Thursday’s Workwear Report: Flounce Pencil Skirt

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With more offices opening up, you might be looking into your closet and noticing that some of your go-to pieces from a year and a half ago are looking more worn out than you remembered, or just not fitting the way you’d like them to.

A basic black pencil skirt is a must-have for my typical workweek, and I love this version from White House Black Market that has a slight flounce. It’s part of WHBM’s “Body Perfecting” line, which isn’t my favorite term, but I appreciate the fact that it has a little stretch for comfort and shape retention.

The skirt is $99 and comes in sizes 00–18.

Sales of note for 2/7/25:

  • Nordstrom – Winter Sale, up to 60% off! 7850 new markdowns for women
  • Ann Taylor – Extra 25% off your $175+ purchase — and $30 of full-price pants and denim
  • Banana Republic Factory – Up to 50% off everything + extra 15% off
  • Boden – 15% off new season styles
  • Eloquii – 60% off 100s of styles
  • J.Crew – Extra 50% off all sale styles
  • J.Crew Factory – 40% off everything including new arrivals + extra 20% off $125+
  • Rothy's – Final Few: Up to 40% off last-chance styles
  • Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
  • Talbots – 40% off one item + free shipping on $150+

Sales of note for 2/7/25:

  • Nordstrom – Winter Sale, up to 60% off! 7850 new markdowns for women
  • Ann Taylor – Extra 25% off your $175+ purchase — and $30 of full-price pants and denim
  • Banana Republic Factory – Up to 50% off everything + extra 15% off
  • Boden – 15% off new season styles
  • Eloquii – 60% off 100s of styles
  • J.Crew – Extra 50% off all sale styles
  • J.Crew Factory – 40% off everything including new arrivals + extra 20% off $125+
  • Rothy's – Final Few: Up to 40% off last-chance styles
  • Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
  • Talbots – 40% off one item + free shipping on $150+

And some of our latest threadjacks here at Corporette (reader questions and commentary) — see more here!

Some of our latest threadjacks include:

486 Comments

  1. I come from a community/background where being childless by choice is just not a thing. As such, I have no one to ask this IRL so asking here: did any of you decide to freeze your eggs? I am 35, think we both don’t want kids, but not like we hate kids so we worry what if we change our mind and regret this later (to me not a good reason to have kids either). Doesn’t help that if I try to have this convo with my friends or relatives in real life they just try telling me how I will DEFINITELY regret not having kids in a few years, and it will be too late and I will die very unsatisfied/alone/with no legacy etc… any direct/indirectly related thoughts and anecdata welcome!

    1. I froze my eggs and definitely would not in your situation!!! You don’t want kids. Your husband doesn’t want kids. You are an adult who knows yourself and you won’t regret this. Egg freezing is expensive, rough on your body, and isn’t actually very good! For me it made sense to preserve some chance but for one round and 12-20k, you may very well not even get enough eggs that will be viable enough to become a baby.

      1. My experience differs from that of other posters. At 35, my thoughts on kids were “probably not” but by my early 40s, I felt differently. I was ok with adoption and that worked out for me. It isn’t an easy route, just as the whole egg-freezing path is not easy. It doesn’t answer the question of whether you should freeze your eggs, but I am anecdata that sometimes people change and decide they want kids. It’s so personal. One thought: if you were 100% decided against kids, you might not be asking for input, but it could just be your style of decision making requires lots of data points.

        1. Anecdata the other direction I know people who were not sold on kids then decided they “wanted” them and now regret having them. They love their kids and would never admit this publicly but I have two friends who have confided in me that they regret their decision. I think being occasionally curious or feeling a desire to have kids is not a great reason to have them. I’m firmly in the camp of don’t have kids unless you 100% both want them.

          1. +1 as a vocally childfree person, parents are oddly comfortable disclosing to me they regret their children. Very few of my parent friends are actually happy with their decision, but you’d never know from social media. Give them a few drinks and they will say they ruined their life to fit social norms.

          2. +1 I also know of some people like this. I bet there are a lot of them out there.

          3. +1 – and same experience & also child free, I am the confessional for a lot of people and there’s a lot of regret out there

          4. It depends on how old your friends’ kids are, but once you get through the really hard years, which I think of as baby through elementary school, people stop complaining as much. I’m in my 50s with late teens and although I’ve never been one to question whether I should have had kids, I find it totally normal to complain (to other parents) about how hard it is. We are not many generations removed from all of us living in family clans and having the village literally raise our children. The way we’re all expected to do it now is for the birds.

            I have five close friends who are childfree and close to my age, so basically childfree for life. Two will tell you they really regret not having kids when they had the chance. Two will tell you they have no regrets. One is on the fence. We do talk about this stuff pretty often.

            My one on the fence friend thinks she’d like to marry a man with adult kids and be that kind of step mom. She was never really super excited about changing diapers and all the baby stuff but she would really be a great step mom (in case you know any great divorced dads of teens or young adults!!)

        2. I also changed my mind but at 34. Could conceive naturally. Tried IUI and IVF. No luck. Tried adoption and after a match fell through (thankfully early in the process) we were just done. We weren’t people who had always wanted kids so it was pretty easy to go back to our childfree life. I still get sad once in awhile when I see a heartwarming parenting moment but I’d rather have that sadness than OMG what did I do to my life. I was all in on kids early in the infertility process and was back to “nah” by 38. I’m back on birth control just in case.

        3. I didn’t want kids until I did, and then I wanted them yesterday. They’re 18 and 20. Zero regrets.

          1. You were smart. Now I am pretty sure I will not be abel to have my own kids b/c I am almost 40 and I am thinking I may just turn into another older lady with cats b/c I was not abel to find a man to impregnate me soon enough. FOOEY!

    2. I’m 43 and child free by choice. I don’t regret my decision at all. If you’re quite sure you don’t want kids then I wouldn’t spend the time and money to freeze your eggs just in case. Don’t let others influence your choice. I went to the C-moms page once looking for a gift recommend for a relative. Reading some of rhe comments about the difficulties of raising children made me very happy with my choice.

    3. I am about your age (so I can’t tell the future) but I did not freeze eggs. My childfree status is both due to my own goals in life but also my belief systems. DH and I have discussed becoming foster parents in the future because in its a cause we believe in, but there is zero chance we will ever create a human.

    4. I’m 49, no kids by choice. I have a twinge once in a while, but it is generally years apart when I do. I don’t regret not having kids. I know far to many people who regret having them. Now I am well past the point where it would be possible without a lot of help.

      When I would have been making a decision about freezing eggs, it wasn’t really an option. I had surgery in 2006 to stop periods, so I really made the decision at that point.

    5. I froze my eggs at 35 (and later used them to have a healthy baby), but I very much wanted kids and wanted them with a partner if at all possible. I also come from a background where being childless by choice is stigmatized, but if that had been my choice, I absolutely would not have frozen my eggs. That said, if you think you might change your mind in a few years, and you have money to freeze, it’s not the worst idea in the world. What does your partner think?

    6. We were on the fence for a LONG time and then slowly tipped to like 60% in favor. I would say if you are neutral or unsure, don’t do it. Society will have opinions about your family status whether you have 0 kids (oh no!), 1 kid (oh, just one?) 2 kids (basic), 3 kids (minivan city), or more (what are they trying to prove). Don’t @ me, I’m just making a point that you can’t win.

      Kids are amazing and wonderful, but they also are an enormous drain on physical energy, mental bandwidth and finances. See this great essay by Monica Hesse on how the deck is stacked against motherhood:
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/birth-rate-american-mothers/2021/06/14/045c4684-c950-11eb-81b1-34796c7393af_story.html

      1. I loved that essay. I don’t want kids for a lot of reasons, but that article definitely captured a number of them.

      2. I’m 44 and very happily child-free by choice, have never considered having children even though I live in a country with a year’s paid parental (shared) leave, public kindergarten, free schools etc. I just don’t want to be a mother.

    7. I wouldn’t. You’re old enough to know what you want. I’m 47, childfree by choice. My friends know and for the nosy family types, I just say we couldn’t have them and make a pained face and get left alone/pitied, which is fine with me. Having kids is something I knew I’d be good at, would probably enjoy some of the time, but not as much as we enjoy our lives without them. We have so much less financial pressure and the gift of time to enjoy our lives. No regrets.

    8. I am an Old, and we are still happy with our decision not to have kids. We both have relatives who caved to the pressure and had kids without really wanting them, and they are not very good parents. The relatives who really wanted kids did much better jobs. Don’t cave!

    9. I think you are a grown woman who is perfectly capable of knowing whether you want kids by 35. If you don’t really want kids already, it is okay to let that door close.

      1. This. I will say that I had been child free by choice my whole life (still am) but I struggled he most with that decision between 35-40, that felt so permanent in a way that it hadn’t before. I’m well on the other side of that now, and am completely on team “thank goodness I didn’t have kids,” but OP it’s rather normal to second guess yourself around your age.

        1. I know multiple couples who went through the same thing. They are all very relieved they stuck to their instincts and stayed childfree.

    10. I’m team if it’s not a f*ck yes! then it’s a no when it comes to kids. You have your answer

      1. This.

        My husband got a vasectomy when I was 35. Five years later, i’m still very happy with our choice.

    11. I didn’t want kids until I was in my 30s. The reason was straightforward: super dysfunctional childhood and parents who practically have an express pass at the divorce court. Meeting good, stable men made me understand that I could break the cycle of dysfunction and give children a happy childhood and a good home.

      I have a great kid who is amazing and I couldn’t imagine life without him. Nevertheless, I have told people that I regret having him. The moment my husband and I got married, people stopped treating me like a cool, fun, accomplished woman and started treating me like gestational equipment attached to a meat sack. (Take my word for it – it was cruel and dehumanizing.) Following a medically dangerous pregnancy, and due to my age (40), we’re not having more. But the pressure to procreate continues. The only thing that gets people to understand that more kids aren’t coming is “On some level, I regret having Liam.” It’s like 99.95% untrue, but it gets the yapping to stop.

      The “dying unsatisfied” is garbage. You have kids because you think it would be fun and you can give a kid or kids a good life (Having kids IS fun, especially later in life.) The legacy part is situational. Are you and your husband only children, descended from parents with small families, or do you have cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews?

      Think about what it is about your life that you like now that would change if you had a child or children. Consider that having one kid is much less disruptive than multiple kids. Think about if you would have fun having kids. Think about if you’re able to structure a life with kids that isn’t Mommy Martyrdom. What area of the country are you in? Can you do a free-range parenting thing, or are you going to be competing to get your kid into an appropriate nursery school?

    12. Since it sounds like you would want to have any potential children with your spouse, definitely freeze embryos instead of eggs. It is the same amount of stress on you physically, and much higher chances of working in the long term if you do change your mind. If the peace of mind would help, and you have the financial means, I would do it. I am not in the same situation as I have one child already, but I can tell you I’m very glad to have frozen embryos for future children as it removes some of the urgency tied to age (husband is >40, and I would worry about decline in sperm quality).

    13. Never wanted kids, never second-guessed the decision.

      Strictly from a financial planning standpoint, it seems like a smarter choice to stockpile money for possible adoption than to spend a fortune on egg storage. The adoption cash is easily repurposed.

    14. I think you’re old enough to know what you want (and there is no age minimum for knowing what you want, but I feel like at 35, you have a good sense of what the deal is with friends around you having them). So I’m not saying whether you should or should not freeze eggs, but I wanted to add that freezing EMBRYOS is very different than freezing EGGS. If you want to free embryos with your partner, know that there’s a much higher success rate when you want to use them later than there is for freezing eggs. Just want you to have that info since I didn’t see it mentioned above. Frozen eggs aren’t as structurally stable as frozen embryos, and you don’t have as good of an idea as to what you’ve “got” with them. Embryos thaw better and the success rates are much higher bc the eggs have already developed to the point of being an embryo.

    15. Why do you care what other people think? This is a decision between you, your husband and your medical professionals. I hate that small town mentality that everyone gets a vote or their approval needs to be sought. Why even discuss it with them?

      1. Lauren, I do agree with the principle, but the whole point of Jane’s question here is that she’s NOT discussing this with her small town crowd because she knows they won’t be helpful…

    16. It may be worth checking out the success rates for having a live birth result from frozen eggs. People always talk about it as a sure option, but the rates of success I’ve seen are low. It may be worth getting the official numbers with whatever center you’ve identified as potentially using.

      1. I’m the PP upthread who used my frozen eggs to have a baby a couple of years ago. I agree the rates are far lower than for embryos, but the technology has vastly improved even since I froze in 2015, and while they are not a sure bet, many centers have excellent rates with them. There’s also a calculator online that will tell you about how many eggs to freeze at your age for the odds of one or more live births (based on the data). As anecdata: I froze 21 eggs at age 35 and ended up with four untested embryos. First transfer failed. Second transfer resulted in a healthy baby and still have two left.

    17. Anecdotally all my married friends who were on the fence at 35 about having kids but leaning to no, are now happily child-free in their 40s. If you wanted kids you’d probably want them by now.

    1. Oh wow, all three color choices are gorgeous! I would have a hard time choosing and I don’t think you’ll go wrong no matter what.

    2. Honestly I don’t like any of the color combos (ducks). Gold seems too bright, white will show wear easily, and I would have put the tan on the arch and the black on the toe of that combo – more elongating to the foot.

      If they’d done one in all tan I would be tempted!

      1. I have a favorite pair of sandals that do just what you suggest, reversing the black and tan. These go with so much and women approach me regularly asking for details because they like them so much.

      2. I don’t either, MGemi is hit and miss style wise, they make some really cute things and some odd things. I will say if OP loves these, I’d avoid the black and white. It seems easy to wear, but shoes in that combo are always the hardest to pull off – they stand out in a bad way with most things, imho.

    3. So pretty! Personally, I love metallic sandals – I have a gold and bronze pair that I wear with everything (jeans, shorts, dresses, etc). These shoes are low-key and elegant enough that I don’t think they’ll come across as flashy in gold. I say get those (although the black and white ones are cool too).

    4. What is your summer wardrobe like? I would only get the black and white if you wear a lot of solids or geometric patterns with white in them. Otherwise, I would get the gold.

    5. Thanks all! Gold it is!

      I agree about M.Gemi being super hit or miss. Some of their shoes are so unbelievably ugly I can’t image who could possibly be interested. And then there’s the stuff like this that I love :)

    6. I am currently wearing a pair of gold flats – such a useful neutral that I wear them all. the. time.

  2. Humor me. My kid failed a high-stakes math test and is a hot mess after a year of remote learning. We are working on reteaching over the summer so that kiddo can have a fresh (competent) start in the fall. Kids (middle schoolers) insist that math is pointless and a useless skill as an adult. I know that this isn’t true (I use it at work all the time; they know this, but they insist that they will do something else and that they are right; sigh — it is nice to know everything).

    Adults: What math or number skill / fact do you actually use?

    I will go first, and I know that there is probably a formula for this, but if the daytime high and the overnight low are not terribly different numbers, it is humid AF outside. I can the weather forecast more for this in the summer to know how sticky it will be outside.

    1. Deciding whether to buy a large or small box of cereal when the unit cost labels have fallen off the shelves.

    2. I do a lot of mental math – calculating monthly payments, percentages etc.My toddler also likes to shout numbers at me (37+3+3+3+1) and thinks I am a wizard when I give him an answer (as does my husband who has a very loose grasp of numbers)

    3. It’s hard to think of any job where math is totally irrelevant.

      Deal attorney perspective – directly relevant to understanding pricing & financials. Otherwise helpful in understanding how a deal supports my company’s bottom line.

      Let’s think of “I hate math” careers. Say they want to go into marketing or PR. They’d better be able to speak to the return on a particular program or launch. Or they want to be writers or artists or basket-weavers – they need to be able to set rates and bill people.

      General life – just spending 2 minutes thinking about it, comparison shopping (division), talking to contractors about the cabinet designs we want (ratios & geometry), managing household budget…

      1. Thinking more. Now – to be fair, there are some kind of arcane things you learn in middle school and high school math – like I am not out here multiplying matrices 20 years later – but even things like “calculate the area under a curve” are relevant to things like reading about Covid stats.

      2. My boyfriend is in PR and he spends a LOT of time with statistics and making sure that whatever is being said/quoted in a press release makes mathematic sense.

      3. I am a math-related professional who works with attorneys all the time. Every attorney I meet says “ohh I became an attorney so I wouldn’t have to do math,” then proceeds to do a ton of math as we move through the case. Attorneys use math ALL THE TIME.

        1. I am a quantitative researcher who happens to have a law degree and who studies lawyers and judges. Every single lawyer and judge I meet kicks off the conversation with “I went to law school so I wouldn’t have to do math, hahahahaha.” I am so sick of hearing it. It’s like saying “I’m just a girl and girls are bad at math, hahahahaha.”

        2. Haha so true. I’m an attorney who happens to enjoy math but people tell me all the time that they became an attorney because they don’t like math – umm as a deal attorney I use math constantly in formulas in contracts, figuring out cap tables, etc. On the litigation side I think it comes up pretty regularly on things like calculating damages. Math is everywhere. Just because it’s not a word problem that involves a man buying 50 bananas doesn’t mean it isnt math.

        3. Deal attorney, and I hate when people say that. I mean sure, the last time I did math was high school and I’m definitely not doing matrices, but some ability to understand numbers, percentages and concepts is an everyday part of my job (ever tried to word a reverse earnout with a double negative? I once saved a client from losing several millions by mapping it out with real numbers).

        4. Oh I totally agree with that comment! I hear it all the time from litigators in particular and it’s like – you do realize you are actually doing math daily, right? Settlement negotiations are, when really boiled down, word problems.

    4. A person with curly hair has a hair that is a lot longer than a straight hair that hangs at the same length. It’s not just distance from top to bottom, but the course that the hair takes (winding vs straight). So if a curly person wants a 2″ trim, how much do you really need to cut? 2″ combed straight? Or 2″ of overall length? It’s not that simple.

      Ditto something like curtains. If you want curtains for a 60″ window, don’t just get curtains that measure out 60″. You maybe need 2x your width.

      1. The curtain example is not really about math, but about style. There are math PHDs who wouldn’t understand that curtains are supposed to gather rather than not lie flat.

        1. Kind of true, but for anyone who is making the curtains and knows that they do want them to gather, the measurement example makes sense to me. I use math like that in sewing all the time.

          1. My mom sews and quilts and it drives her batty that 1) people do not account for the weave in a fabric, so you cannot just put pattern pieces together like a puzzle on the fabric and start cutting and 2) there is such a thing as a seam allowance.

            She watched one of the Real Housewives talk about her fashion line (She by Sheray?) and was baffled that the woman had no idea about garment construction.

            The builder guys are right: measure twice, cut once.

        2. OMG this is so true!

          OTOH, I do feel that my quant friends would understand that a greater volume of fabric would lead to more light blocking / sound muffling than a mere 60″ curtain. IIRC, architects have a bendable thingie to place over curves that they can straighten to provide the distance of a curving line.

          Also: roof shingles need to overlap. You cannot just measure the dimensions of the roof and buy enough shingles to cover just the dimensions. Little Free Library projects can go very, very wrong and involve infinite trips to the store.

          1. Yes we do understand that. I don’t think the person who said that about mathematicians knows any.

          2. Hahaha I am glad that Anon explained it since I wouldn’t have thought of the gathering aspect on my own. Signed, mathy person and Ph.D. who just bought Home Depot blinds, has IKEA furniture and is 40yo.

    5. I was one of those kids! Majored in English, thought for sure I’d have a math free career. But I’m constantly doing percentages in my head for daily life (tipping, sales). At work I manage a lot of budgets, and while Excel does most of the formulas for me, being able to understand when the math looks ‘off’ is essential to minimizing human error in my many spreadsheets.

      1. This. My teacher used to say that you need to be able to catch a typo on your calculator.

    6. Exchange rates and percentages.
      I spent ages a couple of weeks ago trying to work out which way the currency effect went on the Financial Times’s Climate Leaders list. All the carbon intensity numbers were by €m revenue, but not all the companies listed are headquartered in places that use the Euro as their currency. Were companies reporting in £ getting an extra bonus or suffering from a currency headwind on their reporting over the period?
      Also carbon accounting more generally.

    7. I am a math person in a math job, but honestly, I don’t think you can convince an unwilling teen that math is important. But if the kid fails math, he or she will get fewer opportunities to go to the colleges they want, because math is factored into GPA and to the extent SATs still exist when they apply. Sometimes the practical approach works best with kids. Also, a lot of examples people are giving could be handled with a phone calculator in real life. Math is just something a teen with college aspirations has to do.

      1. “a lot of examples people are giving could be handled with a phone calculator in real life.” The arithmetic can be handled with a phone calculator, but the kid still has to know how to set up the problem. If you can’t figure out that cost per ounce is calculated by dividing package price by number of ounces in package, a calculator won’t help you.

      2. +1 to your last sentence. My kid hates history, probably because she has never had a good history teacher, but she still does all the work and gets As because she wants to go to a selective college to study something that has nothing to do with history.

      3. +1. I think this is the right approach. Kid can use the “but you can use a phone calculator” comeback for basically any example of day-to-day math.

        1. And I can use the, “I can figure it in my head faster than you can pull your phone out, kiddo.” comeback.

          1. Oh, I 100% agree!! I happen to love math and it was always my best subject, but from the perspective of a 13 year old who doesn’t like math and who has grown up with everyone having easy access to cell phones, I don’t think this will be a winning argument.

        2. You can’t buy a calculator to understand certain things. How to read a graph (understanding axes, their range, points on a graph, whether the points actually lie on the fit line) makes the difference between just seeing/hearing news pieces about virus numbers (or the potential impact of higher wages, climate change or many other things) and actually looking at the graph and seeing that they cheated with the axes for example.
          Number literacy makes you grasp the difference between numbers which all sound larger than life for the normal person. It’s important for discussing higher income tax to distinguish between millionaires and billionaires. Juggling numbers is useful when thinking about your city budget or school district budget. A calculator doesn’t give you a feel for numbers.

          1. Some people just don’t have a feel for numbers though. Doesn’t mean they’re dumb.

          2. Numeracy should be treated just like literacy. If a student “doesn’t have a feel for words”, they’d get interventions, not excuses. That it’s become culturally acceptable to “just not do math” in the USA is one of our failings as a society, IMO.

          3. Doesn’t mean they are dumb, but it means that no one ever taught them math in a way that they could understand. The vast majority of people are capable of developing number sense.

          4. Of course they aren’t dumb. Dumb to me has a connotation of ‘hopeless case, completely unable to’, but this is not an inherent gift (for most people) but a skill that is learned and practiced. I was just trying to list reasons that make it a skill worth acquiring for many people vs. a very niche skill.

          5. was not saying that your post implied people who don’t get math are dumb, but growing up when I did it very much felt like the messaging was “you can do STEM or you’re dumb”. As someone who doesn’t have a brain for math, it was not a great feeling.

      4. +1 Sure I use math, but it’s nothing that I learned in HS or college. Excel and my phone calculator do all the math calculations I need in my day to day life. When I need something more complicated for work, I have accounting and finance people who do the math.

      5. +1 These examples are all legit, but using them will be trying to apply a rational explanation to a problem that’s emotional, not rational. Rational explanations don’t budge a kid who is stuck feeling like a failure, having to do (potentially hated) work over the summer, and disliking/begrudging having to do it at all. When I get in that state—and I’m a reasonably mature adult—you can give me all the rational reasons you want and everything you say is simply going to make me dig my heels in, fight you harder (and I don’t care how irrational I sound), and “hate” it even more. I’m going to need a bribe, a prize, an immediate benefit, the easiest possible way to get started, some immediate wins, and a feeling of value and worth to overcome that sense of failure and “hot mess.”

      6. I agree with this approach. I took 4 years of computer programming in high school (required for my program) and struggled mightily. It was in fact largely irrelevant to my life now, but that part doesn’t matter – I had to do it graduate high school and that was that.

        You’re arguing over a strawman your teen posed. They need to pass their classes in order to graduate high school and get into a college/pass the incoming math placement test the summer before their freshman year in college. Arguing over why these requirement shouldn’t exist lets your teen believe they can argue with the way the world is set up. They can’t – and understanding that is the real skill that matters here.

      7. Maybe a hot take but things your phone can do actually isn’t math for the most part. Learning your times tables isn’t math – that’s memorization. Math is understanding the concept of what multiplication means. If you don’t understand the actual math/principle, the phone/calculator is useless.

      8. Yes, I took 3 AP history classes my senior year and did not take science (because it was physics, which is essentially math). I tried to get out of math but was told if I wanted to go to college, I needed a math class. I also took two languages throughout high school. Double majored in social sciences and minored in a language at a well regarded university. I am a words person through and through, and have set up my life since I was 17 to avoid numbers. I’ve actually done pretty well with it. I have a great job working in government and aside from reviewing budgets someone else made, I never use math at work. I can calculate the tip on a bill at a restaurant, but that’s hard for me.

        I’m pretty sure I have an undiagnosed learning difference because math, spacial reasoning, and some types of logic questions just do. not. make. sense. However, I’m a great writer, a fast reader, and excel at word games. I get really, really fed up with the obsession with STEM right now. It’s not for everyone, we need non-STEM people too, and you can be bad at math and still be smart. I have several relatives with reading/writing learning differences and people take them saying “I’m not a good reader. I can’t write well” at face value. When I tell people “I don’t understand math” I get people telling me why that’s not a thing.

        As an adult, the only time that my lack of math impacted me was when I tried to join the Navy as an officer (I could have enlisted just fine). Most of their programs required college calculus, which I don’t have.

        All this to say – it’s okay to not be good at math. It’s okay to find a life where you don’t have to use math. Your kid will find something that they’re good at and enjoy and will study that and make a career out of it. It takes all kinds of kinds.

        1. No, it’s not okay to not be good at math. Nearly everyone is capable of understanding math. It’s just that math is taught so poorly in the vast majority of schools. Numeracy is just as important as literacy.

          1. Math major here. I personally think at the high school level trig and calculus are overvalued and probability and statistics are undervalued. I’d rather everyone understand prob and stats (and maybe game theory too) – tons of real life applications.

          2. Anon at 10:05 here:
            I went to one of the best high schools in the state. I had AMAZING teachers who literally came up with 50 different ways to teach things to me. I still cannot understand math. I can’t even say “its all greek to me” because I literally understood Ancient Greek better than math in high school.

            I get annoyed because I have a lot of friends in STEM who say things like “I’m a terrible writer” and people take that at face value (and they chose majors and career paths where they don’t have to write very much). I say “I”m terrible at math” and people jump down my throat. I truly believe that some people’s brains are not suited to be good at math (or reading, or writing, or foreign languages). Most people are decently good at all of the above, so it’s a non issue, but there are definitely some people who try as they might will not understand math or will have trouble reading.

          3. Lauren – totally agree. I only took stats in high school because I was on the remedial track. All other tracks took Calc. Stats is super relevant and should be taught more!

        2. I know that I have a relevant learning difference (“non-verbal learning disability”). But I still wish that math had been taught to me in a way I could have understood and followed. I’m glad that I was able to graduate and get into good schools and degree programs without math requirements holding me back. It would have taken more time, better teachers, and a different approach to translate math into my language, but I think I would have gotten there in the end? The only way I passed algebra (for example) was by getting a very old textbook that had lengthy explanations (that were actually really well written, unlike nearly all modern textbooks generally). For practical application/computation type math, I think a historical approach that explained when we came up with this stuff in the first place, and to solve what problems, might have really helped me. And a numbers theory approach might have helped with “math as a humanity” mathematics. Some of my best friends in college were math majors, I think because in some ways we thought more similarly than people in more practical majors.

          1. Exactly. There are learning differences that affect math. There are ways to teach math that accommodate those learning differences.

      9. This is what I was going to say. I use arithmetic at work, not calculus or anything, and none of the you need it arguments ring true past math at lower levels. But you gotta suck it up if you want to go to college or grad school. I don’t speak a second language either in daily life (sure wish I did and was good at it but I’m not) and you have to suck that up too and get through it.

      10. +1. I’m an economist, I use a lot of math every day and I was always into it. FWIW, I was the unwilling teen who was sure I would never need to read a novel professionally, so why was I writing all these stupid essays about foreshadowing and literary devices? Now, I am constantly citing examples from the humanities to illustrate economic ideas, and middle-aged me is glad that my mean old parents powered teen me through it.

        There are really two kinds of “math.” One is the type your teen is probably thinking of, the math as a tool kind of thing. The other type, the fun interesting exciting type, is really almost story-telling. It’s using math to relate an economic narrative about incentives and planning and beliefs and decisions, etc. K-12 math focuses on the first type (and that’s important, don’t get me wrong) because a lot of the second type requires the first type. I’d suggest Jordan Ellenberg’s “How Not To Be Wrong.” It’s a great book about what math really is, beyond just “here’s how to do algebra.” He describes the first type as “computation” and the second type as “math.”

        When a kid says “You never give me what I want!” and you say “I gave you ice cream just now when you asked” that is math! There was a claim and a counterexample proving the falsity of the claim. When someone makes a choice e.g. I’ll spend money on vegetables instead of popcorn that’s also math – somewhere in the back of your mind you are deciding that money for vegetables is a better (for you) use of resources than money for popcorn. When doctors get their residencies, they go through the “match.” Executing the match process is computation; knowing that the outcome of the match process meets specific criteria is math. When an insurance policy is sold, the insurance company buys risk from an individual; actuaries price that risk.

        At any rate, here’s the math problem your kid is in fact trying to solve: when should she stop studying math? There is a long long math / computer science / economics literature about when to stop learning and make a decision. She is (as you obviously know) not at the optimal stopping point.

        1. This is a great response. FWIW, I’m an attorney and I use math (or, perhaps, computation) all. the. time.

      11. “Also, a lot of examples people are giving could be handled with a phone calculator in real life.”

        Maybe not really. Here’s one: my car calculates how many miles I have until my tank is empty. Having done enough mental math while driving, I know that it overestimates when I’ve been driving for long, uninterrupted stretches, and underestimates when I’ve made a lot of stops or am in the city. This is helpful for me when determining, e.g., if I need to stop at the expensive place and pay an extra $0.50 per gallon, or if I can comfortably make it to the cheaper place near my house. (Super helpful skill during the gas shortage in May, let me tell you.)

        There’s also an appropriateness factor. I remember being out with friends and getting a $100 bill, and someone was like – $7 is a good tip, right? On two levels, it was all sorts of wrong. Calculating 18% or 20% of $100 is not even math – it’s English (‘per cent’). It also was so completely not in the right ballpark.

        Are you even going to KNOW to pull out your phone to check the math, or will you just agree with the number the cashier says you owe, the quote your mechanic gave you, or the extra you owe your babysitter when you got stuck in traffic?

    8. In my everyday life:
      I like to build stuff. That means a lot of measuring, adding, multiplying and even a little bit of trigonometry. Sometimes you can’t just follow a pattern.
      I convert between ounces and grams all the time when cooking and baking.
      I appreciate art/architecture/design so much more because I understand the math behind the design.
      When I run, I gauge my exertion by mentally calculating my mile splits (admittedly this is an old-person pre-GPS/heartrate monitor trick). Being unable to calculate my splits easily means I need to slow down, even if I don’t otherwise feel tired.
      I “solve for X” all the time, whether its converting units or figuring a difference – it’s reflexive at this point.

      In my academic/work life:
      Computer science is an applied math degree. Yes, there is coding, but code is just one way of expressing math.

      For what it’s worth, I was similar to your kid growing up. I could muddle through, but I wouldn’t say I truly understood what/why I was doing. It finally really clicked in college (thank you, trig professor!). Drilling skills isn’t fun, but it’s how you learn foundations so you don’t get bogged down in calculations when learning harder concepts.

    9. I work in hospital revenue cycle informatics, previously in healthcare IT. I had to write an algebraic equation for Medicare reimbursement for our software vendor to plug into their software so that we could calculate expected reimbursement correctly. This helped us with budgeting and forecasting so we had an idea of what we could afford for employee raises.

    10. In my non-work life, mostly for sales tax and tipping. Yes, the kid might say they can just use their pocket calculator aka phone, but guess what, phones sometimes suddenly die on you! Geometry is useful for life things but to be honest I don’t realize when I’m doing geometry, it’s just like… oh I need to figure out this length between two points in my house (but really it’s the hypotenuse of a triangle).

      For my work life, I ended up working in construction & engineering, so there is a lot of math. Basic math, algebra, geometry, trigonometry.

    11. I hated math until calculus. I was good at it, but it was taught through rote memorization and endless drills. When I hit calculus and the teachers finally started deriving formulas, I finally started to think it was interesting.

      I ended up tutoring math for several years after college. I found that if I used manipulatives and other strategies to get kids to derive properties and algorithms for themselves, even the most math-resistant kids got interested and learned and retained the material. Here’s an example of having the kid derive an algorithm. Give the kid 3/4 in fraction towers. Have her make a tower the same height out of 1/8 pieces. How many eighths are equivalent to 3/4? Write it down. Do the same with other fractions. Have kid look at list of equivalent fractions and figure out the pattern (multiply numerator and denominator by same number to convert). To reinforce, compare 1/4 with 2/8, 1/3 with 2/6, etc. using fraction towers. Voila. Kid knows how to convert fractions and understands why it works.

      Just trying to convince kids that math is useful is not going to motivate them. You motivate them by making it interesting instead of just plug and chug, drill and kill.

      1. Agreed. I was okay at math (read: had to work a little harder to make As than in my other classes, sometimes brought home Bs) and always felt like my understanding of the concepts behind what I was learning was slightly lacking. Calculus made math make sense to me and helped me start to understand the “whys” behind a lot of the seemingly rote things we’d been doing for years. Calculus was interesting! It also helped that I had teachers who gave us insight into what we’d be learning in the years to come and how basic calculus concepts were the foundation for much of that cooler and more “useful” stuff.

        1. +1 on calculus is fun! Unfortunately, lots of folks miss out on the fun because they struggle with the algebra that underpins all the calculations. Students don’t fail calculus because of the calculus – they fail it because their fundamentals aren’t up to par.

    12. Not quite your question but an anecdote. I was always good at math but hated it, thought it was just meaningless formulas and stupid word problems. I swore it off, pursued non-math majors and career. For Reasons, those didn’t work out and I had to pivot in the depths of The Great Recession. Stumbled in to commercial real estate finance. Came in as an administrative assistant but learned quickly and frankly loved it. Now 10+ years in to my CRE career, I’m happy as a clam, making money I never would have dreamed of, and more importantly now recognize my math teaching lacked applicable context. I think there is not nearly enough real-world connectivity between teaching math concepts and actual real world situations, whether it personal finance, real estate, shopping at the grocery store or otherwise.

      I also wonder why I was pushed so hard to take AP Calculus. I think it was probably only for resume/college applications, but it was such misplaced energy. I was good at it but the AP course took up so much time that I sincerely wanted to spend on other things. I also resented the fact I knew I’d never use AP Calc in daily life. I knew I didn’t want to go in to the sciences early, in high school, so there was no rationale for me to take AP Calc and effectively swear off anything related to math.

    13. Middle school me super agreed with your kids, so I floundered through. High school me agreed with your kids so I stopped taking math as soon as I had enough credits to do so. But it’s cool, I floundered because I’d never need it again. Until it hit me on the ACTs and my math score was about half of my other scores, negatively impacting my college options. Until I had to pay to take remedial math in college that I would have had for free in high school, had I known. But it’s cool, I floundered because I’d never need it again. Until I had math classes to graduate. But it’s cool, I floundered because I’d never need it again. Until I decided to go to grad school and it hit me on the GRE. But it’s cool, I floundered because I’d never need it again. Until I needed to take stats in grad school. But it’s cool, I floundered because I’d never need it again. Until I decided to go for a PhD and needed it in multiple classes. But it’s cool, I floundered because I’d never need it again. Until I needed it for my dissertation.

      Never planned to go that far in school and got hit by the same math stuff every time and it cost me a ton in tuition and tutors that I’d have gotten for free in high school and built my skills along the way to not need so much help later.

      They’re sure they won’t go to school that long? (Something I said too!)

      When I waitressed, it helped me quickly tell which table left a great tip so I could thank them again as they left. As a single person, it helped me figure out how to put my money in retirement at what intervals for best returns. As a shopper, it taught me to average cost per wear of nicer clothes and whether generic or name brand, big box or small were better deals. In living with others, it helped to split the bills equitably when bedroom sizes and who had an air conditioning unit were different. It helped me determine insurance prices versus risks, healthcare costs versus risks, how to choose a health insurance plan when looking at costs and deductibles. It showed up when negotiating a car purchase and best deals. It shows up in assessing or planning for vacations and savings.

      Another option? Have your kids watch some episodes of Til Debt Do Us Part on Y0utube so they see how not understanding math literally ruins lives and marriages. Have them do some of the exercises shown and let them struggle with it so they see how they need skills to complete the tasks. Buy them the book Young Fabulous and Broke to read and start to see how much of that plays into understanding numbers and math.

      But middle school me was 100% on your kids’ side here.

      1. So I just googled Young Fabulous and Broke and it is a clothing brand (that I guess is embracing this? it is spendy and the vibe doesn’t seem ironic).

        Is it also a Suze Orman book? Or is google failing me?

      2. “it helped to split the bills equitably when bedroom sizes and who had an air conditioning unit were different” THIS.

        DH’s daughter is terrible at math (she is 20 now) and loathed it in HS. She asked me for help figuring out how to split rent between 4 people and couldn’t fathom why I didn’t care how many people and needed to know about how many bedrooms, sizes of bedrooms, if any had attached bathrooms, etc.

    14. I think they are at an age where they can understand that it’s an understanding of math that is important and necessary rather than the ability to manipulate numbers to get answers to specific questions. If they are interested in science, they need to understand math. Chemistry, physics, and environmental science (mostly because much of environmental science is chemistry and physics) are all heavily reliant on math. Let’s say they want to be doctors.
      Will they be doing calculations at bedside? Probably not (although obviously a basic understanding of math is critical for things as foundational as ensuring a correct dosage is given). But if they want to go to med school, the need to take organic chemistry. If they want to take organic chemistry, they need to understand math. They’ll never make it out of Chem 101 without using math. Statistical analysis is crucial for any type of research in any field, but obviously it’s particularly critical in science. Learning how to think critically about numbers that are presented to you — whether at work (data, studies, analysis) in your “non-math” field, or in every day life (understanding basic concepts like exponential growth or how to critically assess covid statistics, or assessing interest rates, for example) — is a fundamental skill.

      1. During the pandemic there were some interesting articles on how doctors really need to understand Bayes’s theory but generally do not. So if anything we need more math in med school than the current prereqs are providing.

        1. IME doctors are really bad at statistics and at understanding the difference between statistical significance and substantive significance. When I look at drug studies I am horrified by the crudeness of the methodology. It would never fly in my social science discipline.

    15. Does your kid really think math is unimportant or are they embarrassed by their failure and anxious that it’s a sign that they’re unable to pass? If the second motivation plays any role in this then I would take some time to reassure your kid that you know he/she can do well and that resilience in the face of failure is one of the most important life skills.

      1. OP here — I truly think it is #2 (and that this may be when girls start on the “bad at math” where it’s really that IDK why school thought that sending YouTube math lessons was really sufficient for learning a task that (to me) was largely learned by working through well-designed problems with teacher oversight and feedback for helping get you back on track when it was clear you weren’t getting it).

        1. In that case the answer is not trying to convince her that math is important. It’s teaching her math the right way so she can succeed.

        2. If you knew that the math curriculum was terrible and your kid was struggling, why did you let this go on all year? I have a kid who struggled mightily with on-line school and was very resistant to help, along with a full-time job that has been more demanding than ever. I still made it my top priority to tackle the school issues, even though it was incredibly difficult and expensive. I wasn’t going to let the school’s decision to outsource to YouTube dictate my kid’s entire future.

          1. Yikes, this isn’t a very kind response. Like the rest of us, I’m going to assume OP also had a bunch of other issues going on in her life/her family’s lives. Glad that you’re the parent of the year in the pandemic but most of us are just doing the best we can.

            OP, you’re a good mom and I applaud you for trying to find a solution for your kid!

          2. wow unhelpful. Comments like these are one reason having children is unappealing to me – a lifetime of hearing about how I’m doing it wrong.

            Can you provide any suggestions on how to help the problem at hand without blaming the OP?

          3. Good for you, I don’t know if you noticed that there was a bit of a pandemic going on in the last year, and ‘why didn’t you just turn into a flawless homeschooler like me, what a terrible parent you are’ is a sh1tty thing to say.

          4. Um, wut? I don’t even have kids and can see this is just an assh*Le response. (And get real, it’s not your kids “future” – they can take summer school, repeat a class, it’s not going to break them. Better to see a successful parent rocking her job as a role model than a parent who hovercrafts in….)

        3. You are so totally right. IDK why any thinking woman wouldn’t have dropped everything to observe the zoom classes and scrutinize the assignments better, then find an actual curriculum or just reteach everything after class. And there is no reason why a parent couldn’t master teaching any level math needed by their child. People are just so d*mn selfish with their time and expect others to do the heavy lifting here, in a pandemic no less!

          1. I do think people sometimes fail to realize how hard it is do a worse job than a typical bad-to-average teacher (x10 w/Zoom school). For example, the school offering can easily be worse than nothing (such as what happened here, where a student’s confidence was broken down despite inadequate instruction). But this isn’t the way to say it.

        4. That’s a tough situation. Would something like mathnasium help? I would assume they’re practiced teachers and cheerleaders (no personal experience though). Sian Beilock wrote a bit about math anxiety in her book “Choke” but I don’t remember if there was any practical advice for tackling it. I think many of fail in a significant way for the first time as teenagers and it’s so hard to learn how to deal with it. You know your kid best, but were I a teen in that situation I would feel the failure very deeply and would want to know my parents were proud of me for tackling my failure head on.

          1. I used to teach for something like Mathnasium. Those types of places tend to have very rigid curricula and not to provide much teacher training. If you get a good teacher it can be great, but otherwise it’s just meh. I would hire an individual tutor if possible, and do a trial session to ensure a good match.

    16. We all use math all the time without realizing it. Shopping for cereal or a car or a house, understanding the pandemic, election results, our bank balance and retirement savings, even figuring out which outfits look proportional on us. This all comes from a basic feel for math, and you don’t have to whip out the Pythagorean theorem to do it (although that came in handy trying to figure out how much shredded bark to buy for an oddly shaped area of my garden.)

      Keep taking those math classes to continue with a basic feel for numbers, volumes, dimensions, measurements, and logic. It’s the mathematical way of thinking about things that is the most important life skill, and it’s definitely use it or lose it, so that’s why you don’t stop taking math in middle school.

      1. Also, I’m a career mathematician who hated math in middle school. It didn’t get interesting to me until algebra and geometry, then REALLY interesting in trigonometry and calculus. I just wasn’t all that interested in adding fractions.

    17. Why is your middle schooler taking a high stakes math test? Why is the solution to a year of educational misery taking away a break? Why do you need to lie to them about how all adults use math all the time? We all know this isn’t true beyond basic arithmetic.

      Change whatever circumstance has you convinced there is any need for a middle schooler to have any high stakes tests.

      1. Lots of folks don’t have a choice – testing is mandated by the state. It is what it is. Monday-morning quarterbacking a parent’s parenting during a pandemic is crap and you know it.

    18. I got a degree in computer science, so I took calculus and statistics classes in college. I work in software developers now as a business analyst and I don’t use any advanced math skills in my job.

    19. I am a CPA, so some people think I use math in my job all the time. I actually don’t. I use math all the time at home — buying furniture and measuring to ensure it fits, cooking and doubling or halving recipes, shopping, investing, travelling, etc.

      I think it’s the process of learning math that is important vs the actual formulae or calculations. I don’t know how you convince a middle schooler of that.

      Hopefully you can find a tutor that your child clicks with. Once your child feels more competent, I suspect she/he will like plot more.

    20. I have been trying to sew a baby blanket and trying to add and multiple fractions has been so hard! I remember how difficult I found it as a kid and still do – my husband helps me every time.

    21. I am a lawyer, and there are a lot of jokes about going to law school because you can’t do math. And, yeah, I’ve forgotten everything I learned in calculus. But I use algebra and fractions/percentages all the time when negotiating contracts. In the past month alone, I can think of calculating productivity-based bonuses, the value of a company’s AR, potential damages, how much of a company someone owns if they own 5 out of 62 Class B shares where Class B accounts for 80% of the company. Yes, I use my calculator, but I have to set up the problem.

    22. Cyber chase on PBS for the win at engagement. It’s a cartoon about math.
      Also check out older book series called “math doesn’t s*ck” by Danica McKellar.
      I stunk at math courtesy of a scary elementary teacher. Did not get it until remedial classes at the local community college that I had to take to get into my undergrad program.

    23. Lawyer: need to do client budgets; need to understand P and Ls; need to do case exposure calculations; need to do multi-factor risk analyses; need to spot errors in damages expert reports.

    24. Think of math as one of the best brain exercises you can do. Very similar to music, it uses both sides of the brain. When you get good at it, you can relate it to beauty and art. It strengthens your brain and allow you to participate in the world more deeply

    25. Let’s actually assume your kid is correct and math is useless. I would imagine the rest of his or her classes are similarly useless. I also do not write book reports in my day to day life, need to know the dates of various wars, the chemical compounds of elements, run a timed mile in my day to day life. Most classes don’t have a directly translatable skill as an adult, it doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable or that kids don’t have to learn them.

      1. I actually think a lot of school was a waste of time though. Most students are capable of so, so much more than the rote, repetitive assignments designed mostly for the convenience of the system that I remember. Hopefully school these days is much more creative and engaging.

        1. Honestly, I know this is controversial and comes from a place of privilege but this is why private school is worth it. People talk about the rote memorization and the repetitive assignments and honestly, that’s just not something I experienced. We were working on interdisciplinary projects 20 years ago, we had immersive field trips, and many of our lessons were hands on.

          I rarely had classes where the teacher just lectured and we just took notes. Teachers were there to teach and there was never an impression that anyone was just “baby-sitting” the class. There were a lot of rules and consequences for not following them and also small class sizes (most classes I had were 12-16 students) so teachers never really struggled with classroom management.

          I grew up middle class and my parents absolutely sacrificed to be able to send us to private school, but it was worth every penny.

          1. That’s exactly what my public school was like. It’s about good schools, which can be public or private.

          2. This is what college was like for me, and I just kept asking myself, why couldn’t school have been more like this?

          3. You described my public high school very well. It was a much better school than the expensive private school my husband went to. There are good schools and bad schools and excellent schools and many in between. Whether the school is public or private isn’t a very good indicator in and of itself as to where the school lands. As an example, I have a friend with no teaching credential that is between jobs and is teaching HS history at a private school where tuition is $50k. My friend is brilliant but she has zero training on teaching.

          4. Fair! Even the really good (like #2 in the state) public schools near me aren’t like that, so I generalized and said private school.

          5. I honestly think a lot of teacher training is counterproductive. Teachers should be subject experts (if they’re actually teaching something). Qualifications in “education” aren’t the same (and education research is super sketchy to begin with). It’s entirely possible the friend with the History degree is a better instructor than a lot of people who have that training, even if she knows less about things like classroom management.

          6. I’m a subject matter expert in several things and would be a terrible teacher. Knowing things and being able to teach them are two entirely different skill sets. I also went to a research heavy undergraduate school and can tell you professors who are experts in their field are usually the worst teachers. For higher level courses, sure, give me the person doing the cutting edge research but for my intro and intermediate courses the teachers who were good at teaching were way better even though they knew less about the actual field. High school courses don’t need to be taught be people who have PhDs in their subject areas, they need to be taught by people who have the skills to teach.

          7. I think elementary / middle school teachers are best as trained teachers, but in high school the ideal is a SME with a teaching cert or some level of teacher training (but not necessarily a full degree). At my school most teachers had a Masters or a PhD in their subject matter and then some teacher training. Most of our English/history teachers were actually former lawyers so there was a lot of focus on developing and supporting an argument (we had weekly DBQs, I remember).

    26. LOL at your weather example.

      Math makes moving through life easier. How to know if you are getting a good deal on a car? Here you have 2 equal payments but different interest rates, how do you evaluate?
      You are in your first job out of college and need to set a budget so that you can go on a vacation with your friends in 6 months, or buy a house, or throw a wedding, how do you balance it?

      Yes these are simple arithmetic questions but understanding the concepts behind them matters more than knowing how to plug numbers into a phone.

    27. I tutored people through college and graduate level statistics who needed it for degrees like psychology or an MPA. Not exactly what you asked, but if you don’t have a solid grasp of mathematics, it limits your non-STEM options, too.

    28. I agree with your kid. I use arithmetic and basic algebra. That is it. Geometry and Calculus were a total waste in my opinion. Just ticked a box to get me through school. UGH.

    29. Use me as a cautionary tale. Even though I was a smart kid, I struggled with math from about grade 5 onward. Nobody could explain it in a way that made sense to me. In high school, I was the kid who had straight A’s in everything except math, where I was lucky to pull a C. I did all the office hours. My dad, who is great at math, helped try to re-teach algebra to me. And yet, it was a miserable struggle the whole way through, which embarrassed me greatly. I got an overall score of 25 on my ACT, despite scoring a 34 in the reading section. Of course, that affected my ability to get scholarships.

      I often say it’s a good thing I was skilled in writing because my math ineptitude has absolutely limited my career choices. I have never applied to grad school because I know I don’t have the capability to get through the math portion. Like even basic algebra would be beyond me. I took my last math class in 1998 (statistics); I didn’t retain much.

      Today, I would probably be flagged for intervention. Maybe even diagnosed with something like dyscalculia because some signs are there. But as a girl growing up in the 80s and 90s, well, I guess it didn’t matter?

      Mostly, OP, I’m sorry your kids are dealing with this. Only you know if it’s an attitude issue or an aptitude issue.

      1. Oh wow you could be me! I also had straight A’s in honors/AP courses in everything, and then a C in remedial math. I got so much extra help. No matter what I do, I cannot get myself to understand math. I’m SUCH a words person (also thankful I’m a good writer) that numbers are a foreign language to me. I also haven’t gone to grad school yet, because I know I can’t take the GRE or the few quantitative classes I’d need. I’m very certain I have some sort of learning difference, but it wasn’t flagged (which is annoying because I have a sibling who struggles with reading and that was flagged asap and they got tons of extra help).

        1. I’m the poster from above with the NVLD. So you know, you can be tested at any time; it’s not too late! You just see a neuropsychologist and they do an IQ test basically.

          1. I think the main reasons would be accommodations (if you do go to grad school for instance) and health history (if you ever need psychotherapy or develop a health issue that’s a recognized comorbidity).

      2. I distinctly remember freaking out in 6th grade math because my teacher said we couldn’t count on our fingers anymore… how did no one realize that I probably have a learning difference?! I was in pre algebra and still using my fingers for arithmetic.

        1. Be a mouse in the corner on any college General Physics, Calculus, Stats or other math intensive course final. EVERYONE counts on their fingers, taps their eraser on the desk or does SOMETHING to keep a tally. Your 6th grade math teacher sucked. Talk about making things harder than they should be for absolutely no good reason.

    30. honestly? I don’t

      I hate math and I’m terrible at it. I was the kid who had all APs in history, English, and foreign language and was in remedial math. I grew up with a mom who is a math and science teacher, so it’s not like I grew up subconsciously learning that girls can’t do math (in fact, I was a jock who now works in a male dominated field so I never really listened to what girls “should” do). I went to my math teachers for extra help every day. My mom and my uncle (also a math teacher) tutored me every weekend. I cannot do math. On the flip side- I can, and frequently do, read a 400 page book in one sitting.

      So, I work in government where I spend most of my time managing the non-financial aspects of projects and writing reports. My department asks me to proofread pretty much everything for them, because they know I’m a good writer. The way my office is set up is that anything financial goes through the finance team, and everyone else just does project work so I don’t have to get involved with finances.

      When I have to do arithmetic in life, I use a calculator. I can add in my head and can calculate at 20% tip (but I have to think about it), but beyond that I need paper/pen or a calculator (even double digit subtraction, I need to do on paper). There are online calculators to help with everything – retirement planning, running split calculations, etc.

      1. Yep, I’m with this poster (and OP’s kid). AP history, foreign languages, etc. Took math because I had to and remember thinking in high school, “This is stupid, I’ll never use this.” Aaand, I was right! High level math isn’t used in any number of jobs. I use arithmetic and basic percentages and fractions, but yeah, all those years of higher math were just pointless. I work in government relations – so I talk and write for a living.

        Rather than telling your kid he’s full of it – when depending on what year he’s in, he may actually be right – I’d take the approach that, “Hey, son, you know, you’re right – you may not use this. But you need it to get into college to do [humanities thing he wants to do], so you gotta power through a few more years. I’m sorry, this sucks. Let’s see how we can make it suck less, ok?”

      2. Anon at 11:18 here – I”m so glad to have found my people!! I often feel “less than” because I don’t get math and people do not seem to understand (see the comments above) that people like us a) exist and b) are doing just fine

    31. We are having our bathroom remodeled and have been remarking that anything having to do with architecture or the building trades (ESPECIALLY TILE SETTING!) is ALL MATH.

      Also not long ago my husband and I calculated the area of a circle (several circles, actually) to figure out how many small ramekins we needed to make individual pies instead of one big pie.

      And of course in law you have to calculate damages.

    32. I don’t use any math in my day to day life beyond arithmetic. Any math I do need to do can be done on my phone or with a very basic formula in Excel. I am one of those people who has always struggled with doing math in my head, so I need to see it written down. By the time I find a writing instrument and paper, it’s faster to just use my phone. I am 99% sure I have never used anything beyond 5th grade math in my life once I finished school.

      I was actually pretty good at math growing up, until I hit high school. Then I hit a string of bad teachers and even worse subject matter. Geometry, algebra II, precalc/trig…I couldn’t see how any of it applied to real life (and still don’t). Trig was a HUGE struggle for me during my junior year of HS, although I actually like calculus my senior year because it felt more like puzzles to me than whatever on earth trig was. And these were taught by the same teacher who was actually pretty good, so that makes me think that trig was the problem, not the teacher. I took prob/stats in college and again in grad school and that actually wasn’t so bad, though I don’t think that really requires much of a math background beyond basic algebra.

      All this to say that middle school and high school are the doldrums for math instruction. You’re getting into a lot of concepts and formulas that are just really not relevant for most people who don’t go into science. Probability and statistics, the ability to read and understand graphs, understanding the true scale of the difference between orders of magnitude, etc…now those are useful math skills that kids do need to be taught (but often aren’t).

      For your kid, I would hit them with a lot of sympathy for what they’re going through, but also let them know that unfortunately they do need to get through it because that’s how our society is set up (you need the math for the SATs to get into college, most colleges require at least one math course, etc.). It’s also fine to tell kid that it’s ok to hate it.

    33. Well, I tell college students with whom I work that they do not study subjects to specifically learn the material. They study a wide range of subject so they know how to think, to “strengthen” their brains, to create neural connections, to become more facile mentally. No one does bicep curls to get good at bicep curls; strong arms translate to better kayaking, skiing, carrying suitcases or grocery bags, etc. Become a mental athlete, well rounded, ready for life.

    34. If you understand math/statistics, you can read all those bogus news articles about why x food is bad/good for you or about some other new promising treatment for cancer and point out why the conclusion they’re reporting on is not true.

    35. Numeracy also informs your understanding of policy, in a way that matters for when you vote.

      For example, let’s say a couple pays a total of 32% of their income in taxes. A policy proposes that they pay an additional 5% in taxes. That means:
      1. Their tax burden increases by 15.6%.
      2. Their take-home pay decreases by 7.35%.

      You have three different numbers going on: additional percentage of income paid into taxes, percent increase in tax burden, and percent decrease in take-home pay. Only one of those numbers is 5%, and if you don’t have any sense of this, you wouldn’t even KNOW to calculate it out or think about why it matters.

      I know people who don’t understand the step function nature of taxation, so they think that being in a higher tax bracket means you take home less money than you did before; they don’t understand that it’s only the additional, marginal income that is taxed at the higher rate. I know people who don’t even know to calculate a blended tax rate. No calculator can help you if you don’t even see the issue.

    36. I use math or number skills every day. Most used:

      Percentages. Very useful to be able to calculate percentages in everyday life, for example when shopping something on sale. It’s very useful to understand interest rates for personal economy – percentages are essential. For the US – calculating tips when eating out.

      Geometry. Very useful to understand how big an apartment actually is even if it isn’t square, how to put together IKEA furniture successfully, a good angle for hanging your Sonos speakers on the wall, whether a garment will fit based on the sizing chart, and how much paint you need to buy freshen up the walls in your first rented apartment.

      Arithmetic. The basics. Very useful for personal economy, adjusting recipes, dividing the bar check correctly, handling money at a retail job, doing hobby stuff that needs some sort of calculation, understanding and calculating time etc.

      Equations. Very useful for handling questions related to proportions and percentages. I use equations a lot for knitting and sewing, and for travelling (exchange rates and things like centimetres to inches).

      Maths I use less:
      Trigonometry. I did a lot of trigonometry in school, and enjoyed it a lot, but have used very little of it later. Useful for engineering, drawing (perspectives) and sciences, but I get by by more basic geometry in my everyday life.

      Statistics. I wish that I was better at statistics, good for understanding scientific articles, political polls and stuff like covid vaccine efficacy.

      I think one of the really big things affecting people with low numeracy skills, is how they handle money and personal finances.

    37. I work for a bank in risk, and I have to be able to calculate percentages of things happening

      Ie: 15/ 100 accounts failed the regulation requirement and therefore we are compliant xx%
      Obviously there are built in formulas but you need to have basic arithmetic to ensure you are not reporting wrong to federal government bodies

      Also, a Canadian, in middle school in the ‘80”s when we converted to Metric. (Never ending gong show as my parents and many others still work in imperial system) But I sew for fun sometimes and the ability to convert a fabric yard to metric centimetres is invaluable for having enough fabric
      Those sorts of things are good life skills to be able to work out

    38. You don’t pass math because you’re going to need it. You pass math because it is the gatekeeper to further education. It is how we weed out the weaker from the stronger nowadays. Our education system gives students a chance in middle school to close a lot of doors by opting not to learn math. Some countries use make or break exams, some use ancient languages, some require a lot of memorization. Yours requires math.

  3. Hi all! My husband and I are buying a co-op in Brooklyn, first-time homeowners. Can anyone recommend a good real estate lawyer in NYC? Brooklyn would be more convenient, but Manhattan is fine as well. Thanks!

    1. Congratulations!! We used Tracy Makow at Brickner Mackow 5 years ago for our co-op and were happy with her. Office is in Cobble Hill I think, although we only met her in person at the closing. Closing was way out in Queens or Nassau, but she traveled to it.

  4. If I want a pencil skirt, I don’t want a flounce at the bottom. If I want a flouncy skirt, it should be more flouncy. This is a hybrid that I would never wear.

        1. I love it! (Perhaps I’ve reached an age where I don’t care when the last time something was deemed “trendy”? There really are some benefits of getting older.)

  5. Has anyone been to Saint Augustine, Florida? I’m in search of recommendations for things to do and where to eat (both kid friendly and adults only). Any help would be appreciated!

    1. I haven’t been in some time, but check out Fort Matanzas. The kids might also enjoy the alligator farm and mini golf.

      For restaurants, the Columbia Restaurant is great.

    2. It’s been ten years, but I would definitely say the Castillo, and kids might enjoy the cheesy Fountain of Youth attraction. The whole historical downtown is super touristy in a way that I think older kids would find fun – from my recollection, there were about ten stores devoted entirely to hot sauce. For adults, the Lightner Museum was worthwhile. Also, I’m biased because I’m descended from them so I’ve been hearing stories about them my whole life, but reading about the history of the Minorcans in St. Augustine made the town much more interesting to me than just “generic touristy historical town center.” If you kids are older and into history, it might be worth having them do some research (though your kids may be less nerdy than I was).

      1. I loved the Lightner Museum! Would totally go back. So many topics in one historic building.

    3. The local newspaper staugustine.com has a great list of weekly events (birding tours, Volks-fest) and a list of great local restaurants. Anastasia Beach is beautiful.

    4. Haven’t been in several years and it was pre-baby but 1000% Colombia Restaurant. Amazing salad and I never say that. A cruise on the water, going up the big lighthouse, alligator farm, and the Lightner Museum are all good possibilities that everyone might enjoy. Also, Maple Street Biscuit Company should appeal to both adults and kids, delicious! Have fun!

    5. Maybe it is too obvious,,but I am surprised no one has mentioned the fort. Definitely visit the fort!

    6. There’s an alligator farm with a ropes/zip line course above it about 20 minutes outside the city. super fun. The touristy stuff is fun, lots going on and something to amuse everyone. Good food throughout, and candy shops and ice cream parlors. The fort is rad, the Lightner Museum is rad. My mom hates Florida in general (she’s elitist and borderline rude about FL, not cool) but she loved our visit to St. Augustine.

    7. Probably 15 years ago now but we did one of those trolley ghost tours – totally cheesy and corny, but such a fun time. The guide was a theater student at Flagler and really sold the whole thing.

  6. Thoughts on traveling to Europe in early September for a vacation? I’m fully vaccinated, but am wondering if COVID restrictions and regulations would create complications. Specific countries on the shortlist include Iceland, Ireland, and Spain. Should I just stick to domestic travel for the foreseeable future?

    1. We love Europe in the fall but are skipping this year because it’s too much of a headache to keep up with shifting regulations and lockdowns. Like – even if we’re allowed in for nonessential reasons it’s not too much fun to go to Paris without being able to linger at a cafe.

      We do have some international Caribbean planned for “vaccinated people don’t have to test” — those vacations require less planning effort and so are easier to both unwind and rebook if things change.

      1. Spain is very open now, and France is letting all travelers from the US in. Cafés and restaurants in France are open. Mask requirement outdoors dropped as of today. Curfew ends Sunday. We’re going in September (work, not play) and unless there’s some surprisingly major deterioration, I think it will be fine.

    2. We have a trip booked in September to a country the CDC is still saying is “red — do not go there.” We have decided that if that hasn’t changed by 60 days out (when we have to pay), we are canceling. I just feel like it’s a bad look for a number of reasons.

      That said, we are going to Iceland in two weeks because CDC says it’s okay if you’re vaccinated, which we are.

    3. I am leaving for three weeks in Spain on Saturday, but from another EU country. Apart from having to fill out an application documenting my Corona passport (vaccine, test or immunity from having had corona), and having to wear masks in public, it seems things are fairly normalised – opening hours are back to normal, etc.

    4. I’m not traveling internationally because I have an unvaccinated kid and a) she can’t go many places and b) we don’t want to take the risk even if she could get in. But if it was just DH and me we’d definitely go to Iceland this summer. I’m not comfortable with many other countries but Iceland has very low infection rates and tests everyone on arrival so we’d feel comfortable there.

    5. In September I will choose Spain, really nice weather then specially in Madrid. The whole country is fully open now for USA tourists and with all the tourist sites working normally (restaurants and bars with different closing times by night depending the region) and it seems masks will not be required shortly in open spaces.
      I will only be worried about the international flight.

  7. I need to rant here, but I read in a heated serious of social media posts / comments that someone I know (who is very woke, of course) thinks we should use “birthing people” instead of “women.” And yet this person does not seem to get that many (most?) women now, especially in the US and maybe in large swaths of the world, live full and complete lives without ever birthing a baby? Like we have value apart from whether we ever procreate (and if we do, before that our lives still have worth)? I am stabby mad. I feel like I am in a bee hive — there is the queen, there are the drones, and then there are the poor female worker bees who do all the work until the die and are never really celebrated but are so vital to survival and all that (but who cares? the poor dears never procreated).

    1. I am also stabby about that. I’m childfree by choice, I am not an incubator, I am an intelligent and capable human. But social norms say I’m a pariah and even in this world of PC culture I’m part of a demographic that is still okay to disparage.

      1. Birthing person means a person who is giving or has given birth (which includes people who may not identify as women). It has nothing to do with whether women should give birth.

    2. ignore this person. i have birthed a baby, but still would find it extremely offensive and ridiculous to be referred to as a ‘birthing person’ whatever the heck that means. there are many many women who have no interest in having a baby, who can’t have babies and who bring a lot of worth to our society (like our current VP)

      1. Birthing person means a person who is giving or has given birth (which includes people who may not identify as women). It has nothing to do with whether women should give birth.

        1. Except OP is telling you that it offends her as a woman. It matters if a new term is offensive to women. Impact over intent.

          1. “OP is ignorant and might not be so offended if she understood the issue.”
            Nah. We don’t have to redefine a concept that has existed since the dawn of sentience in humans, aka that women exist, to suit .000001 percent of the population, aka “men who give birth.” That redefinition is not a thing and it’s not going to be a thing. Why people want to die on this hill is beyond me. There are ways to be trans-inclusive without completely negating the existence and identity of 51 percent of the population.

          2. Oh okay so you’re yet another person who seems to believe there’s a movement to replace the word “women” with “birthing people” in all contexts and delete us from existence? How did this unsupported and irrational believe become so pervasive?

            It’s very obvious that OP’s post was meant to stir up anti-trans drama, and I regret taking the bait, but your post certainly removes any doubt.

          3. Anon at 10:26–if the term offends someone else, than it’s not the right solution either. Calling them ignorant and dismissing their feelings isn’t the way to work toward true inclusion for all. I don’t know what the better solution is–I suspect it’s being specific in context used. But there’s irony in you not listening. Trying to right a longstanding wrong doesn’t mean free license to ignore another group as well.

          4. “Anon at 10:26–if the term offends someone else, than it’s not the right solution either. Calling them ignorant and dismissing their feelings isn’t the way to work toward true inclusion for all”

            So we should aim to select a word that offends no one? That seems achievable, let us know what you come up with. I’m calling her ignorant because she is being ignorant. If she displayed any understanding about context, and STILL found the term offensive in context, I might differ with her about it being offensive but I wouldn’t call it ignorant.

        2. The Original…you keep saying the same thing over again in this thread. But that doesn’t make it correct or right. It’s not something that society should call someone who is having a baby.

    3. Perhaps the person means “birthing people” to include people who have the anatomy to give birth but identify as a man?

      1. I think that at least 50% of my female friends do not currently have children / don’t want children / aren’t particularly concerned about whether they ever have kids or not. Why make a term that excludes and devalues so many women because we haven’t figured out how to say “and also pregnant people who identify as men or as not female or as not solely female” (except maybe to say just that, which to me seems inclusive or at least trying to model a spirit of including other possibilities).

        1. What? Birthing People includes all people who choose to give birth. That includes women, transgender men, nonbinary people, agender people, etc. Nothing about this devalues women, it actually separate women from birthing people because not all women are people who give birth, so it separates the identity of a woman from the expectation she will ever give birth.

          1. Birthing people includes victims of forced pregancy and labor. If you’re aiming to be inclusive and non offensive you’re doing it wrong.

        2. I do not want to be categorized/first identified by my reproductive organs? Our reproductivity is the genesis of so much of the discrimination against women? I fight in a male dominated industry and I don’t need consistent reminder that I’m the one that has the ability to squeeze a person through my v a g i n a?

          Also, I’m pretty dang infertile. Consistently being referred to as “birthing” would make me lose my mind. Not sure why you appear to be digging in on this because you’ve repeated this comment a number of times on this thread. I’m a woman. I’m telling you it offends me.

          1. +1. Same here. I’m a woman. This phrase is offensive to me. My opinion matters. The fact that so many here think it doesn’t is so symptomatic of our ingrained misogyny. It’s so deeply ingrained we can’t even name it when we see it.

          2. “I fight in a male dominated industry and I don’t need consistent reminder that I’m the one that has the ability to squeeze a person through my v a g i n a?”

            Let us know when your company drops the term “women” and starts calling you all “birthing people,” addresses groups as “birthing people and gentlemen,” starts celebrating “international birthing people day,” and replaces the sign for the woman’s restroom with a sign that says “birthing people.”

    4. I think the point of that term is to be inclusive of people of both/all genders who are pregnant, not to say that all women are or should be birthing people. If that’s not the context, I totally agree with you.

      1. Isn’t the terminology there usually “pregnant people”? The term “birthing” is dehumanizing. Birthing is what livestock do.

      2. Yes, performative and regressive language. Maybe we should just be ourselves and not worry about offending everyone? WOMEN READING THIS: It is not your job to walk on eggshells for society. UNITE AS WOMAN AND TAKE BACK YOUR RIGHTS!

    5. This is obviously intended to refer to people who are specifically involved in being a person giving birth not to be used at all times for all women.

      Feel free to just not engage with this instead of bringing here to stir up more drama!

    6. I have never read that we should call all women birthing people by default to be inclusive of trans men. I have heard the term used for a person actually giving birth and trying to be inclusive in that specific circumstance.

      I admit it rubbed me the wrong way at first because women are always getting marginalized and this feels like a further marginalization, but I don’t really think that is the intent, at least from most people.

    7. Comment on m0d but I think this therm only applies in the context of childbirth. If it stays there I’m ok with it

      1. It’s simply about childbirth and it separates the act from a gender both for gender minorities and to separate the act of giving birth from the female identity because not all women give birth as society has long upheld. This is not problematic, this is the OP misunderstanding the terminology, it’s actually better for all women because it stops making assumptions that women will give birth or must give birth to be real women or whatever nonsense people say AND it supports other gender identities.

        1. This is so wrong, the Original. You could not be more off-base. What if a woman finds the act of giving birth to be very tied up in her female identity, and finds your newly-created term to be problematic and making assumptions on her behalf? Come on, give me a break here.

      2. Yes, this. It is being used to describe someone who is actually or imminently giving birth, or who has given birth, in the context of obstetrics and reproductive health care. There is no movement to have the word “women” abolished completely and replaced with “birthing people.” OP, you misunderstood this and are stabby mad for no reason.

        1. So, what, you think that there’s some woke feminist out there who wants to describe all women everywhere as “birthing people”? What on EARTH would be the logical basis or motivation for that?

          1. No, the term “birthing people” for people who are pregnant or giving birth is dehumanizing and offensive and should not be popularized. The currently accepted and not offensive term for pregnant persons of all genders is “pregnant people.”

          2. To erase the word “women” and sex-based rights. That is the motivation. It’s not a good one.

          3. Anonymous at 10:59, that doesn’t answer my question. I’m aware of the term “pregnant persons” and personally prefer the term.

            Anon at 11:18 — who is doing this? The people who want to eliminate sex-based rights and equality for women are not the same people who are trying to use the term “birthing people.” Woke feminists like OP’s friend who are ostensibly using this term to describe all women don’t want to eliminate sex-based protections because they’re woke feminists, right? They don’t want to “erase” women, right? What you said makes zero sense.

    8. You are misunderstanding the term. Birthing person means a person who is giving or has given birth (which includes people who may not identify as women). It has nothing to do with whether women should give birth.

      This isn’t a reason to be stabby mad, it’s a misunderstanding of the terminology. <3

      1. There’s something very offensive about the particular term “birthing,” though. It’s crude and dehumanizing. I’m not a cow.

        1. Agreed as well. I’m a woman who has given birth. I’m a mother. I gave birth because I’m a woman who wished to be a mother. These are meaningful and beautiful terms. I am not a “birthing person” and never was.

          There is no excuse for being offensive to so many women here, even if some women say they are OK with it.

        2. Except that when I was giving birth, I was a birthing person. It’s not dehumanizing. It’s reflective of the fact that birth is a distinctive, intense, and often life-changing experience. Trust me, I would much rather be called a “birthing person” in the delivery room than, for example, “mom” – in which my identity as an individual is subsumed.

          But I am gleaning that this convo was not started here in good faith. I leave this here as an affirmation that birth in all its forms is a recognizable, though not universal, moment in time and can be experienced by people of all genders.

          1. “Birthing” isn’t a word I normally use at all, so it’s really strange to hear it as a participle this way. I think the OP is being deliberately obtuse (this isn’t an alternative word for “women” or for pregnant people; I assume it’s a gender inclusive alternative to “mother”). I realize that linguistic associations can change in a generation or less. But it definitely sounds dehumanizing when it’s a word I’ve mainly seen with reference to livestock.

        3. Not to be pedantic* but… if you were a cow, it would be “calving.” Yes, in English we generally use the term “giving birth” rather than “birthing” but I’m not sure the OP would be any better with their friend using the term “person giving birth.”

          I hear how it strikes the ear as odd, but language evolves. (Also, I looked up the medical term for birth – “parturition” – not sure that’s any better, however one would verb-ify that word! And I did love seeing in my charts that I was a “multigravida” – a person who has been pregnant more than one time. Talk about dehumanizing.)

          *this always precedes something pedantic :)

      2. Why are you saying this over and over again? If people are using this term instead of women, then it is excluding women who don’t want children, regardless of how many times you say this.

        1. This is correct. The term IS being used instead of women in many circles. It’s not okay. My feminist sisters fought for freedom and to be viewed as more than a vessel for procreation. I’m not going back to that and I don’t care if it makes others sad if I defend myself.

          1. I have never ever seen this term used outside the context of childbirth. I’d love to see an example if you have one. Using the term “birthing people” to describe people giving birth cannot possible be seen as exclusionary of women who are not giving birth. Both BBB and Anon, these are just pathetic strawmen.

      3. I don’t know why you think this is the case, it’s pretty clear from OP’s post that her friend is not using the term in this context. That aside, as a mother, I find the term birthing person incredibly dehumanizing. Birthing sounds like a term you use to describe livestock.

        1. Nope, it’s not clear. OP didn’t give a single example of how her friend was using this term, just came her to stir up drama about it. Her post belies her clear misunderstanding of what this term means. I highly doubt that any actually woke friend would use this term to describe all women. That’s obviously pretty exclusionary, reduces women to their reproductive capability, sounds absolutely stupid, and it is implausible to me that any actually feminist would do this. I disagree that the term “birthing” is dehumanizing. It’s not like your OB is going to come into your room and direct the nurse to administer pitocin to the birthing person.

          1. You are reading the post the way you want to, the post says the person is saying we should use birthing person instead of woman. No mention of a hospital or a doctor or anything, and the rest of the post wouldn’t make sense if this was the context she was seeing it in.

            If the term birthing person isn’t actually used in the context of a doctor referring to a patient then when is this term actually being used? You’re contradicting yourself in your own post.

          2. Why on earth would OP’s allegedly woke feminist friend want to define ALL women by their reproductive capacity? Does that sound realistic to you? Because it doesn’t to me. It makes zero sense. On the other hand, someone who wants to be enraged about perceived erasure of women in the context of trans issues and stir up drama who clearly doesn’t seem interested in seeing any nuance and just wants to be stabby mad… I’ve seen that before, and I’ve seen it a lot here. I’ve asked for an example of the term being used for all women, but no one’s provided one.

            “If the term birthing person isn’t actually used in the context of a doctor referring to a patient then when is this term actually being used? You’re contradicting yourself in your own post.”

            Come on. It would be used to refer to patients in medical literature, protocol, policy and procedure, hospital peer review, policy discussions, things like that, where technical terminology is appropriate. Not bedside manner. This isn’t complex. Your doctor doesn’t call you a gravida 0 to your face, either, but that doesn’t mean the term isn’t used appropriately elsewhere.

          3. I highly doubt the OPs friend was posting on social media about medical literature….come on, give me a break. Just because you wouldn’t use the term to refer to all women doesn’t mean other people aren’t FFS. And plenty of posters have commented that they find the term offensive regardless. Pregnant person is something that is already commonly in circulation, why do we need a term that uses the word birthing when so many women find it offensive.

          4. She may have been posting about policy/public health. Gee, I wonder if people really talk about policy/political issues on facebook? In any event, give me an example. If you think this is so pervasive it should be easy for you.

            To be clear, I do not care about the term “birthing person.” I don’t advocate for its use, don’t use it, I use “pregnant person” if appropriate. I think it sounds clunky and clearly it makes people uncomfortable. I don’t see what it adds that “pregnant person” doesn’t achieve.

    9. Yep, I agree 100%. It’s offensive and dehumanizing. People tell me to educate myself and be “inclusive,” but can never adequately explain why I should accept a dehumanizing term to benefit others. It’s also jargon-y and exclusionary to women with less education or who speak English as a second language.

      Don’t forget that if it’s “people” who can get pregnant, you don’t get to complain when men decide who can get abortions.

      1. What?? *People* can get pregnant, and those same PEOPLE get to decide whether or not THEY want an abortion. Don’t use false equivalents to try to push some weird agenda.

        1. Right!!! Plus, I don’t think that the men trying to keep people from getting abortions are typically transmen.

          And I don’t anyone–woman, man, nonbinary person–to decide what I can do for MY OWN healthcare.

      2. I agree that it’s jargon-y and exclusionary to women with less education or who speak English as a second language.

        However, I have to disagree with your last paragraph. I personally hate the no uterus no opinion or similar arguments on abortions. No one should be able to decide whether or not I can have an abortion other than me, regardless of what gender they are. Plenty of women are also anti-choice, doesn’t mean they have more of a right o prevent me from getting an abortion.

        1. But anti-abortion sentiment is rooted in misogyny. Not only men can be misogynists, but we do lose something when we start suggesting that there is no nexus to sexism.

          1. I agree. I’m not okay with pretending that anti-abortion activism has nothing to do with misogyny.

          2. Of course it’s rooted in misogyny but the poster specifically made the argument that we can’t complain about men restricting abortions. The problem isn’t men restricting abortions its misogynists (which doesn’t exclusively include men), that was my only point.

    10. I hate any type of wokeness that just wants to use different words, but doesn’t actually address any of the systematic and societal issues that oppress women.

      1. This is where I am at too, although I also find this particular phrase offensive. As others have said, it’s crude and likens women to animals.

      2. But the purpose of this phrase isn’t to address systemic and societal issues that oppress women. It’s to address system and societal issues that oppress gender minorities. Of course I don’t want to replace the term “women” with “birthing person” in every context, but I don’t think it’s a bad solution specifically in contexts where pregnancy or child birth status are important (at the OB/GYN’s office).

        1. Nah. We can use pregnant women and in the rare care of someone who is trans and expecting a baby, refer to him by his preferred name. It’s fine that in room 222, Jim is having a baby – we don’t then need to refer to the other dozen women on the floor as “pregnant people.”

          1. There will be times when we are referring to groups of people and not just individuals. E.g., social science research, policy and protocol, medical literature, policy analysis. It’s beyond me why most of you seem to imagine this will manifest in doctors and nurses in delivery wards addressing or referring to their individual patients as birthing people instead of by their names or known gender identities.

        2. As someone who recently did just give birth, it can be dehumanizing enough, I really would prefer not to be referred to like livestock as a birthing person in the process. No thank you.

    11. I don’t like it b/c it will inevitably be used instead of “women,” which is wrong. People get sloppy.

    12. Replacing “women” with “birthing people” manages to exclude women who are not parents, exclude adoptive moms, AND dehumanize mothers at the same exact time. I am a proud woman and mom, not a “birthing person.” That one act does not define me, my motherhood, mothers, or women.

      We can include t r a n s folks without alienating women.

      1. Do you have any examples of anyone trying to replace the term women, generally, in contexts other than childbirth, with the term “birthing people”?

        1. That is literally what this conversation is about, no matter what “The Original” is pretending. But to be clear, I do not want to be referred to as a “birthing person” ever, even in the labor and delivery room!

          1. Is it? Then someone give me an example of when someone has tried to use this term to apply to all women. No one has. I have seen NO evidence that the term “birthing person” is being pushed as a replacement to “women” in all contexts. If you think this is happening, please show me.

            The Original is correctly explaining to OP what the correct context for this term is.

            I highly doubt anyone is ever going to come up to you and insist that you’re a birthing person and give you a Happy Birthing Person’s day card instead of a mother’s day card. You’ll be okay.

          2. anon @ 11:22am: It is offensive to several of us *even in a childbirth context*, hence my explicit reference to the labor and delivery ward. You can disagree if you want.

          3. All I’m asking for is an example of someone asserting it should be used to replace the word “women” in general, as OP appears to believe is the case. Your feeling offended about its use in the context of childbirth is not an example.

          4. So you also take issue with every hospital who has referred to an area as a “birthing suite?” It’s descriptive of a process currently happening or that recently occurred, not about a forever status of a person. Just as some say a person is “laboring” when they speak about the process of giving birth, it’s a word used for a medical term specific to what is happening now. An adopting parent is not birthing not because they are less of a parent but because they do not need to have a fetal heart monitor on right now nor a worry about placental detachment. It’s not about the person’s relationship to a baby or a plan on having or not having one, it’s about the act they are in or about to be in or when planning for. Birthing person is only different from birthing mother because we now realize that not everyone who is birthing is a female identified person. That’s literally it.

            The OP posted here to start a mess and got their wish and people seem to think I am fighting loudly because I kept getting error messages when trying to respond so I tried a few places and then I guess they all posted eventually.

            This is a complete situation of misunderstanding of a word, not anyone dehumanizing anyone or taking away women’s rights. It’s about what is happening medically, not someone’s fulltime status or value as a person or a parent.

          5. Original – I am not misunderstanding the word. I understand it is an attempt to be inclusive. It is a failed attempt, because it is deeply offensive, even in the context you are discussing. It is deeply dehumanizing to be defined as a “birthing person” to me, even while in the act! I have delivered a couple of babies, so I am aware of how I feel about the subject.

            When you tell me that I just don’t understand, you are ignoring my perfectly valid feelings and experience. You don’t get to tell me how I should feel, or what terms you get to use to describe me. Do better.

          6. No Face, I couldn’t agree with you more. This sums it up so well: “When you tell me that I just don’t understand, you are ignoring my perfectly valid feelings and experience. You don’t get to tell me how I should feel, or what terms you get to use to describe me.”

            People tell me to educate myself. I have – but they don’t like what I learned.

          7. +1 million to what no face says. I’m really disappointed by The Original and one or more anons on this post telling multiple women on this thread that their feelings and experiences aren’t valid.

    13. This makes me stabby too. I’ve never once heard that people born male should get screened for prostate cancer, or anything else that is trying to be inclusive of transwomen. However, there is a push to erase women from female-specific medical situations. Why is it always only about erasing women? Where is the effort to make male terms inclusive?

      1. I have actually, specifically heard that about people who should be checked for prostate cancer.

        And unlike the OP who seems to be concerned that “birther” is replacing the word “women” in all contexts, in real life I have never ever heard the term birther to describe anyone other than a person giving birth at that moment. That and the idiots who believed Obama wasn’t born in the US (remember the birther movement?)

        1. Yes, cancer screening researchers are specifically studying how to make sure that people born one gender but identifying as another get the screens they need – like, if you live your life as a male but still have a cervix or ovaries, those need to be checked. And the other way around – if you are living as a woman but still have a prostate, that should be checked.

          Call me naive, but are there a lot of people born female, but living as male, who get pregnant? I have no objections to the term “pregnant people,” although I do hate it when men in a heterosexual couple say “We’re pregnant” because he definitely is not. I sometimes just don’t understand the arguing over terminology. Be polite, address people as they wish to be addressed, and if you make a mistake, apologize and everyone moves on.

      2. There is a major double standard. Apparently you’re not supposed to say “people with penises“ because it makes transwomen feel dysphoric to be reminded of their penises. However, women are supposed to accept “menstruators” and “cervix havers” with nary a peep. Funny, isn’t it, how sexism shines through there? There are other and better ways that we can include everybody. Birthing people isn’t it. It’s also OK if the words that women need to use to describe themselves don’t include everybody all the time. There isn’t anything wrong with that. As a white person, I would never in 1 million years imagine protesting that the phrase “BIPOC” excludes me.

        1. +1 million. It’s the same oppression women have faced for millennia, just being pushed by another marginalized population this time instead of the dominant force.

    14. It’s bad enough to see “pregnant people” instead of “pregnant women.” Hard no on “birthing people”.

    15. Is this to replace “women” (biologic women I guess) in all situations (unrelated to childbirth)? If so that is beyond ridiculous. Agree with comment above about being inclusive and respectful without erasing women assigned female at birth.

      1. Yes, someone upthread keeps saying “show me an example!” and you have to look no farther than recently proposed maternal health legislation in Congress where there are frequent references to “birthing people” in non-delivery contexts – eg, during pregnancy and postpartum and during reproductive age years. It’s not just the 24 hours or so of childbirth. It is in fact trying to erase women.

        1. I understand that this a word to replace “mother” not “woman.” “Pregnant people” doesn’t work because it does indeed refer to postpartum, when people are no longer pregnant.

          Are they seriously using “birthing people” for reproductive age years people who have never been pregnant or given birth?

        2. This is all I wanted! An example! And yet, no one has given one until this. However, I’m not super convinced that proposed legislation about maternal health supports OP’s original gripe. Recall that she was whining that this erases women who don’t get pregnant. Obviously this bill is not applicable to women who do not get pregnant.

          Not sure that I’d go so far as to agree it’s an attempt to “erase women.” All of this just seems like a pointless distraction. Conservative lawmakers are upset that Biden is trying to “cancel mothers.” Good grief. What a complete waste of time and an utter straw man. If only those same lawmakers actually gave a f about maternal mortality. But no, they’d rather get made about woke language. Here’s a question. Googling results came up for a bill called the “MOMMIES Act.” Isn’t this offensive as it erases women who don’t identify as mothers? Because it sublimates a woman’s identity as an individual person and defines her by her maternal status and in relation to her child?

          1. Hard as it is to believe I can find the MOMMIES Act name offensive and the term birthing person offensive at the same time.

    16. I understand and approve of the intent to be inclusive of all genders, but I think the particular term “birthing person” is such an incredibly narrow term it’s actually hard to know who it’s supposed to encompass. (I also agree that it’s dehumanizing, but leave that aside for a moment.) A person who has biological kids is a “birthing person” for a matter of hours while they’re in the process of giving birth. Is it intended to include pregnant people? There are countless people who will experience one or more pregnancies and never give birth, so if we’re talking in the context of prenatal care, we should probably say pregnant people. Is it intended to include people who have biological children but are not currently pregnant? I have given birth but I am no longer giving birth nor will I ever again. I would call myself a parent (accurate) or a mother (accurate and more precise). Are we referring to people who may not be pregnant but may have the ability to bear children? Then we should probably say that. “Birthing person” is really only accurate for people in active labor or on the operating table, but I doubt that’s the context in which it is being used. And for those people, we would use the term person (or man or woman) in active labor or having a c-section, which is far more humanizing. I’m guessing that “birthing person” is probably intended to refer to is pregnant people and/or parents and/or people who have the potential to have biological children, but I can’t actually tell, and I think that those latter terms are all more inclusive in the sense that they are more accurate and will have a higher probability of reaching the people who they are intended to encompass.

    17. I want the world to be better for trans people, but I also don’t want to be erased as a woman. To be clear, I don’t have or want children. Something about the use of language like this that is meant to be inclusive has the effect of sounding misogynistic – it erases women? Women who are born female and socialized as women from birth? Am I missing something?
      At the root I feel like this language is actually a symptom of patriarchy and the fundamental domination of men in society that means that whenever there is a situation where trans men, or women who used to be men, are involved the language serves that group as primary because of the adjacency of maleness.

      1. I like how you phrased the first sentence especially.

        And your second paragraph also- those who were raised and socialized as men have a very different experience than those raised and socialized as women.

    18. Absolutely not, sorry…how dare you even ask. Last week, I made a commitment to stick up for my self and other women next time someone comes along to police our language specifically around issues that have to do with our bodies.

      It makes precisely no sense that birthing person is ok but woman isn’t…both word refer to the same exact people.

  8. Can I wallow in self-pity for a minute? We were supposed to go on vacation next week to visit both of our families. this has been planned for months, and it has taken tremendous coordination to get all 7 households together. My side of the family hasn’t been together in 5 years, and this will be the first time our siblings have met my youngest child. Needless to say, I’ve been very much looking forward to this.

    Well, DH has had some complex colorectal issues for about a year (including 4 surgeries and continuous open wounds). This has had a serious impact on our quality of life, but I’ve been keeping my chin up and marching forward because I’ve needed to be strong and supportive for my husband and two small children. Well, it seems like DH has developed another abscess and will likely require surgery ASAP. He’s going to the doctor today to confirm, but if that’s the case, we won’t be able to go on our trip (which involves a flight and several hours of driving). I’m so sad. This year has been hell for my family – multiple deaths in our family, serious health issues for multiple family members, having a second child, the pandemic, etc. Our families live all over the country, and I don’t see us being able to reschedule for 6+ months. I could potentially take the kids by myself, but the prospect of flying with two small children and dealing with car seats, luggage, and the rental car by myself is daunting, and it doesn’t feel right to leave my husband after surgery (especially since I’m the one changing his bandaging daily).

    I feel guilty for being upset when my husband has been and is going through so much, but I’m really struggling today.

    1. Hugs–this is so hard. Can you get some in-home care for your husband and then have one relative fly to you to assist with travel? If you have teen nieces/nephews, they would be great at this. My teen daughter would gladly do this for any of her aunts.

    2. Hugs this is hard. Whenever I read stories like this I can’t help but think about all the statistics on how women stay in the face of medical hardships with their partner and men bail on their partner.

          1. You have a really sad outlook on life and love. I hope you find someone to change your point of view one day.

          2. No, it’s not. You have an axe to grind, and look at everything through one very cloudy lens.

    3. Go without him no question. You matter too. You have needs too. The moms board has you covered on how to do solo transit. Either put him in rehab or hire a visiting nurse.

      1. +1 – even if it’s for less time, and you get someone to watch the kids so you can go for a weekend/less if the time, go see your family

      2. Are you single? Married people do not go on vacation when their husband or wife is having surgery. That’s what marriage is. You are there for them. Unless you really don’t care which is another problem.

        1. No, I’m married, but if it sounds like the timing is such that the surgery is happening now and the reunion is during recovery. My husband and I are both pretty self sufficient and we’d find a way to let the other attend a rare event.

        2. This is different, though. This isn’t a sudden emergency or a one-time thing. It’s a chronic situation that hasn’t gotten better and may never improve. OP shouldn’t be chained to her husband’s bedside for the rest of her life.

        3. This “are you single, you can’t possibly know what married life is like” bs is getting tired.

      3. Agree. You have earned your vacation and your family time, no question. In fact, your DH probably wants you to have it. I love the suggestion of having a teenage niece or nephew travel with you to help with the kids.

      4. +3. If you can arrange for him to be in good hands for a few days, and have someone help you wrangle the kids, I would definitely do this.

    4. uch i think i remember you posting on the mom’s page about everything you’ve been dealing with. of course you are allowed to feel extremely upset and disappointed! you should not feel guilty about feeling that way at all. sending hugs

    5. Sending hugs and good thoughts! This all sounds horribly sucky and I’m really proud of you!

    6. Ugh, I’m so sorry. Don’t feel guilty for being upset. The fact that your husband is in a really bad situation doesn’t make yours less bad, and you feeling guilty won’t help either of you.

      That said, I understand where you are coming from – my husband had a stroke a couple of years ago and the long recovery period was really hard for me. Of course it was much worse for him, but I still had to deal with it being hard for me, and I couldn’t really vent to him–normally my main support person–about it.

      If you think he would be okay with you going and can figure out a good respite care solution for him, I would not let the logistics of solo travel stop you. The travel days will be tough but that is two days. Once you get there, you will have a lot of support and assistance.

      1. Putting in a plug for the Well Spouse Association as a resource for you and for the OP. You can google it to find the website.

    7. Seriously think about going with just the kids. You can hire a visiting nurse to help your husband. It will not be as easy, but you can handle the travel with your kids.

      1. +1. Could one of your siblings (or parents) fly to you and then fly with you and the kids to the vacation destination? I know that is a lot of travel, but I would do it no question for a sibling or close friend who was in your shoes.

        1. Unfortunately, no. We’re actually going to two different locations (first his family, then mine), and no one is able to fly to us to help out.

          1. Ugh, so sorry OP! Maybe just pick one destination then, so at least it is not so much travel? Go see your family this time and reschedule the visit to his family for a time when he can join?

          2. I would skip husband’s family and just go to your family. In addition to simplifying the logistics, this would give your husband more time to recover before he’s left alone.

          3. I agree with the others. Skip his fam this time and travel with the kids. Then let your family spend time with the kids while you sleep!

    8. Ugh, I’m so sorry. I hope you can still go by yourself. I know it’s hard but sounds like you really need it. Best of luck to you both.

    9. I think you should get your husband situated after surgery, make sure he’s ok with some home health care, then go with your kids to the family reunion. You can do it! I was looking at pictures from the 1970s where my mom took us three kids, ages 1/2 through 5, on a trip halfway across the country by herself, with one plane change involved and renting a car. The whole thing.

      My mom seems badass for doing this but to be honest, and I loved my mom a lot, she was neurotic and needy and still somehow managed to do it. It was because it was a family thing, my dad couldn’t go, and she really really needed to be there.

      What about paying to have one of your older nieces or nephews fly to your location, then to the trip with you to help? They might view it as a fun adventure.

    10. Hugs from an internet stranger. Several years ago, I had multiple surgeries which resulted in open wounds for several months (plus many drains and a PICC line). My family and friends took great care of me but they had to live their lives too and sometimes that meant having to be alone for a surgery or hospital stay or hard recovery at home.

      Please take the trip with your kids. Rent car seats from the car rental company. If you have a child that can walk, they can pull a roller bag (kid friendly size) that has their toys and snacks for the trip. Ship whatever luggage you can (my c-suite boss does this for every trip; it’s a thing). Once you get there, let your family take care of you. Sounds like you need it.

    11. So sorry for your husband! I had a couple of years with frequent health issues, and it absolutely sucked

      That said, you should hire or find care for your husband and go on the trip with your kids.

    12. Please go. You can’t take care of other people when you have nothing for yourself. That’s no way to live.

      Just because flying with two kids sounds hard doesn’t mean you can’t do it. You can absolutely do it. This is a time where you pay extra to make it easier on yourself — I second the idea to rent car seats at your destination, pay extra for the luggage trolley or to check baggage at the airport door. Take as little as possible on the plane and buy what you need when you get there. Buy snacks in the airport. Throw money at it. Baby wear the younger kid through the airport if possible. You’ve got this.

      1. Agree with CPA Lady that this is a put your own mask on first situation. I understand if you can’t afford to throw money at the problem, but if you can, then you should go visit your family with your kids and leave your husband home to recover. Since the visit to his family won’t happen, maybe one of his family members would be willing to come stay while you’re gone? Caretaking is hard work, and you need breaks.

    13. Ugh. I feel your pain.

      I am a caregiver for a very mentally fragile relative, and have been in this exact scenario.

      Curious – has your husband suggested you go anyway?

      I would try to go in this scenario, at least for part of it. Is there any family member of your husband or close friend that could “move in” while you are away to help?

      I would really consider getting him stable after his surgery and asking his doctor/surgeon to order Home Health services to assist while you are away, if he qualifies with his insurance. Nursing visits to check dressing/wound, a personal care assistant may come help with a shower. If insurance doesn’t cover this, hire it from a local agency. Or just buy him a bunch of bed bath cloths online (no shower needed) and even those shower caps filled with hair cleaning solution (water free). Get him some take out menus. Ask him to call his friends and set up daily visits for while you are gone, in case he needs something.

      It can work. It doesn’t sound like he will be medically unstable right? I think he would understand.

      Good luck!! Keep us posted.

    14. I’m so sorry. I’m honestly shocked with the number of responses indicating you should still go. I have a very modern marriage and we’re both very independent, but I can’t imagine either of us not being there for the other in a similar circumstance. Like I can’t imagine not being close by. But I know every relationship is different. Can you plan something (or somethings) with at least some of the family a few more months out or another type of trip that would give you something to look forward to? That might at least take away some of the sting for both of you.

      1. I have the perspective of being the spouse who had frequent medical issues for two years, including multiple surgeries. Post op, I am on meds and need rest. I would much rather my husband and kids spend time with family having fun while a friend/nurse checks in on me, instead of sad and in the house trying to stay quiet.

        1. I was thinking the same; I’d probably want my spouse there the day of the surgery and then if everything went well, recover alone in peace while they took the kids.

      2. Has your partner ever had a chronic medical condition? I don’t think you can begin to judge what that should be like.

        1. I’m the one who said I wouldn’t go. And yes, my husband does have a chronic medical condition (actually very similar to OP’s). And he has been around post surgery for me many times as well. I remember one time when he came home early from London when he probably didn’t want to because I had surgery suddenly for an entrapped nerve. Like I said, every relationship is different. I’d be asking him how he feels. He may be fine with her going or not but it’s a decision to make together.

  9. Any recommendations for a cozy lounge set? Looking to treat myself to something new and comfortable to wear to my IVF egg retrieval.

    1. I love the Vuori joggers and matching hoodie. The fabric is so soft and holds up in the washer, unlike most synthetic lounge sets.

  10. Store or brand recommendations for purses? I haven’t bought one in over a year and am not liking the Kate Spade / Tory Burch look anymore. I’d like a crossbody, ideally large enough to hold my ipad mini or a small purchase. I like the Athleta travel crossbody but was hoping for something a little dressier. Any ideas?

    1. honestly, I’ve bought all of my purses from TJ Maxx. Id recommend going to a similar store and browsing!

    2. Get the MZ Wallace small sutton. It weighs nothing. I like that it’s sporty enough to wear with yoga pants but also because of the quilted fabric can work with something nicer.

    3. If I was in the market for this I would seriously consider one of the Cuyana bags. Reports here from people who bought them say they are high quality.

  11. Very off topic, but I am procrastinating this morning. I recently found out one of my coworkers is a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader and part of me is having a fan-girl moment (very small and very silly, but still), I used to have dreams of being one when I was a young girl. We work in a professional services industries so she definitely has a career in addition to her outside work-hobby?; I don’t know what one would call it. The only reason I found out was because a coworker recognized her from a post on the team’s social media page and of course it is now spreading like wildfire through our company. She has actually never told anyone in the office about being on the team, but kudos to her for being able to balance both. Not going to lie, I have so many questions I want to ask her now!

    1. That’s cool! I used to love the show about their tryouts – Making of the DCC or something like that? It was total trash TV, but there’s no doubt that those ladies are talented dancers and work hard. I’m impressed that they can balance a career and DCC.

      1. Yes, the show is called Making the Team. There is a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders channel on Pluto TV (free) where you can watch the first 12 seasons of the show.

      2. Awesome. One time in my adult dance class, the local NBA team came up in conversation and the teacher said “oh yeah, I danced for them for a while in college.” She was an NBA cheerleader, no big deal. She said that tryouts were completely open to anyone, but also brutal: the staff would just come up to you in the middle of the routine and tap your shoulder, which meant you needed to go.

        In my limited knowledge based on other dance teachers as well, you always need a day job. Cheer/dance teams do not pay a living salary.

        1. Ooh, one more anecdote that might interest you: there were EXTREMELY STRICT anti-fraternization rules between cheerleaders and players. The NBA woman told me that they had to sign an agreement that included immediately leaving any social setting if members of the team showed up. For example, if she and her cheer friends were out bar-hopping, and someone from the team entered the bar, they needed to leave with no more than a polite acknowledgment of the player(s). My other teacher, who cheered for a local minor league team at the time, said she had a similar requirement. Phew!

    2. Very cool, but I suspect she kept it a secret so male colleagues wouldn’t objectify her and people will respect her as an accomplished professional. I bet she’s getting a lot of unwanted attention right now.

    3. Wasn’t there a lot of press a few years back on how terribly professional sports cheerleaders were treated? Like, they weren’t given basic employment protections like minimum wage and were subjected to awful behavior?

      Did things get better since then?

      1. It sounds like this cheerleader has an entirely other full time job? I assume that’s for a reason. It doesn’t detract from what an incredible achievement it is just to be able to do professional cheerleading.

    4. That’s awesome. I had a dental hygienist who was also an NBA cheerleader. I was super impressed.

  12. Silly comment: It is ridiculously hot, so I wore linen today (which stays in the wardrobe precisely for days like this). I was unwrinkled for approximately thirty seconds, but I am so comfortable.

      1. If I were a lizard person, I might like this weather more. :)

    1. I love linen and am also wearing mine today. We don’t worry about the creases. It lets everyone know we are wearing actual linen and not some poly blend crap from Dress Barn.

    1. …And insurance companies just had a record year, deductibles are high, the Aduhelm travesty is ongoing, they say United Healthcare is planning to deny coverage for ER visits that were deemed unnecessary in retrospect, the physician shortage continues, my insurance company is challenging prescriptions I’ve been on for decades or raising their coverage tier… It’s heartbreaking that the bar is set as low as “not losing ground,” but I guess I’ll take it.

      1. I’m not the person you’re responding to, Eeyore, but I will take small victories where I can get them. The ACA has made it possible for me to undergo the late career change I’m making right now.

        1. Right? Like thanks for the perspective, Ms. Sunshine, but this is pretty major for folks who depend on the ACA for healthcare and would have no access to insurance at all without it.

  13. Testing – my comments keep ending up in moderation, even though I’ve been here for years with the same screen name and email.

  14. What to do? My kids are going to a camp that serves lunch – we just heard from the director that kids get choices like hot dogs, ham and cheese sandwiches, chicken nuggets, or pasta with butter. My kids are mostly vegetarian and really don’t like the taste/texture of meat, except for hot dogs, which they’d happily eat every day. I’m concerned about the nitrates and am generally not a fan of super processed meat. We serve hot dogs at home from a local organic farm w high humane standards because I don’t want them to be forbidden fruit, but I’m not really looking for them to have regular hot dogs every day for lunch this summer.

    Any advice on how to deal with this without making my kids feel like they’ve been singled out or giving them a complex about food? I care about this but would probably be inclined to just let it go for the summer, except my wife cares really deeply about the health, animal welfare, and environmental issues around processed meat and I want to be respectful.

    Also, any food recommendations on meals I can pack that would be ok out in the heat for a few hours before being consumed?

    1. I’d probably just let it go for the summer and compensate by making sure breakfast/dinner/snacks at home are healthy. I think if you pack lunch for your kids, they’re going to feel singled out. You could broach the topic of “everything in moderation” or “yes, hot dogs are delish but it’s good to vary up what we eat” with them, but honestly I wouldn’t sweat it.

      In terms of packing lunches – I pack a lunch every day around 8am, keep it at my desk (I don’t put it in the fridge when I get to work), and eat lunch between 1-2pm every day. There’s really very few foods that won’t keep for a few hours (especially in an insulated lunch box with an ice pack). Anything you’d pack for your kids during the school year should be fine to pack for camp.

      1. This would be my approach too. Lots of veggies and healthy vegetarian food for the rest of their meals at home, but kind of let lunch slide for now (assuming no complaints from your kids). After a week of camp, if they are complaining about the lunch, just pack them whatever they normally eat at school in an insulated lunch box/bag.

    2. Let them go and eat the food normally and see how it goes. If they complain they don’t like it, send them lunch in an insulated box with an ice pack.

      The camp director listing these foods doesn’t convey to me that hot dogs are served daily.

    3. My brother and I were both ethical vegetarians as kids (our parents ate meat) at summer camp we typically had sandwiches made with good bread and lots of veggies/hummus etc, as our sides we’d get a piece of fruit and a granola bar. My mom packed our lunches in insulated lunch bags with ice packs, it was always fine. The granola bars were usually home made because they were tastier that way, and everyone at summer camp was jealous so occasionally my mom would give us an extra granola bar or two to share with our friends. Neither of us have food complexes and when I became older and more able to understand food systems I transitioned to veganism.

    4. I feel like this is something that you should have looked into before committing to the camp if it was going to be that important. My vote is “let it go, and if your wife isn’t willing to let it go, then she gets to be the one to plan and pack lunches.” As somebody who had a separate lunch in elementary school because my mom thought I should lose weight, I can testify that the kids will indeed feel singled out and have a complex. (Either that or they will come off as holier-than-though if they tell the other kids their lunches don’t meet their high standards.)

      1. Seriously, did you expect a camp for kids to be serving organic, vegetarian lunches every day?

        1. yup, camp is gonna serve food they know kids will eat (so, lots of hot dogs and chicken nuggets)

      2. +1. If avoiding processed meats is your top priority, then that’s the first thing you ask when choosing a camp. One thing you will learn as a parent is that you can’t have it all. You can’t have the camp with the most fun activities, and an organic vegetarian lunch that you didn’t have to pack, and kids who aren’t singled out for not eating the hot dogs. Your choices are usually to send them to the lame vegan camp or to send them to the fun camp and either let them eat hot dogs or accept that they’re going to get made fun of for packing hummus.

    5. There was a good thread from a week or so ago that had all sorts of recommendations for vegetarian camp-friendly packable meals. But packing daily lunches for the rest of the summer is a bear, so I’d be inclined to compromise. Kids bring a packed lunch two days a week, eat camp food the other days a week. And start preparing your wife now for the realities of college dining.

        1. Haha, flashbacks to almost every day of elementary school where I would trade the lunch sack full of carefully prepared, wholesome, organic food that my Mom had made for me for someone’s lunch ticket so I could eat tater tots, which were never served in my house. If the kids get to camp and want to eat hot dogs, believe me – they will figure out a way to eat the hot dogs, regardless of what OP’s wife wants.

          1. Haha see my comments about my high school age kids and their “vegetarian” friends below.

          2. When I was a kid, we spent a lot of time at a friend’s house when their cousins visited over the summer. The cousins lived a few states away, and their mom had decided that they had all kinds of food intolerances so she sent special food. These cousins would freely exchange their gluten-free whatevers for our 1980s processed junk food lunches because the cousins only saw real potato chips on these visits.

    6. You are already paying for the food, so I’m not sure what you would gain ethically by turning it down and bringing your own food. I guess the camp might buy/make less inhumane hot dogs, but I doubt their hot dog production schedule is that tightly calibrated. If your kids will eat the food, I would let it go. If they are going to starve themselves rather than eat it, I would pack a PB&J (If PB is allowed), or maybe just a snack to supplement if they will eat some things.

    7. I think you need to work with your wife to get her to chill out a little bit. My personal philosophy is that you can have whatever restrictions you want when you’re in control, but once you’re in a situation where you’re not totally in control of the food/lifestyle/whatever, you need to compromise (unless of course it’s a health restriction!). For example – I am currently trying to lose my COVID 15lbs so am eating a very healthy diet when I’m left to my own devices (pretty much just eating produce, fish, chicken, and whole grains like oatmeal or brown rice). However, I’m visiting my parents this weekend so I’m eating what everyone else is – so burgers on the grill, sandwiches for lunch, etc. even though I never eat that way at home.

      A packed lunch will definitely single your kids out. A summer of hot dogs isn’t going to impact your kids long term. A whole generation of us grew up doing that and turned out just fine :) I’d just make sure you’re having healthy snacks and meals at home to compensate.

    8. I’d probably let your kids eat hot dogs for the summer. But if you’re disinclined to, your kids won’t be scarred for life. Growing up in the 1980s, my family was vegetarian when no one else was and most kids had never heard of a vegetarian (I can’t tell you how often I was asked: “you don’t eat meat? What do you eat?”). I always took my own food to school and camps even when food was provided for everyone because the options were not suitable for a vegetarian. I’m still vegetarian in my 40s. And I have absolutely no food issues and never have; instead, I’m one of the heathiest eaters I know. Do I have memories of standing out because I had different food and other kids asked about my “weird” food? Abosolutely! Was it a scarring childhood experience? Not at all.

      1. Many years ago we had a young guest for Thanksgiving (like, maybe 5-7 years old) who was a vegetarian (the only vegetarian in his family). My mom said “Noah, what do you eat?” and he gave her a withering look and replied, “vegetables!”

    9. I feel like you should see how your kids feel on week 2. My kid acts like she would happily eat her favorite meal every day forever, but after a few days or so she gets tired of it and asks for something else. She would be thrilled with that menu but after 1-2 weeks would start to ask to bring lunch.

      I’m with you on the meat thing — I’m 95% vegetarian — but part of it is that I had some really bad experiences around food as a kid that gave me issues, and I want to avoid that for my kid. If your kids are eating vegetarian and humanely raised meat for every meal expect a few weeks of camp lunches, those meals won’t make much of a difference. And like the other poster said, you’re paying for them anyway.

    10. I’ve been a vegetarian since I was in my early teens (almost 30 years), but I’d just ask your kids what they prefer on this one and play it by ear once you see what the situation is when camp actually starts. I don’t think a few weeks of unhealthy food are that big of a deal in the long term and on some level hot dogs are more ethical than something like chicken breasts because they make efficient use of the whole animal. There was a good thread on lunches a few weeks ago, and like another poster says, most lunches actually hold up pretty well, especially if you throw in an ice pack. Sandwiches are a classic for a reason, but that other thread had a lot of other good ideas if your kids want to pack a lunch.

      1. My kids are late teens. We live in a very liberal, crunchy community so many many of my kids’ friends eat vegan or vegetarian or gluten free or etc etc at home, and I can tell you with certainty that is not how they eat when they’re with their friends.

        Which I think is fine in a perfect-is-the-enemy-of-good way, but I think many of their parents would actually be somewhere on the spectrum of deeply disappointed to horrified. Naturally, I keep my mouth shut.

        The mom who loves to say her kid has never eaten fast food, when there is a McDonald’s 1/2 block from the open campus high school both of our kids attend …. OK. Keep telling yourself that.

        1. My kid has a friend whose family is vegan. When we first got to know them, the mom went on, at some length, about how great it was that they had trained the kids to make healthy, ethical choices and that none of the kids really even want to look at a hamburger, etc. I kept my mouth shut about the previous weekend, when the kid had been at my house, and I asked what he wanted on his vegan pizza. He said “please order me a pepperoni; I can only get pepperoni when I’m away from my parents, and can I get extra cheese also?” Or that the kid told me later he had a secret stash of beef jerky, non-vegan chips, and all kinds of other goodies in his closet, that he’d eat when his parents were out of the house.

          P.S. the mom eventually found the secret stash, there was a blowout and now the kid doesn’t have to pretend to be vegan anymore.

        2. I live in a similar community and there is a convenience store close to the high school where it’s very normal to see teenage boys buying all kinds of junk that would horrify their very “clean eating” mothers.

    11. Your kids are old enough to go to camp without your supervision, so you’re going to have to ease up on the hovering over food choices. The healthiest eaters for life are the ones who had lots of choices and made mostly healthy choices on their own, rather than having it imposed on them. It’s just a summer. You can handle it. They can handle it.

      I also agree with SA that this is something you should have researched before choosing camp.

  15. Random comment re yesterday’s AirBNB convo. I had an AirBNB experience that was bad. I booked to stay in a condo when we were having some work done at our house. I arrived with hungry kids and groceries to make dinner with to a condo that had not been cleaned since the prior visitors (e.g., the sheets on the beds were dirty) AND it was also covered in cat hair (which I’m allergic to). I didn’t realize the dirty beds at first b/c we entered into the kitchen and I got about to putting groceries away and cooking dinner and depositing the kids in the living room. It was a waste of $ to toss dinner and go out to eat while the very angry (at me, but why???) cleaner came in to clean (but just changed the sheets; did nothing re the cat hair that was on everything, including window sills). We could not get a hotel due to a local sports event. The host begged me not to leave a negative review (and then suggested that he’d review me if I did) and refunded some $ (but not the AirBNB fees) outside of the platform. So now I will never stay in one again b/c I do not believe that the reviews are a representative slice of people’s actual experience. Also, there was no way to chain the doors from the inside, so I would have felt like who knows who had access (the angry cleaner, for one) to the space had I been staying there alone?

    At any rate, take the reviews with a grain of salt. You don’t know what you don’t know.

    1. +1 million I know tons of people who have had similar experiences re: pressure to not leave negative reviews after a bad experience. And the safety factor is enough for me to never do it.

      1. This is how I feel about Uber. I never leave a negative review because I’m worried it will be traced back to me. If a driver made me feel uncomfortable in the car, I feel even more uncomfortable leaving a bad review of someone who knows the general vicinity where I live.

    2. I’m sorry that happened to you but you should have contacted Airbnb support rather than gone off-platform to resolve! We’ve stayed at a dozen or more over the past 5-6 years and had issues with two hosts (one who hadn’t sent us the checkin information timely and one who wasn’t giving us a refund even though it was clearly within the Covid rules to do so) and they stepped in right away and fixed it.

      1. This. One reason to use the Airbnb platform is for the protection Airbnb gives you. You had a bad host and you have every right to leave a bad review, and get a refund.

    3. Agree. I have a coworker who is a “super host” on Airbnb who once bragged to me about all the corners he cuts, including not changing the linens between guests. I’ve had many positive experiences with Airbnb but knowing my coworker is a superhost has really soured me to it.

    4. Yeah, all this in combination with AirBNB messing up the residential rental market in a lot of places is why I don’t use it any more.

      1. Right. With all discussion about ethical consumption that goes on here, I would like to highlight that AirBNB has contributed hugely to the disappearance of affordable housing in many cities, as hosts buy up properties to turn into short-term rentals. It’s fueled the rise in the homeless population in the Bay Area, NYC, and many other cities worldwide. Short-term rentals affect neighborhood property values, sometimes in fragile neighborhoods where a house is a family’s only form of wealth. The existence of AirBNB and their continued efforts to fight being regulated are leading to some very large systemic problems relating to housing and economic equity, globally. Please think about that before you book with AirBNB.

        1. +1 not to mention part of the reason they are cheaper is avoiding hotel taxes. Great for you, not so great for the community who depends on those tax dollars.

        2. I wish they had more competition. I really like to stay in tiny houses and in-law suites. And it’s not like I want to support hotels either.

    5. I think if you talk to AirBNB, they can remove a negative review based on threats. I have one bad experience as a host and one bad experience as a guest. As a host, I came back to find the bed sheets freshly laundered, and was at first quite pleased. But then when I started using them, I noticed small traces of blood and something else that looked like some weird body fluid that could not be completely washed off. I also noticed similar things on certain areas of the wall, which made me wonder if the person who stayed there had used my place for something illegal. I left a bad review and he sent me an angry message, which I immediately contacted Airbnb about. He was not able to leave me a review as a result.

      My unpleasant experience as a guest was not that bad. At the time, it felt bad. But looking back at it, it was actually quite interesting. The woman was a Russian artist who claimed that the place had two bedrooms, and I would use one while she the other. I got there, and it turned out that it was a one bedroom, she would sleep in the living room and I in her bedroom. I kept getting bites around my ankle while sleeping on her bed. She did not have any locks on her front door, and had a dying dog with cancer who would constantly stare at me in pain. And there were pictures all over the bedroom of pictures of her young son, who had passed away a long time ago, and various occult looking things. I called Airbnb about the misrepresentation and asked for a refund but was rejected. Apparently, they had a weird policy where if you do not leave within 24 hours of arrival, you cannot get a refund. However, she was a very friendly person and had a very interesting life. She told me about her multiple gigs as an artist in Hollywood, her personal life, her dog, and even did some weird, new age, fortune telling for me. She was so nice that I could not bear to leave her a bad review.

    6. You’re not alone; I only book hotels. I’ll reluctantly stay in an AirBNB if someone else is planning it but I’m always worried about cleanliness and hidden cameras. Many AirBNB hosts are also in violation of their lease or HOA which can lead to uncomfortable situations. It really sucks to have AirBNB neighbors and they are driving up rents in many cities.

  16. Are you still masking in situations where no one else is? Do you feel uncomfortable doing it or not care? I realize for some of you this may be the entire pandemic but I live in N Va where masking was great throughout. And now it’s about 80% of people masked in stores and no where else. I live in an apartment building with elevators – they lifted the mask rules when the state did, I’m usually the only one masked in an elevator, lobby or trash room. At a car dealership yesterday, had to wait 2 hours, not one other customer was masked. I ended up sitting outside at a nearby office building patio because 2 hours in an unmasked unventilated space with random people in a waiting room seemed like too much.

    I know I’m probably going overboard – I’m vaccinated, 70-80% of this area is vaccinated but IDK I just feel like at any moment some new variant could break the vaccine so why not mask + vax for a while longer. I mean I’m 100% comfortable no mask outdoors and even indoors in a huge space for a few min esp if no one is right near me — but in small spaces like elevators or waiting rooms I’m not there yet. Anyone else? Will you continue to mask? Do you feel self conscious?

    1. I mask in stores where the workers are either required or feel it’s necessary for themselves to do it. It just seems courteous even though I don’t feel the need myself. Yes, I sometimes feel self-conscious among the other unmasked shoppers, but who cares. Most people can’t recognize me with a mask anyway.

    2. I’m still masking and will continue to do so indefinitely. I haven’t had a cold in two years, nobody can see my hormonal acne, and creepy men don’t tell me to smile. Masks 4 eva.

    3. I’m wearing masks indoors in public spaces even though I’m vaccinated. Similar logic to yours – I don’t know what’s going on with the variants, and it’s not a big deal to put a mask on. But yes, I feel extremely self conscious about it.

    4. i’m doing what you are doing. wearing a mask indoors doesn’t really bother me. you do you. who cares what anyone else does. are you worried someone is judging you? there are people who wore masks for a variety of reasons pre-covid.

    5. I’m fully vaxxed and still masking. I have asthma and every cold turns into bronchitis. I was literally sick for the entire year preceding the pandemic. I have not been sick in the past 15 months. I will keep masking as long as it is socially acceptable.

    6. Am still masking in indoor places. It’s just a tiny thing to do on behalf of the grocery clerks, etc.

    7. Yeah no way I would have sat in a car dealership waiting room with a ton of likely unvaccinated maskless people – we don’t have tons of dealerships, people drive from places where vax rates may be lower because your dealership is within 1-2 hours of home. 1-2 hours from here vax rates are a lot different. I would’ve worn a mask not caring what they think – I don’t know them. But yeah even better solution is outdoors in gorgeous 75 degree weather. TBH this last year has brought me to the point of – protect myself, I don’t care what others say or think. I agree with you that variants will keep popping up if spread in other countries continues; seems like the vax deals ok with Delta but how knows if one is next that breaks thru the vax. I personally would rather not worry by wearing a mask in enclosed places where I can’t know vax status – stores, elevators, errands like the dealership or DMV etc.

    8. My husband, my teenage son, and myself are vaccinated, but my youngest daughter isn’t old enough to receive the vaccine yet, so we decided that we will continue to wear masks at least until she is vaccinated. We went to look at purchasing a hot tub the other day and we were the only ones wearing masks, but I didn’t care.

    9. No, mask mandates have been lifted in my state and I’m fully vaccinated. I trust the science and see it as per formative or a personal choice at this point. Performative, I silently judge, personal choice I do not.

    10. I’m on board with this approach. Not only could a new variant break out at any moment, but an entirely new virus or pandemic could start at any moment. Unfortunately, the next strain or pandemic could be highly transmissible outside, by touch, etc. Since we just can’t know for sure, I am wearing an N-95, gloves, and goggles inside and outside indefinitely. There’s of course some judgment, but I shrug it off…

      1. Wow. I’ll own it; I judge this as being either performative or way, way over what is necessary.

        Did you live this way pre-Covid? There’s always been a chance that a new pandemic could happen, since the dawn of human history. Are you planning on doing this forever?

    11. I’ve been struggling with this too. I still wear my mask, I’m working on controlling my anxiety around strangers who are unmasked indoors. I have no issue removing my mask outdoors or around people I know are vaccinated — family members, friends and my paralegal. But I wear a mask in any indoor public space.

    12. The study results on whether the vaccine even works for my risk group haven’t even been published yet. So I’m not supposed to stop masking yet. A lot of risk groups were afterthoughts in the vaccine rollout.

      I think I’ll keep masking anyway though, since not getting sick with anything this past year was a really good experience.

      1. +1 as another member of the afterthought group. It’s not safe for me to unmask.

      2. I’m masking since my husband is immune suppressed (Crohn’s). His doctors have told him to continue to mask and act as though he hasn’t been vaccinated even though he has since he shows no antibodies and research is still being done to see if there’s any other protection. I feel like it’s the least I can do for him and all the other folks out there in a similar boat (cancer patients, etc.) and the children around who are similarly vulnerable. Even if I don’t get symptoms, I recognize there’s significant risk with bringing anything home. I also know vaccination rate in my area is only about 40 percent and there’s far more folks out there acting like it’s 2019 than the math would make sense.

    13. I’m fully vaccinated and continuing to wear my mask. My primary motiviation is the health of a family member who is immune suppressed so I’m taking all the precautions to reduce any risk that I may get sick and pass any illness on to him. I’m absolutely convinced that a lot of unvaccinated people where I live are not wearing masks in public, and I also don’t want to be exposed to them. That said, I’m still working from home full time so I only have to wear a mask when I go somewhere like the grocery store; I don’t know if my analysis would be different if I had to wear one all day long.

      1. This is the problem with our current “vaccinated people and liars can all stop wearing masks today, yay!” policy. It’s asinine.

    14. Nope. I’m also in NoVa and fully vaccinated and have stopped wearing my mask in any location that doesn’t require it for all patrons. The case count in our area is unbelievably low, so the mere probability of being in the same indoors space with someone else who has it, and the probability that you will catch it and get sick or pass it on if you’re fully vaccinated is very close to nil. I fully understand that it’s mentally hard to make the leap to being comfortable without one, but you just have to trust the statistics and take the leap.

      1. Same here, but in NYC not NoVA. I still wear a mask in places where I am required to, but not otherwise.

      2. I will add that I don’t judge anyone who continues to mask. I don’t know everyone’s situation. You do you.

    15. Point of anecdata: I work with Emergency Medicine physicians, and they are now fully comfortable unmasking in the office around others. (This is technically breaking hospital policy, btw.) Everyone coming in to the office is fully vaccinated, but the 3 doctors I spoke with all agreed that the Pfizer vaccine, which is what our hospital distributed, has shown to be effective in preventing infection, even with the variants. These are the people who bore the brunt of the worst of the pandemic, and if they’re comfortable, I’m comfortable.

      That said, it has been an adjustment to unmask in public. Yesterday was the first time I did it in my building’s elevator. I would also be perfectly compliant if someone asked me to put one on in the elevator or other indoor public space.

      1. I have a comment in m0d but I work in statistics and agree with the physicians in your office, and am behaving much the same way as you and they are.

    16. I’m fully vaccinated, as is my husband and my son will be shortly.

      I carry a mask with me always and judge the situation when I’m in it. If I walk in and most people are masked, I mask. If most people are not, I don’t mask. I have full confidence in the vaccine (no reason not to, given the data) and as for “new variants,” so far the vaccine has provided excellent protection against any variant that’s been identified, including the Delta. I’m not going to walk around in fear of “a new variant” for the rest of my life; what a waste of energy. I probably will go back to masking at the gym and the grocery store during flu season, though; not getting colds this winter was a nice thing.

      My son is, of course, still masking everywhere until he’s fully vaccinated.

    17. I am fully vaccinated and haven’t been masking for the most part except where required to. Just for the last three weeks or so. I was the most locked-down go-nowhere pandemic believer you have ever met. I am the opposite of a covid denier.

      But I also believe in science, have read every scientific article I can about the vaccine and its efficacy, and there is literally no reason for me to be masked. No one is a danger to me, and I’m not a danger to them. So if a store requires a mask I wear one, but outside, walking around, at a restaurant while eating, I don’t.

      I was never wearing a mask as a symbolic gesture. I was wearing one because of science. And I feel the same way about being unmasked now.

      1. PS I don’t care whether someone else masks and would never judge them for their choices, unless they’re an anti-masker having a tantrum in a place of business that has a masks-on policy.

    18. I’m vaccinated and wear a mask in all public indoor spaces. I’m not interested in being exposed to a variant or catching a breakthrough case if I don’t have to and wearing a mask is simple. I honestly like wearing a mask and will likely wear them during cold/flu season for the rest of my life. I’ll also continue to wear them on public transportation and in places with…unhygienic people. I like not smelling other people, skipping lipsticks, not catching colds, not needing to smile, being able to laugh at something without anyone noticing, and being less recognizable when I run errands.

    19. “IDK I just feel like at any moment some new variant could break the vaccine so why not mask.” This is proven false, by many very (pro science, non-Trump) doctors and researchers.
      LA Times article titled *Confidence grows that COVID-19 vaccines hold their own against variants*
      Article quote: “Confidence is growing that COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. are holding their own against the coronavirus variants now in circulation.

      “Everything we’ve seen with the variants should provide marked reassurance, as far as the protection that is afforded by vaccines — particularly the vaccines that we have in the United States,” said Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla.

      The upbeat view is accompanied by a growing sense that California is emerging from the worst of the pandemic. For weeks, California has reported one of the lowest per-capita daily coronavirus case counts of any state in the U.S.

      Studies have offered reassurance that existing vaccines work well against the two most dominant strains in California — the one first identified in the United Kingdom (B.1.1.7) and the homegrown variant identified in California (B.1.427/B.1.429).”

      Read up on Monica Gandhi, MD of San Francisco. Another quote: “The growing catastrophe in India is probably not a sign that B.1.617 is especially good at infecting people who have survived a previous bout with the coronavirus or been immunized, said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious-disease specialist at UC San Francisco. Rather, it is likely the result of the Indian government lifting pandemic control measures prematurely when only a tiny percentage of the nation’s population was immunized.” Links to follow to avoid delay. (I wear a mask only when required by the facility or by law. Fully vaccinated, had my antibodies tested as part of a clinical study.)

  17. If you had friends or relatives of a set of identical twins, how we’re you able to tell them apart? I am a mom to identical twins girls in middle school. One of them has a distinguishing feature (a facial mole), but she would like it removed, and I support that. The other twin is now worried that people won’t be able to tell them apart at school. I suggested that they consider different hair lengths or styles, or one of them wearing a sporty headband. Any other suggestions from the hive? (I realize that the girl without the mole is making this all about her and will make the other girl feel bad for removing the mole but I think it would do loads for her self esteem to not be identified as “the twin with the mole.”)

    1. I feel like middle school is about when identical twins start looking a little different (at least in my experience). Some of it is due to the kids developing their personal style at that age, and some is natural (ex – one twin’s face stays a little fuller with baby fat, while another thins out).

    2. Do they have the same style of dress? Does one of them prefer certain colors? Katie likes to wear jeans and Claire likes to wear leggings or dresses? Forcing them into something they don’t normally do doesn’t sound like a great option, but I’d imagine there are already distinguishing factors, even if it doesn’t always work perfectly.

    3. Are you sure their friends are relying on the mole to tell them apart? There were identical twins in my high school class with the same haircut, and everyone could tell them apart. There were all sorts of subtle differences in the way they spoke, moved, dressed, etc.

    4. oh this sounds way more like a “establishing my identity fundamentally” issue than a practical “cut your hair” issue to this armchair psych…

      I was friendly with one pair around that age. To be honest, from down the hall in school, I couldn’t be sure whether it was my friend the twin or… her twin that I wasn’t as close with. The difference came when they moved or talked! I suppose it’s probably a good lesson in there somewhere about actions, words, etc being more important than appearance, but I’m sure that’s not easy as a 12 or 13yo.

      1. I’d suggest letting them figure out what they want to do, including the option of doing nothing. This is a time of forming identity and figuring out relationships in life.

        I’ve been in school with 2 sets of identical twins before, and both sort of enjoyed rolling with the ambiguity! Twin girls in my high school each had a policy of just saying “hi” back to anyone who greeted them, even if they had no idea who the person was. They seemed to just have the attitude that if you were friendly with one, you were friendly with both.

    5. My husband and his brother are identical, still even in their 40s. Those close to them can tell them apart, but many of our friends, coworkers, neighbors cannot. I can’t tell apart their baby/ young pics, but their parents tried always to have A on the left and B on the right which helps.

      People will always pick a defining characteristic – for a while it was “A’s the one with the buzz cut” and now it’s “A’s the one with the brunette wife and kids.” As kids most people couldn’t tell them apart and they just sort of dealt with it and shrugged it off, but sometimes tried to help which characteristic they were defined by. Apparently one year they divided colors – A only wore blue and B only wore black. Another year one of them grew sideburns. They would say it out loud “Oh I’m B, see my watch? A doesn’t wear a watch.” to help friends figure out who was who.

      1. Yeah, I was going to suggest something like the watch, or maybe some distinctive piece of jewelry.

        1. Not Ellen literally they both do nude modeling and one had a noticeably bigger tush.

    6. This is not helpful but my dad is a twin and I just ‘knew’ I’m not entirely sure how, even though by all accounts they were identical I never once confused my dad and my uncle and no one else in my family has either.

    7. If the twin without the mole is concerned, it’s on her to change her hairstyle or whatever.

      1. +1. I have identicals (not-so identical 1 year olds – one had SIGUR so she’s smaller and also has a cochlear implant so it will be pretty easy to tell them apart). I would ask non-mole twin to make a change for herself (maybe offer up some overtone hair dye?) and not put it on the other twin.

    8. I used to work in a criminal justice position that required visiting people in jails. I was stuck in the waiting room for an hour once and asked a guard what was going on and he explained that there was a set of identical triplets, 2 of whom were incarcerated at one jail at one time, and every time one of them had to be moved (like for an attorney visit), the whole facility had to be put into temporary lockdown because apparently they had successfully switched places before (one was due to be released earlier than another), and the only way to tell them apart was fingerprints. Apparently the 3 of them cycled in and out with some regularity so there was a special procedure just for them.

      1. PS the twin with the mole should have it removed if she wants to; other twin will deal.

    9. How about a necklace for each of them, tied to some sort of family occasion/tradition? Not initials unless they want them, but the sort of wear all the time necklace that is special and has meaning, so twin A the one who wears the locket, B is the one who wears the arrow, etc.

      1. No, don’t make the twin who got the mole removed engage in the identity disambiguation cuteness.

    10. to be honest, as a kid i had trouble telling apart my identical twin cousins and close family friends and usually had to remember based on what they were wearing.i have A LOT of issues with facial recognition though – like you would never want me responsible for picking someone out of a lineup bc i can almost promise you i’d get it wrong. that being said, in college i was very good friends with a set of identical twins and generally had no trouble telling them apart. one typically had her hair parted to the side and one center part, but even without that their faces had slightly different shapes, etc. Same thing with my identical twin cousins, as they’ve gotten older it is much easier to tell them apart.

    11. Not what you asked, but the sooner the better for that mole removal. Our ability to heal without scarring only decreases with every year we age.

      1. 100% agree, so then it will not be ‘twin with the mole’ it will be ‘twin with the scar’.

        There’s got to be a tell, some minor difference, even tone of voice or smile.
        Often identical twin are complete opposites personality wise.

    12. Fun fact – I dated identical twins in high school. Consecutively, not at the same time. They looked very similar, but their personalities were different enough that I never mistook one for the other.

      Agree that the twin without the mole doesn’t get a say in this. If being the “twin without the mole” is part of her identity, she will need to work a little harder to be different.

      1. Completely off topic, but how did you end up dating both twins? It sounds like the plot of a romance novel lol.

        1. It sounds more scandalous than it was, I fear. We were in a larger friend group. I liked twin 1 more than twin 2, but twin 2 liked me more than his brother did. Went out with twin 1 a few times, including to homecoming dance, but then let him down easy. Went to prom in the spring with twin 2, right before my family moved to another city.

    13. Those name necklaces are popular – my teen wears one. Like Carrie on SATC. What if they just had their name on their necklace?

      1. Let the one without the mole get a name necklace. Don’t make them both wear one.

    14. My dad is an identical twin. I would look at their wedding rings to distinguish my dad from my uncle.

    15. My husband is an identical twin, and they look super alike. I’ve been able to tell them apart for a long time – maybe I confused them once right after we met. They have very different personalities, so people who are close to them can tell them apart but less-close friends often have trouble. This sounds crazy, but they basically divided up the color wheel as kids so the twin wearing green was always the same one, while the other twin never wore green but wore blue. I can’t imagine girls doing this though, lol. Maybe different hairstyles?

      1. I have Girl Scout troop members who are twins, sit together, and look super alike. I’ve taken to just shouting one of their names, getting a response, and making a note.

    16. Identical twin here! I was the twin with the noticeable facial feature (in my case, a dark freckle on the tip of my nose), and it was ROUGH as a kid having every person point out that g.d. freckle as the way they could tell us apart. I was so relieved when I could finally use makeup to cover it and then it finally faded away by college. My view: twins, you live your lives! If it’s becoming bothersome to you that you’re constantly being confused for each other, then go with different haircuts or clothing styles or jewelry. You are not obligated to provide people with a visual shortcut to know who you are. Observant people who make an effort will be able to tell you apart, full stop. But if it is a hassle TO YOU to be mid-identified continually, there are plenty of ways to distinguish yourselves from each other.

    17. I have two sets of identical twin nieces, from different siblings. One set I can tell apart, solely because one has many moles on her face and the other has none. Weird. But, yes, I’d let the one have her mole removed.

  18. Has anyone done any treatments (chemical peel, lasers etc.) for sun damage spots/post-pregnancy melasma? Or alternatively, found any topical treatment that actually worked? I have dark spots on my forehead that have gotten worse (and clumped together into one large mass) with both of my pregnancies and I want to get rid of them.

    Looking for recommendations of what actually works and the potential cost. I am in Toronto (so if you have any clinic recommendations here I’m happy to hear them!) otherwise, just general comments on what treatments I should consider. Thanks!!

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