I’ll admit that my knowledge about infertility was woefully small before talking to Kerry in 
Podcast Episode 30: Inquiries about Infertility. My knowledge of in vitro was even more scant (scanter?), whereas my knowledge about someone like the Octomom was depressingly vast. This is why this week’s Podpost is simply a look at some facts about infertility, not a digression into the extreme cases of in vitro or a critique of women waiting too long to have babies. Truthfully, the media representation of infertility is not an accurate gauge of the reality.
Podposts
This week’s Podpost for Podcast Episode 29: Fathering the First Year takes a biological and anthropological look at fatherhood. You may have noticed a mini-trend in my posts lately. I spent all of my college and grad school years in liberal arts classes, with the exception of the forced chemistry and earth science semesters, so I might be making up for lost time by diverting my parenting research to the sciences. This week I look at a 2010 article by Gwen Dewar from Parenting Science.
She gives a thorough and interesting run down of the evolution of fatherhood among different species, pointing out that our pop psychology notion of biology that insists fathers gain more by spreading their seed and hence by shunning monogamy is actually untrue. I’m sure you’ve heard somewhere that men by nature prefer promiscuity and that modern culture, not nature, enforces monogamy. Dewar notes that in the animal kingdom this is often true, but not always.
In Podcast Episode 28 : The Not So Evil Stepmother, I talk with Ashley Michelle who had the unique experience of becoming a stepmother before her stepson was even born. Confused? Then listen to the podcast. She does a better job of explaining her situation than I can here. In the episode, Ashley Michelle and I talk a little about the myth of the wicked stepmother. Think Snow White, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel (and all the Disney variations thereof).
This week’s Podpost for Episode 27: Living with Autism is full of NPR love (I don’t call my podcast MPR for no reason. I’m totally an NPR fangirl.)
In Podcast Episode 26: People Still Smoke? I spend a lot of timing lambasting tobacco companies and listing the health ill-effects of maternal smoking. I now realize that criticism without offering any solution is down right annoying. I actually got annoyed with myself, a danger of podcasting because I am forced to listen to my own voice over and over and over.
In Podcast Episode 25: Dealing with Deployment, I talk with Amy, whose husband is stationed in Afghanistan for 8 months. Any way you cut it, this situation stinks worse than Amelia’s diaper after eating Indian food (that baby loves her masala).
When I was a little girl I remember my father deploying quite a bit, but in a fuzzy kind of way. As a really little girl, my non-military friends might ask “Where is your dad?” prompting me to evaluate a topic I hadn’t thought too much about. One week or one month to a kid is often the same. I would wonder, “Huh, where is my dad?”
