Charlize Theron went out on the town last week, and was “a hot mess and downright rude.” She apparently “demanded permission to smoke inside, even though it’s against the law.”

This would be the weirdest fucking couple ever.

Anne Hathaway is pregnant! Isn’t that great? A source says she “wants to keep it quiet” until she “has an official pregnant belly,”

You cannot, actually, take your baby wherever the fuck you want. Including most workplaces. Including many social events. You cannot take your baby to jury duty. You cannot take your baby to someone else’s party unless you receive permission. You cannot take your baby to your law school clinic. You cannot take your…

That’ll teach that bear to remember their hall pass.

I don’t think the suspension will go over well at home, though.

What puzzles me about this particular situation is that she did arrange for childcare. So she did have the option of leaving the baby with the sitter outside of the meeting space but didn’t. There is a lot of talk about “NOT EVERYONE CAN AFFORD CHILDCARE AND IT’S NOT FAIR.” That would normally be a valid critique, but…

Exactly. I agree that the childcare situation in this country is sad and we need better options for working-class women. I even agree that employers should be flexible about children in the workplace in emergency situations.

“[T]hings that can sound like happy baby noises to the mother sound like earsplitting squeals to a lot of us”

I work in an office that has a policy that allows you to bring your infant to work until they are mobile. One lady has her baby here, and it really isn’t that bad. Yes, he can be fussy sometimes, but I honestly think the moral of the other co-workers goes up. Who doesn’t like holding a baby? Just don’t make me change…

The erasure of mothers, and in particular poorer mothers, is such an issue. It’s one of the ways the feminist movement makes it abundantly clear that the needs of upper-class white women are paramount, while everyone else needs to take a backseat.

That’s as maybe, but she had a plan in place to hand her off to the babysitter to take her out if she did. That’s a damned sight more than most people do at restaurants these days.

Yes I have. It’s part of life, you suck it up and you deal. Kids cry sometimes, it’s not the end of the world.

For me it comes down to one point: Did the author specifically ask whether she could bring the baby? If she did, then sentencing her to a breastfeeding room without warning is a jerk move on the part of the organizer, no question.

I have spoken at a large conference with my baby in a wrap. He slept most of the morning and you wouldn’t have known he was there except for all the people saying how lovely it was having him there.

I don’t have kids yet. Let’s get that out of the way. While reading this article I kept noticing how the author kept mentioning how quiet her baby was. That’s great, -if it’s true. But let’s not forget that we all tend to be biased towards our own. People never think their dogs will bite someone, or that their kids…

Here we go with the “screaming kid” strawman. No one is saying that kids should be allowed to scream with abandon in a professional environment. The author says repeatedly that she took her baby out of the conference when she started to fuss and would continue to do so, and that she wasn’t going to be teaching with…

When your country decides to actually provide decent paid maternity leave, then perhaps we’ll talk. Till then....nope. You don’t get to whine about this.

The kid didn’t scream. And the author had a plan in place to remove her in case she did. I’ve had my kid at work a bunch of times, even when he was small. I worked in QA for a startup software company, and we did what was necessary to make release. If we had to bring the kid so we could work a night or weekend, we…

Oh for fuck’s sake. The attitude that you can’t go to someplace without your kid because it’s “professional” and that you need to have a babysitter or child-keeper at all times is anti-feminist to the core and supports notions that the only people who “deserve” to reproduce are the affluent.