If you really can’t handle a distraction for the 20-40 seconds it would take for the mother in the story to get her baby out the door she had helpfully positioned herself right next to, then maybe the average professional environment is not for you? Or perhaps you need to carry around noise-cancelling headphones.

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.

I agree. I don’t understand why a noise a baby makes briefly is somehow so awful compared to all the other noises. Just get the fuck over your self if it bothers you so much - or like you say, buy some noise cancelling headphones.

I agree, so much. I brought my 6-month-old to a large presentation at the university where I adjunct; she was asleep for the beginning, and when she woke up, I sat her on the floor in the corner where she could play without disrupting anyone. When she started chattering, we left so as not to disturb anyone—but the…

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…

I used to comment regularly on Jezebel for years (under a different name) and stopped because of the feeling the author describes when someone she assumed would be an ally made her feel unwelcome.

But what about your sleeping infant? Most babies really aren’t constantly crying. It sounds like this woman has and had adequate childcare ready for both this conference and her teaching.

I agree. Nobody is less charmed by children than me, but I am even less charmed (negative charmed!) by those people who pretend it’s a reasonable worldview to insist that children should be kept in their homes and away from polite society until they’re 17 and 4 months.

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.

I always liked that River is older. How many badass middle-aged women do you see on television who go around fighting monsters and end up marrying a (physically) younger guy?

I dunno, I enjoyed that Eleven and River subverted that classic Hollywood trope of pairing a leading man with a woman young enough to be his daughter or granddaughter in some cases. I just wish they’d done better things with River’s character. http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/leadin…

I was going to suggest that they can’t be all that age-appropriate, but I just looked it up and she’s 52 and he’s 57. Color me surprised on both counts. I thought she was younger and he was older.