I was the happiest kid ever, but I did choose to live around adults and today, now that I have a kid, I don't know if I would let him do it.
I think daycare is great for people who have to work two jobs. My problem is with people who are dropping kids off at daycare because they want to go out and spend the day golfing or getting their nails done. You know what I mean? That's not why they invented daycare.
Having a child is difficult enough already, bringing with it a whole range of wonderful challenges, and we shouldn't be trying to guilt parents into 'there is just one way to do it'.
I'm willing to be different than other parents and go against the mainstream.
You should hear what my parents wanted to call me. It was between Brown Rice, Neon Hitch and Z. Ziggurat Zanzibar Zandorf. I'm not joking. Imagine fitting that on my passport!
Parents will purchase the dot-com name for their baby. We have been aware of some instances where somebody didn't name their child a particular name because the dot-com wasn't available.
I think going to university, getting married, having children, and then having the choice to stay at home to raise those children is a very valid one for women and they shouldn't be castigated for it. It's a great job. Not many men would do it.
It's never too late to move to a good place to try to improve your child's outcomes in adulthood.
What's perfect for one mom might be the worst idea for another.
People make a lot of fuss about my kids having such supposedly 'strange names', but the fact is that no matter what first names I might have given them, it is the last name that is going to get them in trouble.
When I was growing up, we spoke Egyptian, we ate Egyptian food, we had other Egyptian friends. It was my father's preference.
Wise children always choose a mother who was a shocking flirt in her maiden days, and so had several offers before she accepted their fortunate papa.
Other families who are poor do what they can to get out of it. My mother did not. She did not utilise her resources. She had a degree. There was something she could have done, but she actively, purposely refused that so we could have this absolutely authentic experience of the worst of capitalism: 'See? Look how bad capitalism is.'
Yes, we can make prudent choices as parents, but we can't create an environment where there's zero risk for our children. Not only is that impossible, I don't think it's desirable, either.
We need to encourage innovative ideas that give parents better alternatives to prepare children for higher education and for the jobs of the future.
Women feel like they have to choose. Am I going to have a career or am I going to have kids and that's not a decision that men have to make.
My parents were just searching for an alternative way of raising their children.
These are all voluntary resources which help parents sort out the choices without infringing on the artists' rights to free speech, which is something that we respect.
Good mothers make all kinds of choices. Making a decision that might sound selfish does not make a woman a bad mother.
One of the reasons we judge each other so harshly in this world of parenting is because... we perceive anyone else who's doing anything differently than what we're doing as criticizing our choices.
I could have probably raised them in L.A. and they would have been great and had so many things at their fingertips and been exposed to so many things. But we travel a lot, so I don't think that moving out of town is sheltering the girls at all. Maybe protecting them a little bit more, trying to prolong their youth.
You're not a bad parent if you don't save for your kid's college because instead you had to choose to feed them and clothe them. Those things come first. They can go to school and do this thing called 'work' while they're in school.
