Pollitt Interviewed on Parenting Blog Babble

She recently spoke to Ada Calhoun about her essay "Beautiful Screamer," from Learning to Drive. Writes Calhoun:

In the sleeper-hit of the bunch, "Beautiful Screamer," Pollitt writes about the loneliness and ecstasy of new motherhood. With great comic timing and a breeziness that makes it feel like an email from a good friend, she hits on pretty much every hot parenting topic out there, from sleep-training (she didn't do it) to childbirth perfectionism (she calls it "machismo for women"). She also drops the bombshell that having babies can turn even the most equitable couples into "gender Republicans." In other words, after the birth of her child: "The old assumptions about men and women, which had been lulled by money and leisure and youthful bohemianism and feminism, woke up."

We took Pollitt out for a glass of wine in the East Village before her recent reading at the Strand bookstore. She was as funny in person as she was in her book, where she delivers zingers like, on breastfeeding: "If it's so natural, how come there is a job called "lactation consultant" that requires twenty-five hundred hours of formal training?" Read the interview here.