http://www.thepunch.com.au/author-bios/emma-grey-/ Emma Grey is the author of ‘Wits’ End Before Breakfast! Confessions of a Working Mum’ (Lothian, 2005) and Director of the life-balance consultancy, WorkLifeBliss.  She writes, speaks and coaches on motherhood, career and relationships and ‘having it all’, while parenting her three children, aged 12, 10 and two months.  She is currently writing a ‘vampire-free’ romantic science-fiction novel for teens.  Her blog can be found at http://www.emmacatherinegrey.blogspot.com   en Copyright 2013 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:00:10 +0000 Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:00:10 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/tales-from-an-unbelieber-why-i-missed-the-royal-wedding/ Hysteria. Queues. Outragious fashion. Prince Charming. We had it all on Friday night - in Homebush. An hour before Kate swept gracefully into Westminster Abbey, I made my own dramatic entrance, swept off my feet by some moss and down my friend’s front steps in Balmain, taking out a large pot plant and fracturing my toe (now purple). Sprawled across the damp pavers - a potted azalea in my lap, bits of me hurting but I wasn’t sure which yet - I took one look at my 12-year-old and saw that she had crowned me, in that moment, the Most Embarrassing Mum Ever. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Emma Grey ) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/tales-from-an-unbelieber-why-i-missed-the-royal-wedding/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/tales-from-an-unbelieber-why-i-missed-the-royal-wedding/#item5735 Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:59:08 +0000 Emma Grey | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/at-the-dentist-youll-just-feel-a-little-sting/ Nearly half of all Australians don’t visit the dentist regularly. Cost and anxiety are the stumbling blocks, and no wonder. I took my kids for a check-up last week.  My 12-year-old, who has never had a moment’s dental drama, leapt smugly into the chair and had the smile wiped from her face when she was told she’d need her first filling.  The dentist anaesthetised her gum with a large needle and occupied her mouth with his mirror, an amalgam condenser and the hygienist’s suction implement.  You’d think this would have impeded her capacity to talk, but no.  feedback@thepunch.com.au (Emma Grey ) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/at-the-dentist-youll-just-feel-a-little-sting/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/at-the-dentist-youll-just-feel-a-little-sting/#item5707 Fri, 29 Apr 2011 19:55:08 +0000 Emma Grey | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/when-is-it-too-late-to-procreate/ Ninety-four year old actress Zsa Zsa Gabor’s ninth husband, Prince Frederik von Anhalt, reportedly wants her to have a baby using his sperm, a donor egg and a surrogate mother. Yes, he does. He visited a Beverley Hills fertility clinic for sperm analysis and blood work.  There have been no reports of him also having his head read; however, Gabor’s daughter, 64-year-old Francesca Hilton (a product of Gabor’s second marriage to hotel magnate, Conrad Hilton) has denounced the story as the latest in a string of wild publicity stunts by her seventh step-father. And while the Gabor-Anhalts gallivant around celebrity baby clinics (if gallivanting is possible when you are just shy of a century, with a partially-amputated leg), my friend – a single mum of two young children – has announced that she has successfully battled cancer at the age of 38.  Facing her own mortality, she had to put in place a plan for the care of her children, which involved her parents and her sisters.  feedback@thepunch.com.au (Emma Grey ) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/when-is-it-too-late-to-procreate/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/when-is-it-too-late-to-procreate/#item5643 Fri, 15 Apr 2011 20:00:04 +0000 Emma Grey | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-perils-of-breasts-bottles-and-babies/ So, radio personality Jackie O crossed a quiet, leafy, Double Bay pedestrian crossing while bottle-feeding her six-week-old daughter and made the mistake of being photographed. Mothercraft and Nannies director, Jenni Waldron, tut-tutted in the Daily Telegraph that “it would be best to sit comfortably in a chair and hold your baby correctly while feeding”. She was probably caught off guard too. Jackie felt compelled to explain herself on air: ‘I was running late and Kitty was screaming…’. Yes.  I feel like doing that myself when I read stories like this.  feedback@thepunch.com.au (Emma Grey ) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-perils-of-breasts-bottles-and-babies/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-perils-of-breasts-bottles-and-babies/#item5524 Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:50:04 +0000 Emma Grey | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/girls-or-boys-young-or-old-karma-gets-bullies-in-the-end/ My daughter came home from her school camp on Friday and when I asked who was in her cabin, she said, ‘two really nice girls and some mean girls. We tried talking to them but they completely ignored us.’ Aaagh! Mean girls! Sugar and spice laced with arsenic. Bullying of all descriptions is abhorrent. Last week’s viral footage of bullied Sydney boy, Casey Heynes, ground-slamming his young taunter in the playground, polarised those who saw it. Many were appalled at the potential lethality of the act and at the outpouring of support for Casey that followed it. They jousted with those for whom it seemed that watching Casey deliver brutal come-uppance to his bully was almost voyeuristically cathartic. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Emma Grey ) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/girls-or-boys-young-or-old-karma-gets-bullies-in-the-end/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/girls-or-boys-young-or-old-karma-gets-bullies-in-the-end/#item5451 Thu, 24 Mar 2011 19:35:50 +0000 Emma Grey | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/dude-decoders-quirky-fashion-and-dolly-magazine/ So, my twelve-year-old has been in high school for, like, five minutes and everything is, like, a simile and a question?  Even stuff that’s, like, a metaphor or a statement is, like, a simile with a question mark?  It’s, like, driving me insane? She bamboozled her grandparents into buying her first ever copy of Dolly mag, as a reward for not, like, being a DQ during the cervical cancer vaccination at school?  Alas, it’s an excuse - and a vaccine - that wasn’t available to me when the same crowd refused to purchase said mag back in the 80s, except for the time when a girl in my class was, like, on the cover. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Emma Grey ) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/dude-decoders-quirky-fashion-and-dolly-magazine/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/dude-decoders-quirky-fashion-and-dolly-magazine/#item5321 Wed, 09 Mar 2011 19:35:50 +0000 Emma Grey | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/fathers-officially-not-as-crap-as-mothers-say/ ‘Delighted when hubby hung his first load of washing on the line,’ noted a Facebook friend. ‘Less delighted when I realised he didn’t use pegs.’  A domino run of comments followed, with women chortling over the guy who didn’t turn the iron on but flattened a shirt with it anyway, and the time a friend bet someone a bottle of Moet her partner wouldn’t notice if she didn’t wash his clothes for ten days. As far as short cuts resulting in more work go, the non-use of pegs is right up there with the least thought-through of ideas.  My 12-year-old did the same thing with her sister’s Pumpkin Patch bikini recently (last seen in the dog’s mouth, as he belted gleefully behind the pittosporum hedge). feedback@thepunch.com.au (Emma Grey ) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/fathers-officially-not-as-crap-as-mothers-say/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/fathers-officially-not-as-crap-as-mothers-say/#item5073 Thu, 10 Feb 2011 05:00:35 +0000 Emma Grey | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Parents-play-role-in-raunch-culture/ Seen at the local pool: two bikini-clad girls – around 14 - simulating a sex act in the toddler pool, then pole dancing under the toadstool fountain while their delighted boyfriends recorded (and possibly distributed) the footage on their mobile phones.  It wouldn’t have happened back in the day, and that’s not just because we didn’t have the technology for it.  Am I wearing rose-coloured glasses, or were most early-teen girls in the 80s too scared of the Grim Reaper, and just too generally innocent, to put much more than a toe in the water (with a boy or a girl) - let alone cavort around in it in broad daylight like amateur porn stars, then plaster the evidence as far and wide as technology would allow (which wasn’t very far). feedback@thepunch.com.au (Emma Grey ) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Parents-play-role-in-raunch-culture/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Parents-play-role-in-raunch-culture/#item4963 Sat, 29 Jan 2011 19:55:37 +0000 Emma Grey | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/competitive-childbirth-its-mum-upmanship/ Nicole Kidman has welcomed a new biological daughter via a ‘gestational carrier’, Princess Mary had her twins in a natural, four-hour birth and Miranda Kerr released a statement that she gave birth to her 9 lbs., 12 oz., baby in a long, arduous and difficult labour ‘naturally, without drugs or painkillers!!!’.  As a mum of three who has been through labour twice, I fully appreciate Miranda’s use of three exclamation marks to describe her drug-free birth. Gosh, I give myself three for enduring it with drugs and scramble to find enough punctuation to describe the caesarean.  One way you can’t sit down.  The other way you can’t stand up. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Emma Grey ) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/competitive-childbirth-its-mum-upmanship/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/competitive-childbirth-its-mum-upmanship/#item4927 Wed, 19 Jan 2011 19:55:37 +0000 Emma Grey | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/modern-parenting-is-losing-the-plot/ My attempts to write something in response to news that a Victorian couple - desperate for a daughter - had aborted twin boys conceived through IVF, met repeatedly with failure. I had a dental abscess when the story broke and I couldn’t think about the scenario without gnashing my teeth.  In the end, I had to stop writing, take two Nurofen Plus, lie on the couch and watch inane TV to calm down.  Toddlers and Tiaras would do the trick, I thought, wrongly. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Emma Grey ) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/modern-parenting-is-losing-the-plot/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/modern-parenting-is-losing-the-plot/#item4864 Tue, 11 Jan 2011 19:35:37 +0000 Emma Grey | Author bios | The Punch