http://www.thepunch.com.au/author-bios/wendy-tuohy/ Wendy Tuohy is a columnist and feature writer at the Herald Sun. Follow her on Twitter @wtuohy. 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/for-a-solid-marriage-play-away-no-thanks/ Oh, so you’re not having an affair? How very boring, and so 1995. Haven’t you heard the way to go now if you are seriously dedicated to keeping your marriage alive is to have a ‘playfair’, or three? English sociologist, Dr Catherine Hakim proposes that monogamy was never meant to be sustained as long as it is now, and that rather than struggle in long marriages against the urge to enjoy the thrill of seduction, we should rewrite the rules to allow a little on the side. Or a lot. “Anyone rejecting a fresh approach to marriage and adultery, with a new set of rules to go with it, fails to recognise the benefits of a revitalised sex life outside the home,” she writes in her book Internet Dating, Playfairs and Eriotic Power. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Wendy Tuohy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/for-a-solid-marriage-play-away-no-thanks/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/for-a-solid-marriage-play-away-no-thanks/#item10727 Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:00:50 +0000 Wendy Tuohy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/does-a-fattist-insult-justify-a-sexist-one/ There’s been much high-fiving online this week among Adele fans, who are delighted with the way in which local comedy hero, Adam Hills, took down Joan Rivers for making fun of the the singer’s weight. The veteran comedienne went on David Letterman’s show after the Oscars and made cruel fun of Adele’s post-baby body. She said she’d met the singer at the event and then made a “she’s thiiisssss big” type gesture by spreading her arms wide and puffing out her face. Rivers was unrepentant when audience members jeered her for unkindness and added “What’s her song? Rolling in the Deep? She should add ‘fried chicken’.” Boom boom. Ugh. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Wendy Tuohy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/does-a-fattist-insult-justify-a-sexist-one/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/does-a-fattist-insult-justify-a-sexist-one/#item10717 Tue, 05 Mar 2013 19:55:53 +0000 Wendy Tuohy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Competitive-parenting-is-a-slap-in-the-face-for-feminism/ So, how far have we come since the keystone women’s lib text, The Feminine Mystique, urged women 50 years back to examine how we spend our lives? The good news is that for most Western women, in many areas of our lives, we’ve come quite a way. We have more control over reproductive choices. We’ve won the right to work (participation by women in the workforce is up from 40 per cent in 1960 to 60 per cent now). We’re in more, if still not enough, powerful positions. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Wendy Tuohy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Competitive-parenting-is-a-slap-in-the-face-for-feminism/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Competitive-parenting-is-a-slap-in-the-face-for-feminism/#item10681 Sat, 02 Mar 2013 19:55:21 +0000 Wendy Tuohy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/sorry-martha-women-dont-dream-of-being-housewives/ Bad news, Martha Stewart; despite your years of diligent tutelage, lately it seems like the whole idea of “housewife” as career choice may be heading for the endangered list. That is certainly the message from several studies lately, which find that despite the nouveau glam of the cup cake and the hand-crocheted throw, now even parents of daughters think the best thing that can happen to ensure her financial future is not to “marry well” but to get her own job. Two hundred years on from the publication of the vail-as-grail saga Pride and Prejudice, a recent poll of 1000 British parents found 57 per cent believed the best hope for their daughter’s long-term security was that she’d “get a good job”. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Wendy Tuohy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/sorry-martha-women-dont-dream-of-being-housewives/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/sorry-martha-women-dont-dream-of-being-housewives/#item10652 Sat, 23 Feb 2013 20:00:21 +0000 Wendy Tuohy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/its-not-ok-to-blame-the-victim-leigh-nugent/ Australian swimming coach Leigh Nugent clearly has bushfires to put out, but one of the nastier outbreaks he must fast address is the allegation that when harassment of female swimmers was brought to his attention his reaction was to blame the female swimmers. News.com.au reports that the head swim coach’s immediate response to allegations of misbehaviour by the men’s relay team, accused to of harassing female swimmers with prank calls at the team’s Manchester camp, was “your girls are flirting with the dream team”. Rather than take seriously a report of the incident by another coach and a senior swimmer, Nugent chose the old chestnut tactic of brushing off the interference with the young women as just “childish behaviour”. A bit of high-spirited nonsense from the lads? feedback@thepunch.com.au (Wendy Tuohy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/its-not-ok-to-blame-the-victim-leigh-nugent/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/its-not-ok-to-blame-the-victim-leigh-nugent/#item10653 Thu, 21 Feb 2013 02:57:43 +0000 Wendy Tuohy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/a-bad-lesson-in-us-and-them/ I guess it shouldn’t have been such a shock to hear at a barbecue yesterday that boys from one of Melbourne’s most exclusive boys’ schools had been heard sledging boys from another school at a cricket match with the chant “Your dads work for our dads”. And to hear that students from a co-ed school based in an area with a large Jewish population had “Where are your foreskins?” chanted at them, was even more confronting—implying as it does that among those educating our blue-blooded ‘elite’ this kind of anti-semitism is tolerated to the point where it can be yelled aloud. Of the three sledges raising eye-brows around the out-door setting, the third—a chant back to to the “Your dads” crowd of “Where are your women? Back in the kitchen!”—was possibly the least offensive. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Wendy Tuohy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/a-bad-lesson-in-us-and-them/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/a-bad-lesson-in-us-and-them/#item10580 Mon, 11 Feb 2013 03:40:12 +0000 Wendy Tuohy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/let-them-eat-dirt/ In news that will come as a huge relief to all parents whose instincts have always told them it’s not healthy for kids to try to make their lives - or them - too perfect, this week it looks a lot like the “helicopter parent” is on the way out. Despite Australian recommendations released this week that children’s lives should be so sanitized they should use sterilizing gel before and after the sandpit, two big international studies have just found too much management of kids and their environment is unhealthy. News broke this morning of a big Stanford University study which found that far from trying to shield children from germs by sanitizing everything they touch (even toys), it may be good for them to “let them eat dirt”. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Wendy Tuohy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/let-them-eat-dirt/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/let-them-eat-dirt/#item10567 Fri, 08 Feb 2013 00:55:49 +0000 Wendy Tuohy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/A-one-woman-war-against-after-school-activities/ There is an industry so insidious, so clever, so cunningly insecurity-inducing that as a mother you have to fight with all you’ve got to save yourself from its choking grip. It is expensive—but somehow you’re hypnotised into thinking you should wear the pain. It eats your time, and the golden free time of your kids. It keeps you on the hook and feeling nervous, that if you don’t buy into it you may fail your precious children and maybe hold them back for life. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Wendy Tuohy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/A-one-woman-war-against-after-school-activities/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/A-one-woman-war-against-after-school-activities/#item10552 Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:45:23 +0000 Wendy Tuohy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/raising-boys-is-just-as-tough-as-raising-girls/ Parents of girls; be afraid, very afraid. Be worried, because your daughters are “in trouble”. So much that we need a “call to arms” and “a movement to end the trashing of girlhood”. Certainly that seems to be the message in the PR for Raising Girls, the latest from parenting guru Steve Biddulph. A decade back, when Biddulph released Raising Boys, it was our little sons under siege by an education system - and a society - that didn’t get them or their gender-specific needs. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Wendy Tuohy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/raising-boys-is-just-as-tough-as-raising-girls/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/raising-boys-is-just-as-tough-as-raising-girls/#item10391 Sun, 20 Jan 2013 19:45:00 +0000 Wendy Tuohy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/heres-16-unpleasant-things-we-should-leave-in-2012/ Yet again it’s that time of year when having over-eaten, over-drunk, over-spent and generally over done it in the last few months you’re supposed to open a fresh Word document and draft up a blueprint for The New You. After one last hurrah tomorrow night, it’s all going to change. You’ll exercise more, sleep more, home-cook more and concentrate more on the things that count: seeing family and friends, making time for other people, giving more, really experiencing the moment instead of rushing crazily about (possibly due to the fear of missing out). feedback@thepunch.com.au (Wendy Tuohy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/heres-16-unpleasant-things-we-should-leave-in-2012/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/heres-16-unpleasant-things-we-should-leave-in-2012/#item10293 Sat, 29 Dec 2012 19:54:59 +0000 Wendy Tuohy | Author bios | The Punch