Hollyweird
My parents were extremely big on the idea that a child needs a full-time caregiver at least until age five, preferably a blood relative.
Blood relatives are statistically less likely to abuse the kid. Darwin and all that. We want our DNA to thrive.
And they didn't feel it absolutely had to be the mother.
My brother got divorced and in spite of being kind of a jackass himself, he got full custody of his infant son on the strength of our parents being willing to take the two of them in and guarantee someone was looking out for that kid.
My father never changed a single diaper on any of his three kids. He learned to change diapers and became the primary caretaker of that baby.
There are cultures that do that. Daddy needs to work in his prime, but grandpa is retired or semi retired and takes an active role in raising the grandkids.
Technically, Josephine Baker isn't part of Hollywood -- she spent most of her life in France -- and I'm not talking about what she did.
She was a Black American woman, first Black woman in a big movie during the silent film era. She never had children of her own. She spent time as a spy under circumstances where that's a reason she's respected and she's most famous for a song in French about her two loves, my country and Paris.
As a talented Black American woman, she couldn't get served a meal in a nice restaurant here. This was after she was successful. They let her sit at a table and blew her off politely for hours.
She adopted twelve children of different nationalities and popularized international adoption and she had clear political and idealistic motives that she wore on her sleeve about all people can get along, regardless of nationality or ethnicity or religious affiliation.
And she was wealthy and presumably infertile. She never got that urge to have and raise kids fulfilled and late in life had enough money to adopt a bunch of kids and clearly spent time with them.
I have enormous admiration for Josephine Baker. I'm not suggesting she did something wrong to adopt children internationally and try to tell the world "Get over your racist garbage." as a Black American woman never respected or treated well by her own country.
But without looking anything up to try to verify it, I'm going to suggest Mia Farrow got her idea of adopting ten children in addition to having four of her own from Josephine Baker and her Rainbow Tribe.
I'm a White woman. I don't claim to be a paragon of virtue, but I'm not thrilled with racism etc.
According to oral family tradition, I'm part Native American and I've been given a ration of shit over trying to learn more about my father's culture and all that. And I look side eyed at a wealthy, famous White woman superficially copying what Josephine Baker did, but not really.
At a young age, Mia Farrow was briefly married to Frank Sinatra who was thirty years older than her and expected her to give up her career. He divorced her for failing to keep that promise and I look at that go "Abused girl escaping a messed up situation."
She was born in 1945 and began having children in 1970, so probably 25 years old, and while having children and adopting children, she pursues a hard charging Hollywood career.
She's one of these women who wants to live like a man, including apparently expecting someone else to raise her kids. I don't really understand that and I think that's problematic even when it's just your own biological children and I'm someone who mocks the phrase birth control and says we should rename it birth influence.
I'm someone who says "babies happen." Most people don't PLAN their kids. You have sex because it feels good and, oops, baby.
Approximately half the children I know are a case of "We tried forever and ever and ever and got medical intervention!" and the other half are "Mumble mumble, gloss over details, don't check the dates because the baby was born six months after the wedding and wasn't premature." or some other variation on "I was just trying to have a good time."
I call it Hollyweird because I'm talking about women:
1. In their prime
2. With a hard charging active career in the here and now
3. ADOPTING some stupidly large number of kids
4. Under circumstances where THEY can't possibly be spending that much time with them and PERSONALLY RAISING them
5. While they HAVE a male partner and therefore COULD make the children their highest priority, timewise.
I'm not talking about a single mom like Della Reese who adopted ONE child and had a hard charging career.
My understanding is her daughter was really her biological niece or something like that. Some relative of hers had like six kids and basically gifted a baby to her because she was a wealthy, childless career woman.
When the girl is something like four years old, she complained Mom is ALWAYS working. So Della Reese cleared her schedule and took a month off to spend time with the girl.
Of course, not working meant not earning money, so she cooked instead of getting restaurant meals and spent time quietly with the girl because she needed to budget. At some point, her little girl finally understands Mom works to pay for all this stuff we have and goes to mom and TELLS her "Mom, go back to work."
Single parents have trade offs to make. The assumption of a dedicated full-time parent is contingent upon a nuclear family with a male breadwinner.
And poor families sometimes have both parents working to try to make ends meet while trying to juggle schedules to have one parent at home and things like that.
I call it Hollyweird because a lot of people believe Woody Allen is a child molester. He was Mia Farrow's live-in boyfriend for twelve years and married one of her adopted kids, Soon-Yi Previn.
Soon-Yi Previn was born in 1970 and adopted by Mia Farrow in 1977 and Woody Allen was with Mia Farrow from 1980 to 1992.
Technically, he didn't adopt her and wasn't her biological father and never married her adoptive mother, but this is basically the only father she's ever known. I have no idea why the courts issued a marriage license at all.
Her romantic relationship with Allen created public controversy when it became known in 1992, when Allen was 56 and Previn was 21; Allen had been the long-term partner of Previn's adoptive mother, Farrow. Previn married Allen in 1997.
Let me connect the dots here: Woody Allen was living with Mia Farrow and gets caught in a sexual relationship with Mia Farrow's 21 year adopted daughter and this is why his relationship to Mia Farrow ended. And then six years later, he married Soon-Yi Previn when she's 27.
So he lives with this girl from the time she's ten and they are probably still living together as father-daughter and he sleeps with her.
He was at one time taken to court and accused of molesting one of the other kids. But we are supposed to believe he wasn't sexually assaulting a child prior to her eighteenth birthday and SOMEHOW this isn't really abuse because Mia Farrow adopted her, not him?
She was eating out of garbage cans prior to a White American woman adopting her. She was seven when she came to the US and has probably been molested by Woody Allen for twelve years already before it became public knowledge.
She doesn't have a leg to stand on or anywhere to go. She's so hopelessly trapped, she does shit like this:
Previn and Allen knew financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein socially before his 2019 suicide. As part of the February 2026 document release related to the U.S. Department of Justice's investigation of Epstein, it was found that Previn wrote Epstein an email in 2018 saying that the #MeToo movement "went too far". She also condemned the underage victim of former Congressman Anthony Weiner, to whom Weiner had sent several sexually explicit text messages, writing: "I hate women who take advantage of guys and she is definitely one of them. She knew exactly what she was doing and how vulnerable he was and she reeled him in like fish to bait. What is her excuse for being a despicable and disgusting person who preys on the [weak]?"
Angelina Jolie has six kids, three biological and three adopted. I've heard it said that at one time, each child had their own nanny.
She adopted her first child in 2002 before getting with Pitt. Technically, she was married to Billy Bob Thornton but ended up adopting the child alone as a single mom because they divorcing which she says was a shock she didn't see coming, perhaps to explain why she adopted a child as she got divorced.
She was just 26.
I'm not saying "Women are required to be full-time homemakers." I'm not saying "All career women are bad mother's on the face of it."
I have read that there is as much child abuse and neglect and drug abuse in upper class families as in the ghetto. The best parents tend to be middle class parents who:
1. Make sure there's enough money and material comfort to adequately feed and care for the kids.
2. While still making career choices that prioritize the welfare of the kids.
There are many ways to do that.
Like Josephine Baker, Madonna seems to have adopted kids starting in her forties, after having two biological children, and she ramped down her career.
Is she deserving of Mother of the Year? I have absolutely no idea.
But as a total stranger who hasn't so much as attended a concert by her, I'm not looking at that and going "What the HELL???? What is wrong with you???" like I do about Mia Farrow and Angelina Jolie.
There is the routine normal prosaic marry an older man, let him pay your bills and be a homemaker or only work part-time, at least until the kids are older.
We VILIFY Mormons for continuing that practice and act like they are psych jobs. But no one but me is going "That ain't right!!!" about Angelina Jolie and Mia Farrow?
It's a known thing that child molester men will marry single moms to get access to the kids. But no one is wondering why known pathological personalities like Angelina Jolie and Elon Musk have so many kids?
Everyone:
Angelina Jolie and Elon Musk Got Issues.
Also everyone:
I have no problem with them having a zillion kids and I'm not questioning what that might imply about their parenting or their motives for that "lifestyle choice."