The Polaroid of Perfection

She is literally the Polaroid of perfection 
She has everything and she´ll give it to you in a second


So Time magazine had a question for me this week: "Are you MOM ENOUGH?"

B*tch, please.

1) Congratulations on a provocative cover that has gotten everyone talking about Time magazine for the first time since 2006, when they declared that the person of the year was "You." Personally, I think someone found a great deal on mirrored paper and was looking for an excuse to use it, but whatever.

2) Let's talk for a minute about your cover model. As another blogger put it:

Let's start with the picture that you chose.  I don't have hard stats (and I'm way too lazy to go do real research), but my informal polls at the playground lead me to believe that most moms who subscribe to attachment parenting are older hippie moms with gray hair and saggy boobs and Subarus.  Why aren't they on your cover too?

Great question, Time! And I'm with Jen on this one -- just watching our local news where they covered "reactions" to the cover, there was only person who thought it was fabulous, and you can see her around the 29 second mark. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Not quite the lady on the Time cover, right? Which leads me to my point -- nice job, Time, for perpetuating the "mom-as-supermodel" myth whereby if we give over our lives completely to our children, we will look like THAT woman. I call bullsh*t, for no other reason than the fact that one's breasts would not look like that after breastfeeding for 6+ years straight. NOPE. Not without surgical intervention.

How do you have time to get your roots done if you're breast-feeding and WEARING two children (the logistics of this flummox me) for six years or more? Cook dinner? Knit something? Read a book not by Eric Carle? Chaperone a field trip? How do you have time to go to Ashtanga yoga or out for a run? WHAT IF THEY GET HUNGRY? OR NEED COMFORT? You set it up so you're the only one who can give it effectively. Can you hold down a job, or does your employer not care if your kindergartner pops in after school for an afternoon snack of breast milk? More on that one in a bit.

3) Just because cavemen/tribal women/people in third world countries do it is not a persuasive argument for having your child three inches from you at any given time. This one drives me crazy. Do you know why these groups currently practice attachment parenting? Think about it. Not because some Christian charity dropped off a copy of Dr. Sears' latest with a sack of old concert t-shirts and they all read it and thought, "Hey, yeah, let's do this!" And sure, there's some cultural impetus behind it. But really, it's because they HAVE TO -- because they don't have clean water, healthy plentiful food, rooms to spare or cribs or bouncy seats, and because their world is DANGEROUS and letting kids wander can result in serious injury or death, far beyond ingesting months-old Cheerios found under the couch.  And that's all they know. Don't you think those moms would like to pop out for an beverage at Starbucks some afternoon with their friends and sit around and chat for a few minutes, sans children? The reason they're not spending their days that way has nothing to do with their commitment to attachment parenting, and it's a foolish argument to make in favor of it. We don't live there. Our lives are not like that. Not in any way. Try again.

4) Where are the dads in all of this? The husbands? The other moms? I believe that, in a family with two parents that are in a relationship -- you know, married, or partnered, whatever you way you want to say it, for simplicity's sake I'll just say "married" for now -- that relationship is really important. It's the backbone of the family. And yes, kids are important, and each parent's relationship with each kid is important. But how are you able to strengthen and maintain that adult relationship when you've got a kid on your boob every hour and a half and more than one in your bed every night? Not to be indelicate here, but there are, ahem, LIMITATIONS to the family bed. Or at least there had better be. My husband put it this way -- "I would feel like a stud horse -- 'Thanks for the kids, now help me out when I ask for it for the next few years, bring home enough money to support this lifestyle, and I'll see you when the youngest turns 5 -- then we can resume our previously scheduled relationship where we talk about grown-up things for at least 10 minutes a day and have time alone together.'" I don't disagree with him. If you're so focused on your kids, to the exclusion of everything else, by definition you aren't paying much attention to your marriage. And if that goes, well, then, a whole lot of wonderful things go with it. I'm not interested in finding out what that's like.

Also, where's the consideration for the dad or other mom's relationship with the kids? If he/she is getting boob-blocked every time they want to rock the baby to sleep, that's not good either. Why is his or her relationship with the kids always given secondary attention to the "primary" mother's? In modern society with current technology (things like "bottles", for example), that's not necessary anymore. Maybe the counterpart to "attachment parent" is "detachment parent"...I guess he or she has got another role to fill -- the guy (or gal) who brings home the paycheck.

5) The very best moms at all don't work. That's what attachment parenting says. Dr. Sears and his wife, in fact, supplement their sons' families' incomes so that their daughters-in-law can quit their jobs and stay home with the kids and be, well, "attached." So again, it's the economic elites that can practice attachment parenting -- those who have Romney-esque family wealth or can at least front the mortgage payments for their offspring for a couple of years.

Moms who work outside the home to pay the mortgage and buy food are JUST AS GOOD AT PARENTING as moms who don't. In fact, an argument could be made that they are more self-sacrificing to spend so many hours away from their beloved children in uncomfortable business suits or uniforms, on their feet all day or crunched up behind a desk, rather than wearing yoga pants in the comfort of their own home being WITH their children and getting to participate in all of the sweet, wonderful moments of childhood in real time, not just between 6 and 8 am and pm. Right now, I get to work from home most of the time, and we have a nanny to enable me to do that, and the yoga pants are definitely the best part of the deal. (In fact, I put jeans on the other day and my legs felt weird walking up the stairs. I thought to myself, is this what real pants are like? Don't judge.)

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But you know what? It's not a competition. (And this post is definitely not intended to be a slam on SAHMs -- and I definitely recognize that SAHM ≠ attachment parent. Not at all.) No way is "better," it's just what's better for you. Do what you want -- you want your kid ON YOU 24 hours a day? Fine. Have at it! But I don't. Nor do I think it's what's best for them. And do not tell me that I love my kids any less for it.

As for me, I don't believe that having parents THISCLOSE to their kids for the first six years of life builds any sort of independence and problem-solving skills, nor do I want my daughters calling me every day from college asking "What should I have for lunch today?" or coming home every single weekend. I have seen that, and to me, that is a parenting FAIL, and the roots of it start early. But again, these are the things that I think about, goals that I personally parent toward. If you don't, whatevs. To each her own. As long as your kids aren't calling me to ask what they should have for lunch when they're 19, it's all good.

So thank you, Time magazine, for turning the run-up to Mother's Day into another series of heated debates about who's doing the whole mom thing more correctly. We all really needed that. As for me, I would have settled for "Thanks for doing your best!"

Moms, Stop Reading.

Really. Just stop. Not this post, mind you, because it's witty and delightful, but stop reading stuff on the internet. On the discussion boards, on babycenter.com, the emails that send you age-appropriate developmental information about your child, just STOP.

Why stop? "I can't do this in a vacuum," you think to yourself. "I need answers! What is this rash? Is it eczema or ringworm or scarlet fever? How much formula should I be giving my baby? Is she too scrawny? Is she too chubby? Is it wrong that she's not sleeping through the night at 5 months? Is she sleeping too much and not getting enough stimulation? Should I get a sling or a front carrier? If so, which one? Organic cotton? One sized for me and a separate one for my husband? One that requires Eagle Scout-level knotting skills? Is my infant autistic because she doesn't look me straight in the eyes? Is my infant needy because she only wants me to feed her? How long should I breastfeed? Can I use Target brand formula, or do I have to use organic if I don't want her to have to wear a C cup at age 7?"

Don't get me wrong, the internet is a wonderful thing. You can find answers for nearly every question, you can keep in touch with dear friends and family who live far away, you can become friends with people who you never get the chance to meet in real life -- you can be entertained, socialized, and educated with a click of a mouse.

But this information is overload is causing a problem. To wit -- this information overload is causing ME a problem. And I don't think I'm that different than you.

I find myself asking more questions and doubting my parenting abilities merely by reading other people's questions. "I've been nursing for 9 months, and co-sleeping, I'm going to have to wean now, is that going to be a problem for her overnight feedings?" I read on one discussion board. Which made my brain start spinning in dizzying circles -- "I've been nursing for a little more than six months, and frankly, I've had enough and am ready to be done, but maybe I should keep going because everyone else is? And maybe I don't love my daughter as much as other mothers because she sleeps in her crib in her own room, and has practically since she was born, and I don't wake her to feed her and I let her sleep from 7 pm until 7 am because, dammit, I just want to watch Mad Men and relax a little and not be awakened by every sigh and snort? I must be a bad mother." Also, reading other people's discussions about which place does the best job at installing your car seat and how it's IMPERATIVE to have a certified expert put your Chicco base in your backseat...makes me think, "Hmm, we just read the directions and installed it accordingly and looked at the level indicator and it seemed just fine...is she going to be decapitated if I get into an accident because I didn't pay someone at the baby boutique an extra $250? OHMIGOD!"

There is too much information and too many choices. How many apps do we need to track every movement our kid makes? A friend just asked me which app I use...and I blanched and felt like I was making up excuses for not having my homework done..."Well, we wrote everything down for the first two weeks, and once that check-up went well we, uh... kind of stopped tracking stuff because she seemed to have gotten the whole 'eating and peeing' thing down pat." Gulp. Do I really need to have a record of every bottle, poop, and pee from the first six months? I didn't think I did. But other people do, so that makes me wonder, am I falling short? Already? Wasn't it enough that I created a vast Excel spreadsheet to figure out which stroller I should buy? And that I even put in a pivot table? But what about the 2012 stroller models? Are they better the ones I researched? Is mine obsolete? It's like trying to stay ahead of the latest computer technology, but add to it the stress of FAILING as a parent and having your kid grow up WRONG or getting BROKEN, because of something YOU DID or didn't do.

Maybe, just maybe, we're all better at this than we think we are. Maybe, JUST maybe, we don't need affirmations from strangers or breathless posts about the dangers of X and the benefits of Y to guide us through this journey of parenthood. Maybe mothers and fathers have been keeping their kids alive since time immemorial, and maybe most of them turned out pretty much okay. Maybe buying a stroller or a crib can just be a purchase, and not a life event. Maybe just reading the directions and using your own brain and the appropriate reference manual and calling your best friend or mom is enough, most of the time.

And maybe if we just stopped being on the internet frantically searching for information all day we'd have a little more time to just hang out with our kids...and that's apparently the best way to ensure that they don't grow up to be sociopaths (I think I read that online somewhere).

Curse you, Etsy, and your unrealistic expectations

Oh, for serious. Etsy is advocating this:

365 Projects: Creating Every Day for a Year

How lovely! You think. What fun! I've got at least that many things in my "Crafts for the Kids" folders on Pinterest, that should be no problem!

Except for this:

I ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH TO DO.

Between working full-time, trying to be a halfway decent wife and daughter, keeping my kids and cats alive and somewhat clean and reasonably well-fed, and being in contact enough so my friends don't think I fell into the ocean, who the f&$% has time for this? Not me, not my friends. I have to completely outsource cleaning the house, how on earth could I take on a three-hour project every fracking evening?

Sure, it's a fabulous idea! I would LOVE to indulge that. I have no aversion to crafts -- in fact, I'm always working on a knitting project or two, and I'd love to do more. And I fully admit to purchasing the tools to put together the awesome "tooth fairy door" as seen on my Pinterest account. But to complete one thing a day? Fully complete it? Geez. Shoot for the moon, why don't you.

I ALSO HAVE ENOUGH TO FEEL GUILTY ABOUT NOT DOING. I'm not as patient as I could/should be, I don't spend enough time hanging out with my children, my clothes aren't neatly put away, I rarely remove the hairball on the shower floor, I didn't bake Christmas cookies this year, I don't exercise enough...I don't need to add to that, "feeling guilty for not 'creating' enough".

Blurgh.

Luckily, little Cinderella has no loose teeth yet - this is going to take me at least four months to finish.

Source: shesmakingcards.blogspot.com via Bethany on Pinterest