July 4: Nothing to see hereMay 6: Mommy bloggers unite!Men who write about their children can skip this rant; apparently, you get a pass on the hate. You might not realize it, but I do write about being a mother. It's off on a second page because at the time I got pregnant, three friends were facing the chance of never having children, and at least two others have no interest in children, nausea or insulin needles. All the kid obsessive stuff is off somewhere easy to find, but if that's not your thing, you don't have to read it. Simple, huh? And yet, for some reason, people who don't like children keep reading blogs written by women about their children. And complaining about it. This would just be a stupidity issue but for the fact that it's only blogs that are written by women about their kids that get the vitriol. Men can write about their kids and no one gives a shit, but women get their own derisive term, "mommy bloggers." And, as my friend Cecily pointed out, bloggers who feel slighted by "real" journalists take comfort in the fact that they aren't "mommy bloggers." This makes it a feminist issue. Let's take the ubiquitous comment: "No one cares about your kid's poop." As a mathemetician, I can tell you that that's a false statement. The set of people who care about the kid's poop has at least one member (the kid) and is therefore, not, by definition, the empty set. As someone (the mother) is writing, we can deduce the set also includes her. We'd hope the set also includes the other parent, but we're going for truth. This may surprise some non-parent bloggers, but kids are actually people too. In infants, pooping or not pooping can be the sign of serious health problems. For example, Jake and I had such trouble breastfeeding the first few days that he had signs of dehydration by the third day (small amounts of very dark urine). In fact, I should have supplemented. Now, even if you know me and Jakob, you might not care. But another woman, in the same situation, might find it keeps her sanity to know that Jake and I got through it, he's perfectly normal, and he loves baseball (that, actually, is totally bizarre). Back in the good old days of large families and everyone dying of cholera from the well pump, little girls learned how to take care of babies, what was normal and what wasn't, from watching friends and family with babies. Now you get a two-hour class that you will retain no information from, and you're on your own! How do you know how much poop an infant should produce? Is three to five a day normal? (Yes -- Jakob) How about every three to five days (leading to the dreaded poopsplosion)? Also yes. Parents care about poop because there are only so many hours in the day to worry, and if the poop isn't a problem, we're going to go back to worrying about getting the little bugger to sleep through the night. Parenting is more stressful than I could have imagined. Jorj and I are completely responsible for another person. For 15 months (counting pregnancy), I was the sole source of nourishment for this person. If parenting is unimportant, someone alert the media to stop blaming parents for the behavior of their kids. If parenting is easy, I dare anyone to take a job managing and training another clueless person, a job they can't quit for 18+ years, that runs 24 hours a day, and will interfere with everything else -- career, family, hobbies. Is it a choice? Yes. Doesn't make it easier. Reading about other parents' experiences -- mothers and fathers, stay-at-home, work-at-home, work-outside-home, straight, gay, single- or double-wage-earner -- makes it easier. It's a huge parenting book, one less influenced by advertising than the parenting magazines, one not dedicated to a one-true-path fallacy. The best thing is, you don't have to read it if you don't want to. Don't like Dooce? Think she's overhyped? You don't actually have to click through and read her! But with luck, some woman with a newborn and a case of post-partum depression will read Dooce, and will get treatment. Honestly? I'd rather read about a woman confronting her demons than some new computer game you got, or what's playing on your iPod, or why you hate Linux. |
One-liners about bad UI, Doctor Who, and the rest of my life. What I'm reading
What I'm listening to
Guilty pleasures
|
