Mommy Wars

I try my best not to pay a lick of attention to the "Mommy Wars" because, quite frankly, the level of stupid makes my brain hurt. It's the blogular equivalent of women folk stripping down to their thong bikinis and wrestling in a pool of chocolate pudding. But I just stumbled upon a MommyBlogger (who knew such a thing existed) who is forced to defend herself on the Today show against a judgmental PhD known as Dr. Janet Taylor. Dr. Taylor is a highly successful and loving mother of four! So her opinion must be more valuable than Melissa Summers, blogger. Melissas' Today show appearance basically consisted of Dr. Taylor, highly successful mother of four and judgmental know-it-all, lambasting Melissa for neglecting her motherly duties. Now what horrendous crime did Melissa commit? Did she neglect to put her child in a baby seat? Was she growing mary-jew-wanna in her basement?

No, she actually has the audacity to drink alcohol in front of her children! Oh the horror, of children being exposed to moderate drinking.

In the end I showed up on a show with Dr. Janet Taylor, well trained media machine who was not discussing drinking in moderation but was instead talking about women as children who have no clue how to drink in moderation and can not be trusted.

I was told this was going to be a 'lighthearted' discussion. I pictured talking about how no one is talking about 'Kids And Keggers!', I pictured discussing drinking as a social activity many adults do, I pictured discussing how my husband and I often drink as a social activity at kid centered activities and not a single reporter or television has ever called to ask my husband "what that glass of beer means to him". I wanted to emphasize how silly it is to call this a trend. I wanted to emphasize how mothers are raising children, they are not children themselves.

I was not at all prepared for a debate between "Melissa Summers, blogger!" and "Dr Janet Taylor, psychologist with impressive resume and four kids." I was especially not prepared for a debate which involved Dr Janet Taylor repeating the same thing over and over like a very tall robot.

"Mothers must find healthy ways to relieve stress." Really Dr Janet Taylor? Like doing Yoga, meeting friends for dinner, going out with my husband, spending a few alone hours at the coffee shop or the bookstore browsing? Like that? Oh, good because those are things I do as well and I just pointed them out and I may as well have been talking to my hand because you heard none of it.

A mom just can't win! Apparently as soon as the little spawn spew forth from our uteruses we give up our individuality and we must, must, must revolve our world around making sure the little darlings never have the teensiest, eensiest bit of strife. Seeing mom drink a glass of wine must be the most terrible thing for a child. This whole thing is so stupid, it's making my eyes bleed. Anyway, at the risk of being labelled a mommyblogger*, I am going to link to some interesting reading that proves that a mom can't win. Then I am going to tell you why I chose to dive into this stupid, writhing pool of chocolate pudding in the first place.

It is no secret to all three of my regular readers, that I have a love for certain smokable herbs, known as marijuana. I love marijuana so much that I have decided to make pushing for the legalization of my favorite recreational activity a full-fledged hobby. I am now the Chief Official Agent of the recently created SKMP and I am considering running as a candidate in the next provincial election in order to lambast our cowardly politicians for their insistence on supporting the highly misguided war on drugs. The reefer madness that passes for drug education in our schools, the unnecessary deaths due to no-knock raids, and the infridgement of our civil liberties angers me enough that I feel the need to speak out about this issue.

However, I am also a mother and this means that I am a mother that uses illegal drugs. I wonder how bad I would be made to look if MSNBC decided to write an article judging me for my parenting skills. I doubt they would take into consideration that marijuana is a safe recreational substance causing no overdose deaths or cancer. Nope, I would be condemned as a bad parent for smoking marijuana, despite the fact that my little darling ankle-biters have never once seen me with a joint in my hand. I suppose I would be judged for the act of stepping outside to smoke a joint and leaving the little darlings unsupervised for a few minutes. What if they tumble out of bed and bleed to death in the time it takes to smoke my demon weed? My poor children even know what marijuana smells like, thanks to my dirty, nasty habits!

* I love my children, this should be obvious. But I am not a Mommyblogger. The last thing I care about is what a bunch of strangers on the internet think of my parenting skills. I use the internet to escape motherhood. I teach children at work and I spend scads of time parenting my children. The absolute last thing I want to do in my spare time is blog about motherhood.