The Mom Syllabus

I'm sure I'm not the only one who regularly finds herself going down a rabbit hole of blog posts that lead to blog posts that lead to blog posts (and eventually to me X-ing out all of the tabs on my browser in an attempt to get back to what I was originally working on, which at this point I no longer remember starting). Yesterday, I took such a trip, beginning here — with one mom's manifesto about how mothers judge each other, and how they judge each other for judging, and how that all really needs to stop — and ending here, with some badass Connecticut moms who bared their bellies to show the world that we should be celebrating, not hiding, our post-pregnancy bodies.

I am a total sucker for essays and articles about momhood. About parenting philosophies. About career-home life balance and about whether or not French people really can get their kids to eat several courses of vegetables, or whether that's an elaborate hoax they've set up to make us feel bad while they scarf down brie and get wasted on fancy French vino. Clearly, there are thousands — millions? — of other moms just like me out there, or all those Huffington Post parents pieces wouldn't exist, and mom blogs wouldn't exist, and I wouldn't have a nightstand full of books like Toddler 411 and Why Have Kids? and Twilight (oh, wait...). 

Maybe we read and comment and discuss because parenting is the hardest job we'll ever do. Or maybe it's because it does take a proverbial village, only very few of us actually have one (or even close to one). Maybe it's because we're searching for answers or afraid if we don't read it all we'll miss something huge, maybe even that one thing that could be totally defining and change the course of our child's life, or ours, and everyone else knows about it but us, and they would have told us if we'd just asked, but we didn't know what to ask, so we missed out. Dramatic much? Maybe. But I do feel like this sometimes, as a parent. Like there's some key thing I don't know. Usually, it turns out that no one else knows it either, and that they were guessing, too. Let's just all admit we're guessing, okay? (Those of you who aren't guessing because you actually do know what you're doing, why don't you just keep that to yourselves.)

And now, off to read Toddler 411, except not. (Because, let's face it, I was definitely that nerd in high school who read every page of every book on the required reading list. But I'm lazier now, busier now, and most of the advice in those books is impossible to follow as well as weirdly contradictory, like "keep your baby up at all costs between 4:42 and 7:38pm but don't put him to bed too tired and make sure he's drowsy but awake but also not too drowsy and also not too awake.")

xox,

Rebecca