Review Disclosures

I am a mom and consider myself an expert on mom-ing.
I read books and consider myself an expert on reading books.
The very nice publicist asked me if I ever recommended books on my website and I promised to say exactly what I thought of it. She still sent me the book. Confidence like that is priceless in a publicist.

The Book of Mom bites. The End. (Or did you want to know why?)

First, it’s “fiction,” which means that the author wanted to write in first person but wanted to brag about being a former Fortune 500 executive, a former Type-A over-activitating Mom, a current burnt-out Who Am I? whiner-mom, and finally a born-again embrace-the-now REAL BOY MOM. Perhaps this hasty exaggeration is an attempt to portray EveryMom, but it actually reduces the protagonist to caricature.

Second, the revelations in The Book of Mom, including “motherhood is hard,” “being mom takes over your identity,” and, most revelatory of all, “even mom needs time to herself” would be revolutionary, soul-nourishing, and emancipatory, maybe, in a pre-Mommy Blogosphere or pre-Erma Bombeck or heck, pre-Virgin Mary (talk about a hard labor and your identity being entirely subsumed in your child) world.

Even Dooce, for whom I have expressed my love numerous times, kind of belabors the point in a recent Declaration of Mommy Blogger Independence post recently:

. . . I have every reason to believe that one day you will look at the thousands of pages I have written about my love for you, the thousands of pages other women have written about their own children, and you’re going to be so proud that we were brave enough to do this. We are an army of educated mothers who have finally stood up and said pay attention, this is important work, this is hard, frustrating work and we’re not going to sit around on our hands waiting for permission to do so. We have declared that our voices matter.

I cried while reading this post, as I often have violent emotional reactions, including anger, to Dooce’s writing. But, really, am I the only woman IN THE WORLD who never expected motherhood to be one long trip to Disneyworld without the sweating sunscreen and sore feet? My own mother, whom I would have chosen if I could have chosen any mother in the world, never told me that motherhood was a funfest. She said, or let me see (I’m the oldest of five), that it’s hard and unrewarded and exhausting and the most important thing I would ever do in my life.

Mommy Bloggers have been criticized recently for endangering and/or exploiting their children, disregarding privacy boundaries, and, worst of all, being even more narcissistic than ‘regular’ bloggers. I think these first two concerns are valid and have to be negotiated every time a mother leaves the house or picks up the phone to her best friend.

Narcissism is a criticism of a different order. Incidentally, if you exploit your children for gain on a blog or in a book, does that rule out narcissism, or are the kids only an extension of yourself and therefore a manifestation of your narcissism? Also, if you don’t make money from your blog, can you be “exploiting”? Mediocrity = virtuous mothering. Success = bad mom.

Another disclosure

I didn’t read past the first two chapters of The Book of Mom. It seems really unfair that I would negatively review something I didn’t finish, but I didn’t have to drink a whole Dr. Pepper to know it tastes like medicine or watch an entire episode of Baby Van Gogh to know it would rot the brains of fragile-minded toddlers.

Oh, I could skim the rest of it and at least pretend I’d given it a fighting chance. But that’s not how I choose the books or blogs I read. When I’m reading personal essays (most blogs and this book, however it is marketed), I like to read (and write for that matter) about everyday life in a way that makes me enjoy everyday life more. When I’m reading for escape (what I look for in “fiction”) I like to read books with words like swashbuckling, bitter-enemies-become-passionate-lovers, gothic-atmosphere, and female-detective-tracks-serial-killer on the back cover.

If you’re going to write fiction without any pirates or star-crossed lovers, but instead hold up a whinging, self-important mirror to the Modern American Mommy, at least try for some original complaints. I don’t know any mother who doesn’t wish she could go to the toilet by herself for once.

Which is not to say that Mommy writing or Mommy blogging is without value. Even though I need only pick up the phone or go to the playground to get commiseration on the joys and trials of motherhood, reading blogs that celebrate motherhood and books like Judith Warner’s that, while flawed, eloquently express the anxiety and frustration that accompany mothering is reassuring and liberating.

I read Rocks in My Dryer for a taste of Oklahoma-goody-two-shoes mothering and Confessions of a Pioneer Woman for a bit of cowboy escapism with my slice of life as a country mother and Scribbit for a dose of Northern Exposure Living mixed with Alaskan Family Fun magazine. That a 200ish-page book could be published and printed without a similarly-original hook to interest the busy-mom reader is frankly mind-boggling.

That’s all I can say about The Book of Mom, because, after all, I couldn’t finish it, and after more all, I’m self-interested enough to want to address the narcissism issue. When Socrates (via Thoreau for me) said that the unexamined life is not worth living, was that narcissistic? Does the talent of the writer influence whether her examination of life is narcissistic or not? (see Mediocrity, above). Could I ever make everyone happy by doing or writing what I think would please them? Would I stop writing about my kids and husband if they asked me to? (Dooce says absolutely).

In trying to construct my own philosophy of What One Should Write on One’s Blog, I was inspired by Jessica Hagy’s popular Indexed blog (via Freakonomics for me). In my legible-for-once handwriting:

I can only hope that when my daughters are old enough to be mothers themselves, they will read what I have written about them, and what thousands of other mothers have written about their own children, and know that I never lied to them: I didn’t enjoy the potty-training or the whiny, high-pitched voices or the syrup on the carpet or the embarrassing runs to the ER for croup or the daily ruining of nice clothes or the stinky poop in diapers or, worse, on the carpet, but I did enjoy them. I enjoyed making them laugh by playing the Look Away game and the chubby fingers tugging on my face to get my attention.

They are the reason I am not even more self-absorbed and impatient and intolerant. They are why I get up in the morning and why I feel guilty when I stay up too late. They are why I am who I am today.

And, narcissistic as that may be, I like who I am today. I like that three beautiful, innocent, forgiving, loving, growing, changing human beings call me Mommy.

I am mommy: hear me blog.

—

Mommy blogging’s what works for me this week. For a more complete review of The Book of Mom, especially if you find it unfair that I’d review it without reading the whole thing, see The Book of Mom, Redux.