Prior to becoming pg with B, I frequented several blogs including Perez Hilton, Pink is the New Blog and The Sports Guy on ESPN (thanks to my darling husby). I loved these blogs … I found the content absolutely captivating, I loved the humor and wit (mainly in The Sports Guy) and I really felt like I had my ear to the ground on all things celebulous. I scoured the sites each day for morsels of information including the latest fashion faux pas and the greatest HWood hook-ups.
During my pregnancy, I began drifting from my regular reads and soon found the list of my daily dish including less celebrity chat and more things mommyhood. I read firsthand accounts of motherhood written by family, friends and strangers. As I wrote on my blog and recounted the details, fears, thoughts, ponderings and joys of pregnancy and beyond, I found myself immersed in the mommy blogging culture. I expanded my repetoire from friends and families personal blogs to sites including Momversation, Baby Center, and later, Momaha.com. Reading blogs after I had Barrett helped me feel connected to other moms, feel less isolated and overwhelmed and also gave me an opportunity to feel like I wasn’t completely screwing up the process of parenting. In fact, in my humble opinion, blogs and facebook may be a Stay At Home Mom’s best friends … always accessible portals to the “outside world”.
While Momversation and Baby Center target national audiences, Momaha.com is Omaha’s answer to moms looking for local happenings and all things relating to child rearing. Complete with a blogging section, Momaha.com features two of my friends every Thursday. I am a faithful follower of their musings and have found myself checking daily to see what makes the other mom bloggers buzz. Last week, one of the mom bloggers posted a blog titled “The Bacon”. The jist of her discourse was that being a working mother is harder than being a stay at home mother.
Okay.
You may be surprised to hear that I don’t have any issue with her feeling this way. I don’t even discredit her findings. But what I am still trying to figure out is: Why even make the argument?
Here’s the deal … I am not sure how many moms/dads/humans read the Momaha blogs daily. I have no idea if it’s in the hundreds, thousands, or bajillions but what I do know is, if you want to incite a riot, put your opinion as if it’s fact in the middle of a group of women and you will feel as if you’ve landed smackdab in the middle of the Real Housewives of New Jersey season one finale. The first few comments on “The Bacon” came from working mothers who applauded Cat (the author) for being bold and brazen enough to shout her anthem from the rooftops and were in complete agreement with her statements that moms who work have more work. A few of the following comments included moms who not only cheered on the working mom but also made a few blanket statements regarding moms who stay home with their brood. Slowly … and then quickly, the comments began to flow like water. Very angry water. The virtual mudslinging got deep very quickly and soon, the moms were no longer responding to Cat’s post but rather to each other. For me, it was like a trainwreck … I didn’t want to watch but I couldn’t help but check back over and over again that day. I thought of posting a comment … but what good would that do at that point? Would mediation really be found by adding in more possible fodder for the foes?
Reading the veritable buffet of bitching made me think, too. Why does there have to be a right and a wrong way? Why do moms have to make such a big deal out of another mom’s choices? I am guessing that if you are a parent, you have realized the big secret by now: Parenting is a lot of work. Having a child is a 24/7 responsibility and before I had Barrett, there was nothing outside of breathing that I concentrated on 24/7. Whether you breastfeed or bottle feed, use cloth or disposable dipes, work outside the home full-time or part-time or stay at home, or parent alone or as a team, being a parent is a full-time gig. The choices we make on how to engage in raising our tots often define us as individuals and put us on one side or the other of a very tall, wide fence. And this fence can make us lose sight of reality. As parents, we all do what we can to get by … to be the best person we can for our wee ones … to give our children the best life possible. Whether or not you want to admit it, we are all in this together… and it is that fact, that I wish all moms (and dads) could buy into.
It is easy to think that in parenting, the grass is always greener in the other field … but that we are such good parents that we are willing to sacrifice green grass if it means our kids have it “better” than all others. I can remember having two days while I was breastfeeding Barrett that I thought, “it would be so much easier to do formula” … and then I thought of cleaning bottles and paying for formula and determined I didn’t have it so bad. I often hear of moms who leave the house for work each day and think “mmm. That sounds so good” but it’s easy to forget that working moms have to juggle a lot more with scheduling and aren’t out getting their nails done and having cocktails at lunch everyday. The list of choices parents make goes on and on…
Before you judge…before you attack, as a mother — a woman who is a living example to her child/ren — take a deep breath and look over the fence. Of course there are going to be times that you cannot see the forest through the trees but perhaps if more moms take a moment before engaging in momflict, our kids will grow up feeling like we practice what we preach.
Blogging, something that is indeed meant to be a soapbox (just like the one I’m standing on right now) and a forum for people to share, express, rant and rave, is an awesome invention … one that I personally couldn’t have made it through the last 24 months without. I love to read my friends ramblings on their kiddos, check out the hot topics in parenting on Momversation and peruse Momaha.com to latch onto local moms because it makes me feel a part of something bigger. It helps me remember that someone always has it worse, someone always wants to make you think they have it better and that I am lucky enough to know parents who just want their children to feel loved. And, at the end of the day, it is not how we love our children but that we love them that matters most.
So, before you partake in momflict in the future, take a timeout and think before you speak. And, in the event that you do speak, enlist tact, humor and patience to drive your point home and don’t forget to say please and thank you. After all, isn’t that what we ask of our children?
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