Mommy Infighting, Again
It was a while back when I decided that I wanted to steer clear of the usual purview of Mommy blogs and instead focus on how to keep my brain engaged and learning, while also instilling a love of learning in my then kid, and now kids. Caitlin Flanagan’s recently published book, To Hell with All That, has re-ignited a lot of Mommy bitterness. A lot of copy has been spilled, so I’ll keep my remarks short.
There have always been jerks. And there have always been people, mommy and otherwise, who try to make themselves feel good about their life decisions by criticizing those who choose differently. Further, it is often a luxury of class (economic or intellectual) that enables folks to mount their high horses. (Akin to the phenomenon described in this article on urban sprawl; link via Arts & Letters Daily.) Finally, it is infighting like this that distracts us from real problems.
So I’ll offer some advice I struggle to follow myself:
Don’t be mean. To each her own. The only person you can know well enough to judge is yourself.
May 23rd, 2006 at 1:03 pm
i enjoyed jessica jernigan’s write up on that book, let me find it for you:
http://jessicaleejernigan.typepad.com/jessica_lee_jernigan/2006/04/to_hell_with_ca.html
May 24th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Flanagan is both too easy a target and too specialized a one. I doubt many of the women who are lambasting her have her money or her writing gig. While Flanagan may be a hypocrite, it’s also likely that most of her critics are envious (myself included–I’d love to have more money and write for the Atlantic.) and thus their criticism is dubious. Maybe all of us would have someone else clean up our kid’s vomit if we could–how can we know?
I like Jernigan’s ending, because it’s simple–I don’t like what Flanagan has to say, so I’m not going to give her my time to read her:
“The percentage of the female population who are in a position to learn much of anything from Flanagan’s example is so small as to be meaningless if not for the fact that this same population has considerable media access and a will to use it.
If like-minded women want to club together to congratulate themselves on their feminine virtues and motherly righteousness, well, it’s a free country. And I can’t imagine that these women are going to stop committing their self-satisfaction to paper anytime soon. What I am sure about, though, is that I’m about done reading.”
But what I would add is that we should not encourage Flanagan by buying her book, and not give her any more of our time/talent by writing about her. Ignore her, and maybe she’ll go away.