Bad Mom

      I think about being a bad Mom a lot. I especially thought about it today after a conversation with a friend who recently adopted a baby boy who may be the most loved child on the planet. She was driven from a Mommy and Me meeting (her first) today because she admitted she went back to work (for 2 days a week!!) and was met with semi veiled hostility in comments like, "Oh, I cannot imagine how you could possibly leave him at all" and "I haven't yet left my son to go on a date with my husband - and he is two years old". I then read a great column by Ayelet Waldmen (http://bad-mother.blogspot.com/) on the cult of the Bad Mommy (Britney Spears is the current incarnation) and how Mothers are not allowed to be anything but 100%, completely selfless. 

   Maybe it is because I have four kids under the age of seven who will gladly take all I have to give until I am nothing but a stump, or maybe because the feminist in me doesn't like to see women tearing each other apart, but I really, really hate competitive mothering. I think we all know what it looks like - and that it has very little to do with how good a parent we are - but everything to do with wanting to feel like we are a good parent, or at least a better parent then our neighbor.  I know I want assurance that I am doing a good job with my kids and that I will be rewarded with four upstanding neurosurgeons who buy me Mother's Day Cards - but I am not going to get it.  

  Hmmm. There is a good reason that I don't post commentaries on my blogs very often, but I feel a strong sense of outrage at the pressures that fall on moms. The more I let go of my ideals of the kind of parent I should be, the better parenting gets. I kind of want to shout out, I am a Mother - not a Martyr!! And my kids sometimes watch more than an hour of television a day!