The Art of Politics

Mommy Dearest

Who hid this lady's Xanax and au pair?

Newsweek has published the most entirely insufferable examination of motherhood ever penned, a woman's midlife crisis manifesto. Not to put too fine a point on it...

This excrable work is devoid of any real useful information - rather, it seems to be about and directed to recovering OCD patients masquerading as parents.

And I wondered: Why do so many otherwise competent and self-aware women lose themselves when they become mothers? Why do so many of us feel so out of control? And?the biggest question of all?why has this generation of mothers, arguably the most liberated and privileged group of women America has ever seen, driven themselves crazy in the quest for perfect mommy-dom?

The post-feminist angst practically drips from the screen. This isn't about motherhood, this is about raising little Chauncy Uppercrust in the wealthy suburbs in between trips to the day spa, where prep-school bred wives bemoan how their station in life didn't turn out like they'd hoped, or career trackers who found out life with kids isn't like the Enjoli commercial.

I heard of whole towns turning out for a spot in the right ballet class; of communities where the competition for the best camps, the best coaches and the best piano teachers rivaled that for admission to the best private schools and colleges. Women told me of their exhaustion and depression, and of their frustrations with the "uselessness" of their husbands.

Who does these things? No doubt, the moneyed set who raise their kids with their wallet. You know the kind - they've got a DVD player and screen installed in the Ford Exxon Valdez Escalade where their kid never has to go anywhere without staring at the idiot box - a permanent admission to Short Attention Span Theater. Makes it much easier for Mommy Dearest to talk on her cell phone if little Chauncy is watching "Bug's Life" comatose in the back seat. Hey, beats talking to the little tyke I guess...

Much of the rest of the article is a blackboard-scraping bleat about how life didn't turn out the way the author thought it might. This is Earth - welcome.

Life was hard. It was stressful. It was expensive. Jobs?and children?were demanding.

Yes, more insightful bon mots. But let's examine the real crime:

And the ambitious form of motherhood most of us wanted to practice was utterly incompatible with any kind of outside work, or friendship, or life, generally.

Looks like Chauncy is interfering with Mommy Dearest's social calendar. This is the ocean swell beneath this entire article... the obsession to achieve perfection while maintaining the temple to one's own id - which is incompatible with the human condition. You can't live a perfect life for yourself, and vicariously through your own child's status in the local child hierarchy, at the same time. Most people know this. But the tragedy queens in this article really do feel the weight of the world:

So that, as I write this, I have an image fresh in my mind: the face of a friend, the mother of a first-grader, who I ran into one morning right before Christmas. She was in the midst of organizing a class party. This meant shopping. Color-coordinating paper goods. Piecework, pre-gluing of arts-and-crafts projects. Uniformity of felt textures. Of buttons and beads.

The horror... the horror!

I mean listen to the overwrought, obsessive-compulsive angst in the words - color-coordinating, uniformity, pre-gluing. It's a school project for crying out loud, get some glue, gold paint, and macaroni, and GET OVER YOURSELF.

Let's get the payoff as she carries her cross to Calvary:

There were the phone calls, too. From other parents. With criticism and "constructive" comments that had her up at night, playing over conversations in her mind. "I can't take it anymore," she said to me. "I hate everyone and everything. I am going insane."

Again - total irrationality, passed off as banal maternal transpirations. Can't take it anymore? If you feel like screaming "Get a life lady" at the screen - you aren't alone.

And after all of the complaining and handwringing, what is the author's solution?

You guessed it - shift her burden to others.

We need incentives like tax subsidies to encourage corporations to adopt family-friendly policies.

Family friendly? Like providing uniform felt textures? I mean this little bit of sloganeering sounds innocuous enough - and like most good slogans, it's presented in such as way as to preclude disagreement, I mean who would be against family-friendly policies?

We need government-mandated child care standards and quality controls that can remove the fear and dread many working mothers feel when they leave their children with others.

Well sure, let's get the people who run the Post Office to set the standards, eh? Let's absolve you, the mother, from the responsibility for evaluating who you dump your kids off with while you head to the club for your 1:30 tennis lesson with Vitas.

And, I hate to say, day care is already regulated. We can't regulate that you'll get Mrs. Doubtfire for your au pair.

We need flexible, affordable, locally available, high-quality part-time day care so that stay-at-home moms can get a life of their own.

Again - get someone else to watch my kid. This is becoming pathological - get a life of their own? The author wants to maintain her status as Our Lady Of Leisure, while simultaneously winning Mother Of The Year, and all of the high praise and notice that entails. Ain't gonna happen.

I lived in France before moving to Washington...

SWEET GENTLE JESUS! Here it comes... why can't the US Government be my childs au pair, like the French government was?

...and there, my elder daughter attended two wonderful, affordable, top-quality part-time pre-schools, which were essentially meant to give stay-at-home moms a helping hand. One was run by a neighborhood co-op and the other by a Catholic organization. Government subsidies kept tuition rates low.

First of all, no, lady, government didn't keep the rates low, it kept YOUR rate low while passing the additional costs on to the rest of the French people. But here we are again - someone else is responsible for her kids now. Shouldn't there be a bill in Congress calling for Mary Poppins to be available to all over-stressed self-obsessed angst-riddled part-time mothers out there?

Because that's what she wants - to turn being a mother from a full-time job into a part-time one.

Hate to inform you - it doesn't work. Passing the burden you feel is too heavy to others is a specious solution in the first place. Besides, this zero sum solution means someone has to pick up the tab - unless you expect the rest of us to pick it up.

One last glimpse at the post-Wellesley sydrome, complete with call to economic redistribution:

In general, we need to alleviate the economic pressures that currently make so many families' lives so high-pressured, through progressive tax policies that would transfer our nation's wealth back to the middle class.

First of all, the high-pressure that seems to come forth in the article is performance anxiety coupled with a princess complex. Uniformity of felt? Secondly, how did this diatribe on motherhood logically conclude in a call to income redistribution? The author isn't changing soap tablets in the men's room urinals - so spare me the Little Match Girl routine.

For all of the posing and bemoaning, the payoff is for someone else to watch her kids while she goes out and blows her government check down at the Nordstrom day spa.

Folks - kids aren't easy. They are hard. And nowhere will you will find a greater advocate for mothers maintaining their own pursuits and interests as equal to that of their children than right here. But when you have a child, you determined you were ready to make room in your life for both of you. And that doesn't mean the rest of us are the ones to pick up the slack when your unattainable level of vicarious success through your child invariably collides with your desire to live the life of the idled wealthy.

And for God sakes, nobody gives a damn about the uniformity of felt...

UPDATE: The always erudite and readable James Lileks has a great take on this article - I particularly enjoyed his abrupt rendering of perspective to the lady who "hates everyone and everything".

UPDATE AGAIN: Genius.

Posted by MEC2 at February 20, 2005 09:29 PM