"Are You Mom Enough?" Time magazine, them's fightin' words!

I didn’t want to comment, really. Certainly, I didn’t want to comment just on the cover; I wanted to read the article, which I finally did, yesterday.

But first, the cover: I think we can all agree that it’s blatant sensationalism. Everyone sees what they want to see. Some see a proud mother, unashamed to be nursing a four-year-old (and she shouldn’t be ashamed. In fact, I’d argue it’s a crying shame that more women don’t breastfeed their babies at all. Still, Time could just have easily shown a mom with a younger baby nursing in a sling, which to me is a more direct image to say ‘attachment parenting,’ which is what the article’s about). Others see an image that disgusts them or titillates (sorry). All that was what the Time folks hoped; that, and that those who saw the image would scramble to buy a copy.

As a journalist, especially as someone who spent a lot of time in old-school (read: non-digital) magazine offices, helping decide which cover images and coverlines would make the biggest impact on newsstand sales, I could see right through the editors’ efforts, and this was before I read the piece, which as I’ll explain in a bit, is not directly related to the image. And I had my most rueful laugh of the week watching, of all things, Bill Maher’s Real Time last Friday. The comedian and political commentator included a snarky mention of the cover in his “New Rules” bit, in which he regularly skewers politics and popular culture. When he said, of that cover and coverline choice, that “…seriously? The print media has to die more gracefully,” well… yeah. I agree, even though the print media has been my bread and butter for 25 years. (You can view the bit here, at about minute 1:20, but I’ll warn you if you’re not familiar with Maher, it’s not suitable viewing for work or with little ones around!)

So yeah, Bill, Time magazine may be jumping the shark, but they got us, didn’t they?

I didn’t want them to get me. I’m frankly way, way over this discussion of who’s a better or more committed or more “full time” mom (which you know from this recent post about the so-called Mommy Wars is a phrase that gets my particular panties in a bunch). But by now I’ve read the story and I have to say at least this: the photo is a blip in the content of the article, which is a discussion (and a fairly nuanced one, overall) of the work of Dr. William Sears, who popularized attachment parenting with the publication of The Baby Book 20 years ago.

I guess a picture of the 70-something Sears wouldn’t sell copies.

The coverline, “Are you Mom Enough” is, to me, far more aggravating and polarizing than any photo of a nursing mother could ever be. It’s setting readers up – before they get a chance to page through a reasonable journalistic take on the subject of attachment parenting – to take sides.

For the record, attachment parenting was not for me. I don’t believe that babies who are fed on demand and worn on a parent’s body 24/7 and not allowed a moment of distress are better off than children who, like my boys, were fed my milk but on a schedule, who were cuddled a lot but who slept in their cribs and were toted around in strollers, not slings. It’s my belief that anyone’s babies are better off when they’re loved, and when the style of parenting adopted feels right to their parents. Was I, am I, attached to my boys? Of course I am. Do they feel attached to me? Of course they do.

On Time.com, there’s even a quiz to help you work out if you’re an attachment parent, but all the questions are yes or no, which makes it seem as though we all have a choice between baby-sling-wearing virtue, and Betty Draper detachment.

You tell me: what facet of parenting is ever yes or no, black or white?

Here’s one thing I did not know, until I read that article, and props to the writer, Kate Pickert, who as I said did a pretty balanced job: both Dr. William Sears and his wife, Martha, admit that they developed their attachment style of parenting as a reaction against poor parenting they’d either experienced or witnessed. Martha Sears tells a sad story of a baby in her family who was left to cry dejectedly in her crib for hours, without attention or love. Out of that is born a desire to never let a baby cry? Or to view any version of sleep training that involves “crying it out” to be abusive? I don’t see that. Again, nothing’s quite that black and white.

Pickert also wonders what Dr. Sears really thinks about working mothers. In the past, apparently, he’s been clearly against mothers leaving their children at all. He claims he doesn’t believe that any longer. And yet we find out that he financially subsidized his sons and daughters-in-law, so that the women could afford to stay home.

(If my father in law, admittedly a generous man, had made that offer? After I peeled myself off the floor and sniffed his Scotch glass to be sure no one had accidentally slipped him something psychedelic, I’d have said no thanks. And not because I didn’t wish I could have nursed instead of pumping milk in a chilly conference room, but because I wouldn’t have given up working even so, because working is who I am, which is part of the kind of mother I am.)

See? No clear answers, no yes-or-no, no black and white.

What do you think?

In case you have not noticed, my book was released last month (no! what’s that you say!?), and since then I’ve been consumed, for at least part of each day physically, and all of each day mentally and emotionally, investing in its (hopeful) success. It kicked off with the first-annual Local Author Fair at my library, which was a great success and a lot of fun.

I’ve been working the publicity front, with some decent success (though I’m hoping this is just the tip of the iceberg) with guest blog posts, like this one on Lenore Skenazy’s Free Range Kids; newspaper pieces, like an excerpt that ran in the Toronto Star; reviews, such as this one on Daily Worth; interviews, such as this one with on Where Parents Talk TV; and a live chat with a consortium of Canadian newspapers, which you can read here.

And here’s what’s happened — I’m finding, in a small way that I believe will grow — my tribe. My other mean moms. I knew y’all were out there! I am getting comments like the one below, that came through here on a day I was stressed to my eyebrows prepping for my son’s First Communion (my younger guy — remember him from this post?) Mr. Jealous from his brother’s big day two years ago was on top of the world for his own, as you can see:

But back to this comment, which made me just glow, inside and out:

I am almost finished reading your book … I have to tell you that I was relieved to know that there is someone out there who feels the way I do about a lot of the issues that our children face and that we face as parents. I get a lot of pressure from other moms to let my 5-year-old play Modern Warfare! …. Anyway I have been mucking along in this parenting world and feeling like I am a little lost at times but your book has been a God send to me.

I share this with you not to pat myself on the back so much, but to point this out: This reader (bless her) says she’s been “mucking along.” She was feeling lost, which is something I can relate to. Oh, sure, I talk a good game about being this no-nonsense Mean Mom (In fact, I talked about it to the tune of 10 chapters, yuck yuck yuck). But I have had moments, many of them, when I feel like this whole swimming-upstream thing is just too hard, that I’m just too alone. When my son tells me, wistfully and in that “why not me, too?” way that kids have, that his best friend has a computer (and apparently unlimited, unmonitored privileges on it) in his room, I want to gloss over it, distract him, or ignore it, rather than repeating, for the umpteenth time, in my sort of hard-ass way: “That’s what their family does, perhaps, but it’s not happening here, sweetie pie.” It’s tiring — and I know it doesn’t get much less so. It’s hard, and I understand that it doesn’t get easier as they get older. And the rewards aren’t necessarily always clear.

I got asked during a radio interview last week if I thought my subtitle – “why doing the hard stuff now creates good kids later” — was “true.” Was I sure I’d get the “good kids” part, after all the “hard stuff now” business?

Well, no, I’m not sure, to be honest. I’m hoping I will be. I think I have a very decent shot.

But what I’m most happy about is this: I’m not alone! There are more of you, hopefully many more (hopefully many more with Amazon trigger fingers!).

And that brings me to the second part of this post, which is this: I want you all to ask me questions, keep me on my toes. So I’m introducing, and plan to continue if it works out, a weekly “Ask the Mean Mom” feature. You ask, I’ll do my level, honest best to answer, or ask people smarter than me (come on, as my husband might say, is there anyone smarter than you? Good man).

So let’s start here, in the comments or, if you prefer, in a direct message. Ask me (almost) anything.

How I (or you) break the bank is our own business. Isn't it?

So, I read this article on Yahoo’s homepage yesterday, about how Nadya Suleman, aka Octomom, spent more than $500 on her hair, while her kids walk around half-dressed and her plumbing doesn’t work (the very fact that I got sucked into the story is why I stopped using my Yahoo email address for anything other than shopping; I go to the page to check my mail and end up reading about how Chelsea Handler hates Angelia Jolie on behalf of her gal-pal Jennifer Aniston, and those are not minutes I get back at the end of my life).

In the piece, we find out that Suleman’s hairdresser, who came to her house to give her a Brazilian blowout (for the uninitiated, this is a hair-straightening process, not what you were thinking it was), and was appalled enough at the state of the house, with Suleman’s 14 kids wandering around half-dressed, hungry, and using potties in the backyard that she went home (with her $500 in hand, one presumes) and called Child Protective Services. What got me were many of the comments. As you might suspect, there were a LOT of comments, and most of them were scornful that Suleman prioritized her hair over her toilets. Which you’d expect, and which (assuming this is all true) is justified scorn.

Those who know me well, and those who’ve read my book (ahem, have you bought it yet?!) know that I’m a fan of moms prioritizing themselves (chapter 2!). But still. While I wouldn’t skip my hair color and cuts in favor of premium-brand sneakers for my boys, neither would I put the hair above, say, getting them shoes at all.

That’s a no-brainer for most parents,  naturally.

But what about other financial priorities? Reading that silly Suleman story, and the comments that totally judged the Octomom for her screwy financial choices, made me think: All of us can be judge-y about other parents’ money — and not just when money-spending choices are clearly wrong, but when they are simply different from ones we might have made.

I wrote about this very topic a little bit back, in a post for DailyWorth.com, in which I said that the $240 per month I spend on my sons’ piano lessons may look to some parents like folly. I mean, clearly my sons are not headed to Carnegie Hall. But those same parents might be shelling out what looks to me like an irresponsible amount of money for, say, private lacrosse coaching or costumes for dance competitions.

Here’s what I wrote — what do you think?

I spend $240 a month for my sons’ piano lessons—$30 per lesson, per kid, per week. It’s a competitive rate for our area, and I love our teacher’s approach. Translation: Even when the $240 is a strain, it has value—for us.

But recently another mom said “Oh, that’s expensive!” when I told her (on request) what we pay. But she’s got two daughters taking more than one dance class each: lessons, shoes, recital tickets, costumes… it’s got to run way more than $240 a month. (I have nieces. I know.)

So. We’re back to value. When you’re mulling over what other parents spend, it’s easy to get judge-y.

You can drive yourself around the bend wondering things like, “What are they trying to prove with the mega lessons/over-the-top birthday party/designer kid duds?” (Or worse, you can fall into the keeping-up-with-other-parents trap.)

Here’s what I tell myself: First, other parents spend on what they value. They can spend, overspend, or misguidedly spend, and you (or I) don’t have to like it. Or even get it.

Second, you never know: Maybe those parents found buried treasure in the back yard. Or maybe they live on credit and don’t care. Or maybe they think their kid really is the next Adele.

Either way, reaffirming everyone’s mutual financial freedom reminds me to value what I do for my kids, with my money.

[photo: Everystock]

Madge is not a fan of smoking (good for you, Madge).

Here’s the clip from the show.

Now, let’s leave aside questions of whether you can lump the famous, wealthy-into-the-stratosphere Madonna in with your average single mother of, well, any number of kids. Certainly, she has plenty of help with her brood. I bet,for example, she had no trouble getting a babysitter for Super Bowl Sunday. But her wealth and fame and fabulousness doesn’t stop her from facing the same problems as any other mother, single or not.

Who knows why Lourdes was puffing on a cigarette: is she testing her limits? Is she already addicted? Was she showing off? She is, after all, 15. And I’m going to make a wild guess that Lourdes is far from sheltered.

But still. If Madonna wants to be tougher with Lourdes and the rest of them (I actually didn’t know she had four), it’s still her job. In the clip, she says that tough is, you know, tough. She says, “It’s hard, though. It’s hard. Every day is a negotiation.”

Referring to the “many” Madonnas there are in the world (singer, actor, clothing designer, all-around provocateur), Madonna tells Smith that, to her children, she is “…mostly the one who says, ‘Have you done your homework?’ and ‘Why are you wearing that?’ and ‘Why did you say that?’ and ‘What are you eating that for?’”

Geez, I hope that’s true.

Now. Where do I send a copy of Mean Moms Rule to Madonna? Anyone?

Or have they?

The so-called Mommy Wars are aflame once again, making me tired, dispirited, angry and unhappy. But I don’t think that it’s the actual moms on the ground, so to speak, who are at war. Even if we had those feelings, and I’m sure many of us do, myself included, they are temporary annoyances to add to the pile of much larger issues we face every day.

Now, I don’t want to use this blog to hammer anyone about politics, and I keep my own politics to myself (well, mostly). But the latest drumming-up of the Mommy Wars happened over politics, specifically the presidential race. Apparently, it’s that point in the contest when The Women get involved. To wit: Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist, on a CNN talk show the other night, made some commentary about how it was disingenuous of presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney to defer to his wife, Ann, on “what women are worried about.” Romney, according to Rosen, is out of touch with real economic struggles of American families, and looks even more out of touch when he says that he gets his intel on what American women are concerned over from his wife, Ann.

Rosen — again, a Democratic strategist — pointed out the irony of a very wealthy man referring to his very wealthy wife as his source of on-the-ground info about women’s economic concerns. And she made the classic Mommy-War-stoking mistake, saying that Mrs. Romney, “…has never worked a day in her life.”

Ruh-roh. Firestorm time, with repudiations, trumped up outrage, tepid apologies, Twitter hashtags, spokespeople uttering canned responses, female anchors in sleeveless jewel-toned dresses on the cable news shows flipping their highlighted hair and wondering (with ill-disguised glee) how the Obama Administration or the Romney campaign was going to address this obviously Very Big Issue.

Here’s a radical thought: Rosen and Romney are both mothers. Could it be they are both saying what they are expected to say, in a war they didn’t start? Could it be they don’t really want to fight, or that they both wish women could make their choices and that be that? Could it be they’d agree with, say, me in thinking that the very fact that we keep fighting over this stuff is masking the larger issue of how women don’t have such easy choices all the time? Both have made their offensive/defensive plays in the media since the “firestorm” (Here’s Rosen on the Huffington Post, and Romney talking to a Fox News anchor.)

I don’t think Rosen was saying that being a mom (in Romney’s case, of five boys, my hat is off to her on that score) is not work. She  slipped up by not using the “right” or “acceptable” (in Mommy Wars parlance) phrase, which would have been “she’s never worked outside the home.” Her wording implied, working moms understand while stay at home mothers are in a bubble.

But neither do I let the “other” side off the hook, those who are calling what Rosen said a “jab against stay-at-home mothers,” when in truth it was a jab against Romney’s out-of-touch-ness. This “other” side dragged out their own familiar tropes: Motherhood is the hardest job on the planet, and why can’t people respect that some women make the choice to stay home and raise their children?

This is the part where I get tired and depressed. I’m going to say this one time: All women who have or adopt children are full-time parents. Whether mothers also, in addition to raising their children, work part time, work in a home office (as I do), work 70 hours a week as a surgeon, work 40 hours a week as a dental hygienist, work on a business start up at the kitchen table, work for the PTA, and/or work to take care of aging parents is beside the point of their role as a mother. Which gives us all much more in common than not.

I become upset and angry over the Mommy Wars because outside of the politicians and the pundits, I’m not sure it exists, or at least not with full-bore attention. I become upset and angry when it’s the politicians and their significant others and their supporters fanning the flames with their fake outrage and false apologies, because for heaven’s sake, don’t they have better things to do?

We all use the “wrong” phrases from time to time. I get my panties in a bunch whenever I hear a stay at home mother say she chose to stay home to raise her children (because I’m not doing that, too, raising my children?) or is a full-time mother (what, I’m not?). And I’m sure stay-at-home mothers are dispirited and infuriated when they hear “just” in front of “a mom”, or when it’s somehow implied that theirs is not “a job” because it’s not paid. Those are all legitimate beefs, and largely semantic, and a distraction from actual issues, and a giant waste of time and energy.

What do you think?

Who needs the ice cream when your child is broken up with? You or him?

I keep reading this stuff, and I keep wondering if (a) it’s all a parody, a great, online reach for irony that either falls short or I just don’t get (but usually I’m pretty good at irony); or (b) if people are making up this stuff so that I have something to write about here.

What I am talking about is the compounding evidence of the persistence — the deeply creepy persistence — of out-of-control helicopter parenting.

The latest is a story by writer Jennifer Coburn, on Salon, about how she was floored and upset by a romantic breakup, via text. Bear in mind, Coburn wasn’t the spurned one; it was her daughter, 14-year-old Katie, who took the break up in stride and returned to her homework while her mother offered two spoons and a pint of Chunky Monkey, or to sit and cry with Amy Winehouse playing in the background (seriously? I’d pick Adele, but I don’t have daughters, or breakups, in my house). She asked her daughter if she needed a hug. Katie turned it around, sure it was her distraught mom who needed a nurturing embrace.

I am willing to believe (or hope, with desperation) that Coburn was being completely ironic. But it seems fair to say that if she was, her irony hit a nerve, because it’s not hard to believe as the truth, that she really was overjoyed that Katie was dating this particular boy, that she really was devastated — moreso than her daughter — that the relationship didn’t work out. And as my proof that — even if Coburn had tongue planed firmly in cheek — most readers didn’t think so, I present the Good Morning America story that followed, which details the “phenomenon” of parents being over-involved from toddler-hood through adulthood, including preoccupation with tween and teen break-up dramas.

Are we literally supposed to feel our kids’ pain now? Are we meant to find it normal to not just try to keep them from ever falling down on a playground when they are toddlers (impossible!), but to absorb and reflect back their romantic pain when they are 15? Or worse, try to fix it by (God help us) calling or texting ex boy- or girlfriends to beg explanation and reconsideration? Have we no shame left — or better yet, no boundaries?

When I suffered romantic disappointments as a teen, which was often, I wrote long sad notes to my girlfriends, who wrote long supportive notes back. And when I saw fictional parents getting involved in their teenagers’ heartbreaks — think Mike and Carol Brady — I was as appropriately horrified. What if my parents did that? Shudder.

And let’s just say for sake of argument that Coburn was 100% ironic. What then do we make of another mother, quoted in the Good Morning America piece, who admits (with shame, which is a good start) that she’s been over-involved in her son’s social life from the start:

“I dressed him, chose his friends, interfered with teachers,” she said.

Once, not happy with her son’s teacher, she intervened with the principal and had him transferred to another classroom. Later, she butted in to his love life.

“I’m ashamed to admit this, but when my 16-year-old son broke up with his girlfriend, he told me she broke up with him,” said Larson. “I agonized and cried about it for a week. I even called her parents and begged them for some sort of explanation.”

I wonder if the parents who are busy working on recommendation letters for their own kids’ college applications (and yes, this is now accepted practice at some schools, including Smith and Mt. Holyoke) would read the above without any irony whatsoever?

What are we going to do about this?

Me and my book, at a pre-launch sale and signing at my local library

So, today is the day I’ve been anticipating since the time, back in January of 2011, when an email from my agent, Neil Salkind, landed in my box with the subject line “Good news.” A month later, contract in hand and a July deadline, I promptly … panicked. And cleaned my office, and dealt with 4,000 other things that were obviously far more important than sitting down to write my first book. Somewhere around the end of February, my month of panicked dithering over, I got started.

I hit “word count” more times than I care to admit, and I despaired once or twice, but even that was minimal. Honestly? For the most part? I felt like I turned on a tap and the water started gushing out.

Here’s one of my word-count sheets, which is still taped to the side of my file cabinet — last March’s very frequent updates gradually tapered off, and I settled into a rhythm as the chapters were written. (Incidentally, that last number is still 20K short of the final count, more or less.)

Word count updates: My low-tech motivational tool.

No one (starting with my parents) has ever accused me of not having much to say. (Common at our dinner table when I was a girl: “Denise. Stop talking and eat something.” As I said recently in a blog interview about the writing process, all I’ve ever wanted was to communicate, to say what I had swirling in my head, and for people to listen.

So listen up: Read the book! Buy your copy today (links right there on the right side of the blog).

Tell your friends! Think about what a great Mother’s Day gift this is. And know that I’ll thank you from the bottom of my heart (especially if you, for example, leave very cool reviews on Amazon, or, you know, whatever…)

In pursuit of plastic eggs: How about a little perspective, parents?

I’m laughing over this story, which I read yesterday in the Toronto Star online, about the cancellation of the annual Easter Egg Hunt, sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and held in Colorado Springs, thanks to past instances of overzealous parents hopping (ha!) the rope lines to “help” their children get the most eggs. That’s not funny, obviously. I’m laughing because if I didn’t, I’d cry.

I’d cry because I could just imagine it: A small clutch of parents who arrived early in order to be first at the entrance, pressing their kids against the barriers, whispering in their ears that they needed to jump right in the minute the event started, perhaps pointing out eggs they could see to help them develop an optimal collection strategy. I can imagine the parents right behind those parents, suddenly thinking, “Well, if her kid is going to run in first, I better get my kid up there, too.” And then I can imagine some hyper type having the inspired idea to just jump on in there with the kids. You know, to help, because they just can’t bear the idea of their child coming up with just one egg, or two, or anyway, not the most.

One dad, a guy named Lenny Watkins who took his friend’s child to the event in 2009, is quoted at the end of the piece. If you thought he might have bemoaned other parents’ crazed attempts to get the most eggs for their kids, you’re wrong.  He apparently sees nothing untoward, undignified, or even embarrassing about the specter of  a bunch of grown men and women leaping the rope barriers meant to corral the kids in the egg-finding area and (one has to imagine) pushing past or knocking over other parents and children in pursuit of the most stuff (and can we point out here that the stuff in question is chocolate inside plastic eggs; it’s not diamonds and rubies or an admission ticket to Harvard).

In fact — this is the part where I felt like crying — he saw nothing wrong with the actions of these helicopter parents in the slightest:

 ”You better believe I’m going to help my kid get one of those eggs,” he said. “I promised my kid an Easter egg hunt, and I’d want to give him an even edge.”

I get that parents want to give their kids an edge in life. That’s normal; if we are not our children’s best advocates, who would be? But wanting to give our kids an edge should mean things like feeding them wholesome food and reading to them and helping them understand long division, or knocking on dramatically slammed bedroom doors after a decent interval, to see if the soap-opera star within would like to talk about the latest middle-school indignity.

Helping your eight-year-old get the most eggs is not giving her an edge in life, though there’s an argument to be made that doing so gives her an edge in being obnoxious, selfish, and possibly pre-diabetic.

You better believe that a guy like Watkins’ son or daughter is, or soon may be, the kind of kid who selfishly counts his or her eggs (and you can substitute anything else for eggs here — friends, gifts, grades) without a thought to (a) how many eggs one person needs; or (b) how emotionally satisfying it can be, at an egg hunt, to find an egg in the tall grass, look up and notice a smaller or slower child who hasn’t found one yet, and handing it to that child.

Modeling that sort of behavior would be a nice “edge” to give your child, don’t you think?

No, seriously. Of course, when they were babies and had dirty diapers and empty bellies, I dispatched those discomforts (those are the easy ones). But these days? If my sons find themselves in situations where they have to suck it up, wait, make do, play second fiddle, or just plain-old not get what they want when they want it (or at all), I sit back and watch rather than scramble to fix it. And that even goes for times the situation is pretty obviously unfair. (Because who promised fair? Not me, that’s for sure.)

Take two springs ago. It was my older son’s First Communion – he was the guy in the dark blue suit with the white ribbon on his arm and the gel in his hair, with his name on the cake and with him in all the photos. That left his younger brother on the sidelines. Oh, he’s in the pictures — with the most aggrieved puss on his face that I’d ever seen:

Here we are, two years ago. Catch that pout on the little mister!

Oh, my heavens, but he was jealous!

So what did I do? Pull him aside and wheedle him into smiling for photos? Promise him an ice-cream tomorrow for some appropriately celebratory behavior today? My instinct was that had I indulged his ‘tude with anything other than a straightforward brush-off, I’d only foster the absurd impression that he deserved some sort of salve for what actually amounted to a pretty run-of-the-mill “slight,” the kind real life is rife with.

What I said, after we started up the post-ceremony party at our house, was “go get some cake and play with your cousins; it’ll be your turn in two years.” The unspoken subtext being, “get over yourself, short pants, because if you start thinking we love the big guy more than you, or that you deserve mollifying for a ‘bad’ day, you’re heading down a dangerous path and I ain’t going with you.” I have no intention of raising professional victims.

I’m glad I didn’t indulge his fit of pique that day. He wasn’t a baby in need of attention or unable to understand his second-place role; he was a pissed-off 5-year old! I refuse, categorically, to make excuses for my sons’ behavior, either in or out of their earshot, though to be sure the former is worse; to intervene, fix, smooth, or otherwise try to leapfrog them over any potential wrinkle in their roads. Because the road is just too full of wrinkles.

You start up with that stuff – the fixing, the apologias – and before you know it you’ve moved from “poor you, no one’s paying attention to you on your brother’s big day,” to “poor you, that college rejected you!” Whoops. When do they grow up, in between those two types of “poor you”? And how?

Is it too obvious to say that in order for children to grow up knowing that life is full of discomforts that one has to deal with, they have to actually, you know, experience discomfort? Sometimes you have to cool your heels on the side of the field because it’s not your game today, and no, you don’t get to play with Mom’s iPod to “make it better.” (And as an aside, what’s “better” than watching your sibling’s game, or dance recital, or piano lesson?) There doesn’t always have to be a snack for you. If the Munchkins are for your brother’s team (and don’t even get me started on why any of them need Munchkins after every game), you don’t get to dig in until last.

It’s not all even. Nothing is. Ever. And sometimes that sucks, and often that hurts. As one of my favorite lines in “The Princess Bride” goes, “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.”

If you’d been faced with Mr. Jealous Pants, what would you have done?

Going for the gold in mom guilt? Forget it!

If the Olympic Games had been founded by modern American moms (rather than ancient Greeks with chariots and time to kill), the prize for Most Abject Guilt would be a coveted gold. I refuse to compete. I like to say I was born without the guilt gene, but after reading Pamela Druckerman’s Bringing Up Bebe, I’m thinking I was born in the wrong country. Frenchwomen, Druckerman reports, don’t express guilt over their choices to work or not, nurse or not or – this resonated most with me – over wanting to remain fully themselves after becoming mothers.

It’s not that average French mamans don’t feel conflict. But they appear to believe that since perfection isn’t possible, it’s not desirable, making guilt irrelevant.

But in the thoroughly American circles in which I run, if you’re a mom who’s not actively feeling guilty about something you’re doing (or not doing), you can’t compete in the games, and often the competition is all. Because the trick to racking up degree-of-difficulty points is not just to experience guilt, but to make it evident, with words and actions, that your guilt is bigger and badder than other moms’.

Let’s say you work outside the home, and Monday mornings make you sing like the proverbial lark, anticipating that even the worst work stress might be offset by such sweet spots as draining an entire cup of coffee while it’s still warm. You can go ahead and feel that way, but if you say so aloud, you better do so minus the lark-song, and with the addition of a self-deprecating “OMG, I can’t believe I admitted that. I feel so guilty for leaving them.” In other words, working for a necessary paycheck is worthy if you’re appropriately guilty about it. But you don’t even pass the qualifying round if own up to working because your career is a part of your identity you refuse to relinquish.

Let’s say you stay home, and you have let the phone go to voice mail every single time the class mom has called, because you simply cannot sit in on another meeting to decide which craft project the second graders will do for the Valentine’s Day breakfast. You don’t admit that, except if accompanied by a pefect-10 of a backflip: “OMG, I feel so guilty that I’m not doing enough to contribute, so of course sign me up.” Bonus points if you skip Zumba class in favor of being a Girl Scout leader.

You’re supposed to feel guilty if you get your roots touched up or your highlights highlighted without tossing in “but I let it go for so long because who has time?” Bonus points if you indicate your grays or split ends with a rueful, knowing, “it’s okay because I’m just a mom” smile; points deducted if you breeze happily into the salon or call a graying, greasy ponytail a temporary condition, not a badge of motherly honor.

You’re supposed to feel guilty if you didn’t sign up your kindergartener for t-ball, so now that he’s in fourth grade, he “can’t” try Little League (your fault!). You’re meant to feel guilty if you tell your daughter that tap and ballet are enough, that you can’t afford (much less finagle time in the schedule for) hip-hop and Broadway.

Gold-medal guilt gets its sheen from the visible strain for perfection, which no one wants to admit doesn’t exist (even Michael Phelps smoked pot; and didn’t Nadia Comaneci have an eating disorder?).

But what if we all just, you know, stopped? Admitted that we don’t feel guilty for (just to use one example) telling our 7-year-old that Chuck E. Cheese doesn’t do 8-year-old birthday parties, when the real reason is that there’s not enough Purell (or Xanax) for you to book a party there, so how about bowling, kiddo? Admit that we work because we want to feel important and interesting and connected to the world outside our homes, as much or more than because we have to for economic reasons? Admit that being home all day with a toddler or two makes you feel like a hamster on a wheel, or that commuting to work with a breast pump and a bunch of half-finished reports make you feel like a different kind of hamster on a different sort of wheel?

What if we all just had a café au lait and a croissant and sighed in a Gallic sort of way, and left the competition to the ancient Greeks?

Whadya think?