The Joys of modern motherhood

[Kulturkampf]

I couldn't help but be taken aback by the headline, Giving Birth Doesn't Mean Giving Up Your Social Life. It seemed something really intriguing to me that I knew the contents would be utterly outrageous, worthy of spitting hot coffee through my nose on a sunday morning as one hears modern feminism clash and selfish capitalism clash against ancient ideas of motherhood and family raising.

Shortly after the birth of her first baby, Brett Paesel found herself not in blissed-out baby heaven, but on her therapist's couch. "All I want is to rewind my life," she mourned, "and be the way I was before I had Spence. I'm never going to be happy again. I've ruined my life." Paesel, a glamorous LA-based comedy actress (Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm) simply couldn't reconcile the monotony and sacrifice of bringing up her baby with her old, carefree self.

Her solution was to implement a weekly happy hour in her local bar. Every Friday night she would meet with whichever of her friends could rustle up a babysitter and drink, smoke and discuss sex, drugs, men and anything other than what their newborn sprogs were eating, drinking and s++++ing. Paesel has just written a book on the subject, entitled Mommies Who Drink.
"I spent the days mourning the loss of my past self," she says. "I raged against the limitations mommyhood placed on me. I rebelled against what seemed like an American group-think about what mommies should be: dull, doughy, desexualised, and pathologically interested in all things to do with children."

Independent

The excellence of the article is very clear: a mother should not have to burden herself with taking care of her kids, but rather she should escape as much as possible and hire babysitters so she can discuss sex & drugs with her friends. Implied is the notion that being a mother is inherently dull. I am sorry, Brett, but your new baby will not sleep with you or sell you cocaine.

This really highlights the absurd realities of modern life: women try to balance careers and parenting and end up with zero free time which results in, I guess, people actually heeding a portion of the calls from detached Hollywood alien lifeforms to instead spend their evenings drinking with their friends.

Notions of sacrifice in a personal life accompanying motherhood are no fun and so we shy away from them quickly.

We are now left with this ideal:

I had always believed that having a baby would ruin my life. I put off having one for ages because, selfish as it may sound, I thought it would spell the end of all social activity. But when I had Ronnie two years ago, I found it amazingly liberating.
When he was six weeks old, the night before we were due to register him, my partner, my friends and I, all sat in the pub, passing him around trying to work out a name for him.

Oh, the romance: with your partner (it is uncouth and passe to marry somebody anymore, it is much more en vogue to have a simple partner who really has no contract with you at all) passing around your child to your friends and thinking over a potential name.
It turns out having a baby does not ruin your life: it brings more light into your pub life by providing opportunity to bestow names onto children over a few beers, because God knows alcohol and naming of children mix together quite well.

We live in an era where no one is expected to really be a parent in any conventional form -- we are expected to be partners (not husbands and wives) and the more endearing terms, mommies and daddies, being that anybody is ready to enjoy the fruits of alcohol and free time when parenting. Otherwise, as it is said, having a child will tear apart your precious social life -- God forbid that your social life turns to doing things with families with children of similar ages as that would take it directly out of the bar (and perhaps those lame characters with their husbands and wives might look down on your partnerships).

Welcome to the 21st century -- we are in a second Pax Romana; come back later, the native populace is too busy fornicating, drinking and hiring foreigners to take care of our children (who most of the rest of the time are raised by televisions and video games).

[Jeanette X]

Gosh, I love it when men tell me that I should be barefoot and pregnant and not have any life outside of squeezing out babies. Funny how I don't hear you ranting about how MEN ought to sacrafice their personal lives for their kids.

[Perndog]

Shit, this is nothing new. People with enough money to afford it have been abandoning their children to nannies in countless nations for millennia. The only thing that's different now is that the practice has become a part of American consumer culture and the proles (or people who should be proles) are participating as well because there's enough money to go around. But I suppose this is a little alarming, because at least someone who could hire a nanny in another era was likely to be in the upper percentiles of intelligence and capability.

Here's the bright side: Schmucks like this is probably worse at parenting than whomever they hire to fill in. They're probably doing the kids favors by getting out of the house.

[Emu]

There was a man in who had a weekly column in the opinion page back home. Every week, and I mean every week, the topic of his piece was about how things are different than they used to be, and how things changed, and how upsetting it was. You remind me of that guy.

[sspadowsky]

Ah, a lecture on responsibility from the guy who delights in passing out, shitfaced, in the scummy back-alleys of foreign countries.

Congratulations on completely missing the point of the article. My God; you are an awful, awful writer. Your clumsy sentence structure is the literary equivalent of a monkey trying to fuck a football.

[mburbank]

I dpon't know about that. I'd pay at least a quarter to watch a monkey fuck a football, and I couldn't get through KKK's first paragraph for free.

[Kulturkampf]

I do not drink that much anymore, not to the point of passing out that is.

I think that what is wrong with this is the image of motherhood we are cultivating is progressively eroding. Along with it, so is the common decency of man as the general gluttony, criminality and debauchery of the American people persists.

It is criminal.

What next, orgitariums?

[Emu]

I know you probably don't speak a lot of English in your daily life, but you need to come back to an English-speaking country again and get your grammar back in shape. Good god.

That said, I'm not sure what you think is 'eroding.' There's a good amount of evidence to argue that motherhood (and womanhood in general) is in better shape in the modern US than it has ever been. The fact is, people have always been foisting their kids off on other people. It used to be quite common for upper class folk to slap their baby into the hands of a wet nurse and see it maybe once or twice a fucking week while they went out and socialized. Certainly it's no longer the world of 50's sitcoms where the woman was a home-maker and nothing else, but I don't think there's anything to suggest that that's necessarily better than what we have now. Obviously, the populace of women in general were not happy with that setup or we would not have evolved out of it.

The notion that motherhood and wifedom should be nothing more than being barefoot and pregnant (going off of Jeanette's comment) is pretty patently ridiculous on the face of it. You say modern motherhood is eroding, so naturally the behavior of modern mothers is somehow damaging to children, right? Wouldn't it be better for the children to have a mother who can maintain her life and be happy, or to have a mother who resents the child because it took away her life (and all this simply by virtue of the fact that she's the woman and she gets pregnant and her husband does not)?

You call yourself a conservative, so shouldn't it speak to you that this is at least a little bit oppressive? There's nothing to suggest that these mothers are foisting their kids off 5 nights a week and shirking their other responsibilities to go suck down booze and complain about sagging breasts.

You could make the comparison between childrearing and a full time job, but the difference is that childrearing is a 24/7 job, and nobody will chide you for going out for a drink and complaining about your boss on your time off.

[Kulturkampf]

One thing that I think you should consider is the psychology of the modern world.

We are diagnosing autism far more, we are more dependent on anti-depressants and have counselors for everything.

We even give classes to people on how to be parents, as if lessons were needed. It is most ironic that the people who create these lessons have essentially laid the framework for failure -- in a society where parents try to be the friends of kids they only look like old fools, and more than that, people have no discipline or respect for themselves (hence increased substance abuse and sexual activity of kids).

Look at the elevated crime and divorce rates, look at the amount of depression; look at how we mock Christianity and our high American values and turn our backs on our nation; look at the homosexuals, the drug addicts, the liberals...

Something is terribly wrong. We should fix this.

[Jeanette X]

Originally Posted by Kulturkampf

One thing that I think you should consider is the psychology of the modern world.

We are diagnosing autism far more, we are more dependent on anti-depressants and have counselors for everything.

What, so autisim is the fault of bad parenting? And since you are apparently woefully ignorant of even the most basic psychology, I would like to inform you that depression is GENETIC. Sure, anti-depressants are over-prescribed, but for christssake, my great-grandfather would get so depressed he wouldn't even get out of bed. Anti-depressants are a godsend for people who need them.

We even give classes to people on how to be parents, as if lessons were needed.

Because there were no bad parents in the good ol' days. Nobody ever abused their kids way back then.

It is most ironic that the people who create these lessons have essentially laid the framework for failure -- in a society where parents try to be the friends of kids they only look like old fools,

Well no shit, you're right on that one.

Look at the elevated crime and divorce rates,

Elevated crime? What the fuck are you talking about?! Crime plummeted in the 1990s, you moron!

As for the divorce rates, its far better for a couple to separate than live miserably. People probably would have done it far more in the past if it was socially acceptable. Recent statisics also show that children of divorce aren't any more likely to have problems than their counterparts.

look at how we mock Christianity and our high American values

Oh lord, spare me the Jesus talk.

look at the homosexuals,

Its the queers fault! THE QUEERS FAULT! THERE NEVER USED TO BE QUEERS! NOW LOOK AT THEM! ALL UPPITY!

[mburbank]

" We are diagnosing autism far more, we are more dependent on anti-depressants and have counselors for everything. "

-KelloKitty

And yet there you are, in all your glory, without a diagnosis, a medication or a counselor, so obviously in need of all three. Where is the invisible hand of the marketplace when you need it?

[Perndog]

@ uppity queers

[Slinky Ferret]

Well I'm not sure how things work in America, but over here thanks to the price of houses, most mothers have to go back to work after six months maternity leave. I'm sure alot of them would love to be able to go to the pub if they weren't so damn tired and broke!

I've always felt that children should have two parents that are committed to each other and to looking after their children. However, today we have a huge number of single parent families with some of the mothers being practically children themselves and babies seem to be seem as the latest accessory along with those annoying little dogs and pink mobile phones. Obviously the other side of the coin is a huge increase in divorce because the mothers have had to work and work to pay the bills and in the end something has to give and it sadly seems to be the marriage. So then two houses have to be bought thus increasing the demand and prices in housing and - well I'm sure you can see this vicious circle!

I'm sure looking after a baby is dull at times but from what I've heard from friends, apparently it's worth all the hassle.

[Rongi]

Originally Posted by sspadowsky

Congratulations on completely missing the point of the article. My God; you are an awful, awful writer. Your clumsy sentence structure is the literary equivalent of a monkey trying to fuck a football.

I'm sorry, but that is too fucking funny not to deserve recognition

[zeldasbiggestfan]

Rongi beat me to it.

[Durin]

Just thought I might add my 2 cents. I personally noticed that many of the people I knew as I grow up, and some that I still DO know, tended to be worse off if there parents were not married and together. And active in the childs life.

To me, it does seem that parenting is a thankless job (note that I am not a parent, and have no intention of becoming one for quite some time). Nonetheless, just like sticking a hand into the toilet to remove a clog, it must be done. By one of the two parents, while the other works hard to provide for the extra members of the family. Traditionally this has been seen as the mans job to work and the woman to be more active in raising the child. This could be due to biological reasons (at least originally), with men having a greater physical strength and women having the mammary glands that were necessary for feeding the child.

Todays work doesn't exactly require a vast amount of strength and physical labor (some does however) and science has gotten around the needing mammary glands to feed a baby problem. However, the problem is when one parent allows the marvels to today to change their "job" (breadwinner to child-raiser, or the other way around) and the other partner does not, thus having either two breadwinners (child doesn't get properly raised) or two childraisers (family starves).

Divorces and bastard babies cause additional problems. The partnerhood of parenting is absent in those cases quite often, with the breadwinner fucntion often taking precedence of the child raiser function. Naturally some exceptions exist, and some people remarry, which can allow stability to return, and some parents of bastard babies eventually marry someone to fill the hole. But there are still many who do not.

All in all, sacrifices must be made by BOTH parents. The husband is going to have to work more at the expense of free time, same for the wife and child raising (or vice versa on the gender roles).

What I'm saying here is DON'T FUCKING HAVE SEX AND MAKE A BABY UNLESS YOU ARE FULLY PREPARED (or as fully prepared as one can be, of course).