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Lynn Harris of Salon lit up the blogosphere last week with her article "Everybody Hates Mommy." In it, she writes particularly of white, urban, upper-class mommies and the unique venom they engender in the childless, a venom she attributes to the feminine, to the mommy:
But I still say that when it comes to mother bashing, there's more going on. Something deeper, more venomous, even more timeless. The level of vitriol is so high, its target so clear and consistent.
Does everyone really hate women? Does everyone really hate mommy?
Harris' article vacillated between agreeing that some mommies are really annoying and expressing shock that anyone would vilify them. In it, she strives to put her finger on really what is so annoying about mommies. In Harris' view, it's the space they take up, especially with their damn strollers.
Yes, the lowly stroller. It has come to represent all that is thoughtless and space-hogging in America. It seems the stroller, and by association, the mommy, is taking up just a little too much room on America's streets, in her malls, and in her headspace. The strollers are too large for city sidewalks, just as minvans and SUVs are too large for its streets and its parking lots. This hogging of space in and of itself represents a lack of concern for the space others need in order to live their lives. The stroller is an inanimate manifestation of parents who bring their undisciplined children out of the nursery and into the public sphere, not at playgrounds or library reading rooms but in coffee shops and workplaces and the grocery store. And these mommies? Not only will they encroach, but they will do it without mercy.
Sadie Stein of Jezebel writes:
This is really it in a nutshell: the sense some of these parents give is that they'll have it all, on their terms. There will be no concessions made: instead, the world will concede.
And ... I get it. I know, I'm a mommy and family contributing editor at BlogHer, a mommyblogger at Surrender, Dorothy. I should so totally be taking the mommy side here, right? But, no. While I love me some mommy, I think it's possible to be an ass whether or not you have kids.
And: I think this discussion is bringing out the worst in all of us.
I was disconcerted by the level of vitriol I saw in the comments on Harris' article on both sides of the stroller. I've written for a variety of comment-ready online periodicals, and I know that if you're going to put an argument out there, you're going to attract some haters. But this -- THIS! Was beyond what I've seen before. In the space of time it took me to start this post, eat dinner, and come back to it, the comments shot up from 152 to 470 on Harris'post. Here's a sampling:
We don't need mothers to reproduce to shore up our dying populations. Having children these days is something that highly uncreative women do to fill their lives. PERIOD.
And while you're letting that one rattle around in your head, try this one on for size:
if I had a dollar for every time I've had to deal with some entitlement-minded mommy or the utterly undisciplined fruit of her womb, I could likely afford to build my own rocket ship and leave this sad planet and it's breeding-to-their-own-extinction primary species.
But lest you think I take the side of the mommies, they are just as bizarre with their comments:
It's not the mothers being too demanding, it's the whiny, boorish self centered, self righteous, non-breeders being upset that mothers and children are upsetting their vision of a hip rugrat-free urban landscape.
Well, then. Aren't we all pleased with ourselves?
Before I was a mommy, I was childless. (This is the adjective I prefer for myself.) I swear the entire time I was a teenager, I thought my own mother was an alien from another planet. (I've since changed my mind.)
After I became a mommy, I was schooled in how annoying mommies can be by my child-free sister and an entire department full of child-free co-workers. Initially, oy, it burned. But after a few years on the mommy job, I realized that it's not about whether or not you have kids, it's about whether or not you consider if what you're doing, what you're going on about, the space you're taking up -- whether it's interesting or enlightening
