Posts Tagged "Oprah"

Who needs an evil stepmother when, suddenly, there are so many bad mommies?

Just last week (see Oprah aired the dirty little secrets of less than perfect moms. Today, The Wall Street Journal ran a piece about all the new books and videos in which mothers confess their parenting transgressions. The new ABC sitcom, In the Motherhood, evolved from a Web series based on the parenting travails of real women.

Personally (as CollegeBoy’s mom rather than as a marketer to moms), I’m aghast at certain of the – shall we say – more creative approaches to parenting. As far as some of the others? Well, they just made me laugh – and wonder why I never thought of them!

It’s all very ironic. What mother isn’t insecure about parenting correctly and sensitive to criticism of her mothering skills? How many magazines and talk show segments and Web sites and blogs and overall experts are there to point the way? And still, the result is this onslaught of mother confessors, hoping to relieve their own guilt and everyone else’s parental paranoia.

So – what does this all mean? Is this generation of moms more likely to be careless – in all senses of the word – than others? And, if so, are they that way because they’re so overwhelmed balancing work and family (and Twitter) — or so spoiled or lazy that they can’t be bothered putting in the effort that their moms put in for them?

Or have mothers ALWAYS been like this – keeping secrets, taking shortcuts and otherwise subverting the pose of perfection? Is the only difference that, this generation, with all its new communications tools, just takes advantage of more opportunities to talk about it?

What do you think?

This one’s for the moms.

Just caught Oprah’s segment on the dirty little secrets of motherhood – what nobody tells you, what moms don’t like about parenting, and what they do to cope. Moms talked about everything from barely getting a chance to shower to making full meals for their kids from snacks found in the car, to experiencing the trauma of buying their first minivan. One of the speakers likened motherhood to a secret society whose details no one tells you because otherwise you wouldn’t join. Motherhood, they agreed, is overwhelming and 24/7 – no rest here for the weary.

Mothers admitted that they are hard on themselves, often because they are insecure about the choices they make. Despite the tremendous amount of advice on parenting offered by magazines and on the Internet, moms often feel totally on their own.

Said one, “I completely believed that I was the only woman in the history of time who did not have the maternal gene, and I thought I was completely alone.”

Said another, “I didn’t feel I had permission to talk about how hard motherhood really was.”

The conclusion of the show: Moms need to be honest and support each other.

Moms, agree/disagree? What has been your own experience? What did you not know? What would you tell other moms-to-be?