Are You a "Slummy Mummy"?
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Are You a "Slummy Mummy"?
| Wed, 08-08-2007 - 10:09am |
Just out: "Slummy Mummy" by Fiona Neill. It's been described as the lovechild of "Bridget Jones" and "I Don't Know How She Does It".
http://www.slate.com/id/2171428/nav/navoa/
Katie Roiphe's opinion in Slate magazine: "We as a culture have a tendency to romanticize the stay-at-home mother, to simultaneously ignore and revere her, and it seems to me that books like this are complicit in this tendency. Of course the intimate decision to stay at home with one's children is a fine and honorable one; but the moralism surrounding this choice, the secret, enveloping narcissism, the inability to imagine anything outside, is what is unsettling here.>>
WDYT?
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After reading the Slate review I certainly don't want to read the book. It does sound rather blech. I've run into that type of writing before but only in article length and I had the same reaction to it as the reviewer: that yes, there are some things that are difficult about being a parent but choosing a stroller and changing diapers aren't it. There does seem a full-leap into mindlessness as though a Good Mom was SUPPOSED to obsess so very much about strollers and isn't that cute and sweet and domestic.
The hardest parts of being a parent are unaffected by work staus and the VERY hardest parts are, IMO, hard for Moms and Dads both. If your kid needs chemo, it doesn't matter whether you are WOHM or SAHM or in fact whether you are Mom or Dad. That and all life's other true curveballs are what's really hard about being a parent and have nothing to with stroller choice or the other inanities found in writing like this. When parents get gray hairs, it's not because they are fretting about whether or not to get a collapsible stroller.
What you said.
Chris
The truth may be out there but lies are in your head. Terry Pratchett
I thought this article from newsweek/msn had a good take on it -- I'm just bored by all these books -- the characters are all so cartoonish when reality is somewhere in the middle. There were parts of "I don't know how she does it" that I idenfitied with but that's about it
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20121799/site/newsweek/?gt1=10252
Yes. We. Did.
Half the fun of these books is the snarkiness of their reviewers. Some of my fave quotes:
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The one part of the book with which I do identify is the dust jacket.
Yeah well, that's just, ya know, like, your opinion, man-The Big Lebowski
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