Didn’t I Feed You Yesterday?: A Mother’s Guide to Sanity in Stilettos by Laura Bennett
My rating: 3/5 cats
…it had always seemed to me that once a woman had a kid nothing else mattered about her. Being a dad might describe a man, but being a mom defined a woman.
this is a quote that comes from Back Roads, which i just read, and it is a sentiment which terrifies me.
i expect it would terrify laura bennett as well.
she’s got six kids. five boys. and she lets them run wild and destroy the apartment/country house while she stands in the center of the room like a glam-obelisk and enjoys the spectacle. this is the image i remember most from her season of project runway: kids everywhere and her, pregnant in a beaded dress.
i love her approach to parenthood – if the mommy is happy, she will be able to happily raise the kids. if she is unhappy, the kids will suffer because mommy will use them as wish-fulfillment canvases. take care of mommy first. it sounds selfish, but she articulates it better than i am doing here. and it’s true that she has a lot of money which takes some of the pressure off, but the philosophy is still sound.
i live in new york. there is nothing worse than an overinvolved new york mother. there are a lot of nannies wandering around with other people’s kids, yes, but there are also too many who are naming their kids “tyler” and “sage” with their double wide strollers and organic canned air and their in utero polyglot kids. jesus, give them some space already.
my parents were not careless with me, but they were not overbearing – i climbed shit and fell off of shit and ate candy and fluorescent cereal and wonder bread, and i am mostly intact. applause.
i wholly approve of the laissez-faire approach to parenting where everyone has their own lives and the kids can learn for themselves what happens when they run barefoot on a wooden deck. i did.
i was once near a baby – a perfectly healthy baby, not some kid in a bubble, and the mom asked me if i wanted to hold it, and to be polite, i said, okay. then she handed me a bottle of purell, and i was so insulted, i said never mind – hold your own damn kid.
contrast this to when i saw jonah crawling all over the floor in the manager’s office at work, on into the break room, then putting his dirty ass hands in his mouth and lesley just shrugged and said, “whatever,” and i thought – yeah, she absolutely has the right idea. she is not an unfit mother, but she knows what not to get all worked up about. and if a baby ever unexpectedly jumped out of my womb, i would have to be the same way. kids are washable and these mothers who are freaking out over their kid wanting to eat a chocolate bar are too silly to even get into here – but there are two great parts of this book that made me laugh out loud in recognition.
so, yeah – i read it because i liked her dresses on project runway and i thought she would have an interesting perspective on child rearing. none for me, thanks, but i enjoyed reading about other people’s menageries.
