The boys’ turn

Image credit: Zazzle.com

Check out the piece on ‘playground pimp’ onesies and the sexualising of little boys in fashion over at double x. Thoughts?

The sexualising of little boys in oh-so-ironic pop culture seems to be happening in a somewhat more knowing way (and on a much smaller scale) than is happening with little girls where in most cases there is simply a failure of imagination to perceive any other goal for girls in growing up than to be sexy. Also, the sexualising of little boys is not orientated towards reducing them to consumable items as it is with little girls, instead their sexuality is expressed through their response to and control over female sexuality. But the sexualising of little boys is just as  stereotype-driven and just as weird.

If you’re up to it.. (stop and really think about that because they aim to offend)…  go on over to T-Shirt Hell (so NSFW) and behold the perplexing sight that is a bunch of cute babies wearing slogans positively screaming “my parents are finding baby cuteness a very stifling time in their lives, please give them some shock and disgust so they can still feel young and rebellious”. Samples include: Hung like a pony, My pee pee is bigger than yours, Hung like a five year old, I enjoy a good spanking, F!#K The Milk Where’s the Whiskey Tits?! and the previously mentioned, ever so darling Playground pimp.

HATE MUM

This article, Everybody hates mommy by Lynn Harris is essential reading as it says  pretty much everything there is to say about the animosity running hot right now towards mothers, well the middle-class ones anyway*.

They’re usually unfairly stereotyped, but sometimes they’re also in our restaurants. I mean, I get it. I remember silently, uncharitably judging the absent mother (yes, I assumed mother) of the feral gender-vague child roaming Park Slope’s Tea Lounge (the place Sohn calls the “Teat Lounge”) who grabbed my then-baby daughter’s toy out of her hand.

“Hey, you can’t just take stuff from people,” I chided.

He/she fixed me with a steely toddler gaze. “Why?”

Oh, God. Just last week, at the playground, I saw a mother beaming at her son on the slide. Every time he went down, she said, “Thank you, Cooper!” No lie. So really, I get that everyone’s cranky and tired and laid-off and just wants to keep walking — or, depending, keep sitting. I get that people may have had supremely annoying encounters with “entitled” mothers making obnoxious demands and “SUV-size” strollers parked next to barstools. Even my most respected, most feminist, most ready-to-leap-to-the-defense-of-women friends and associates have such stories of their own.

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.

*There is a whole other wave of hate reserved for the mothers identified by the Judgey McJudgeys as not being suitably middle class enough for their tastes, like those who are young mothers, those who are single mothers or those who are queer mothers, which I have written a little about previously too.

(Thanks Michelle of Canada).

When feminists raise sons

Me: You know, it was a real mistake to have these baby boys last. We’re spoiling them terribly. We are probably creating nightmares for some poor women in the future. Those women will hate us.

Feminist Mother Best Friend Forever: That’s true. We have to hope they are gay and grow up to fall in love with one another. Then they could only cause trouble for each other.

Me: Perfect.

Feminist Mother BFF: Wouldn’t it be lovely if some of our children ended up with one another?

Me: We’d be family.

Feminist Mother BFF: And wouldn’t they be a cute couple? They are such good looking boys.

Me: Oh these two are gorgeous.

(P.S. Rally for same sex marriage rights is on this weekend in Australia – 28 November).

Near side

Lauca has started horse riding lessons (what a bourgeois little opener that one is), and it is one of those moments as a parent where I am falling through the rabbit hole because my mind is flipping between recreating and remembering my childhood all at once. It is a hell of a nice way to spend Friday mornings.

Incidentally, riding instructors haven’t changed in 25 years, still as bossy as ever.

The grownups are easy prey

God, I recognise myself in this. It is an article about children’s books but more particularly what such books say about the way children are parented these days. There is a bit huffing and puffing in this piece, but they might have a point.

So what should you do when a child throws a tantrum? Many parents, determined not to be cruel or counterproductive, latch on to pre-approved language from books. Walk through a Manhattan playground and you’ll hear parents responding to their dirt-throwing, swing-stealing offspring with a studied flatness. A toddler whirling into a rage is quietly instructed, “Use your words.” A preschooler who clocks his classmate is offered the vaguely Zen incantation “Hands are not for hitting.” A kid demanding a Popsicle is given a bland demurral: “I’m sorry, but I don’t respond to whining.” (The preferred vocal inflection is that of a customer-service representative informing an irate caller that the warranty has, indeed, expired.) The brusque imperative “Say ‘please’!” has been supplanted by the mildest of queries: “Is there a nicer way to say that?” The efficacy of this clinical approach has not been confirmed by science, but it certainly feels scientific, in part because the parents conduct themselves as if their child were the subject of a peer-reviewed experiment.

Then again, there is also a whiff of sour-faced panic here too, because haven’t we been worrying about the OMG delinquent children forever, I mean Rebel Without a Cause, when was that released?

There is a reason why I have an entire category dedicated to ‘motherhood sux’

Because sometimes motherhood really does suck, and not just the times when the patriarchy is ganging up on you either.

Crafty mothers make spectacularly beautiful blogs but something about the unrelenting beauty gives me pause, because really, day in and day out, no break in sight, giving and giving and giving, and no sign of a struggle. Are you alive in there? It makes me twitchy, though I realise the point of these blogs is to give their authors and readers a place to celebrate the beauty not the agony of the home-maker experience. And so my friend, who loves her crafty blogs, was pleased to point out this post to me: The Makings of a Day, from SouleMama. See, they have their off days too.

I found this very charming but not so crafty blog all on my own. The suckiness of the early days of motherhood, ah, there is nothing like that first time is there, ‘mother shock’ sucks the most: bad reacting from evany’s extended cake mix and one other of hers for good measure.

The co-sleeper’s sex life

I want to preface this piece with this and my response to it, which is I Have No Idea How.

When you’re a co-sleeping parent nosey parkers want to know about your sex life. Not judging, I understand the whole nosey parker thing. How do co-sleepers manage to have sex? How does baby number two or three or four even happen? Nosey park no more. Depending on the age of the child and how discrete your style is, co-sleepers can have sneaky sex in the bed while the baby sleeps nearby – tricky, yes. Or they can tiptoe into the bedroom and remove the sleeping child, placing its sleeping self elsewhere (tiptoeing the whole time), and then have sneaky sex in their own bed. (I can’t tell you how sexually frustrating this gamble can be). Or finally, they can have sex somewhere other than in their own bedroom. Yes, think about that next time you’re visiting my house.

All this sneaky sex is a little ridiculous to the other parents. Actually, it is kind of ridiculous to the co-sleeping parents. After all, who else is having sneaky sex in their own house? Horny housewives and visiting tradespeople? So us co-sleepers can be subject to a little contempt from our incredulous non-co-sleeper associates. Such is the frequency of this derision that co-sleeping parenting books even offer suggestions on how to respond to it.

True.

And I feel traitorous for writing about this, it is like revealing the tips nerdy kids receive for handling bullying – but the suggestion is that you deflect the shaming question on how you have sex with a kind of “what, you mean you only have sex in your bedroom, like how boring is that?”.

But it gets more and more difficult to say that “how boring” line with the right amount of smug because ohmygod how convenient is your own bed for sex? After almost four years of co-sleeping (and we’re about to commence round two we’ve commenced round two and we’re still fully committed to the co-sleeping thing but), we’ve reached a whole other level of appreciation for the invention of the bed.

Humankind, you did good with the bed.

The free pass for judging parents

Kate Harding’s piece Screaming toddler on a plane is looking for a free pass to do some parent judging. Harding doesn’t want to be a shit about it, so could you cut her some slack? By the time she lists her caveats you probably can. No judging child outbursts in public if they also involve harried mothers, tired and cranky kids, children with special needs, children who might be in pain, children who are frightened, mothers who are at least trying, parents who are in the process of teaching their child something, even if that process is not obvious to you the observer etc etc.

I have seen child hatred bigotry, sometimes loud and proud and sometimes on the down low, from feminists and non-feminists alike, and Harding’s views ain’t it. So yes, I find Harding pretty reasonable. Are children sometimes inconsiderate, some more so than others? Well hey, I hang out in playgrounds on a regular basis and I can attest to seeing the odd bout of inconsiderate behaviour. Do I think there are shitty parents about? Yes, though really, how to compare a noise disturbance in your favourite coffee shop with the much wider problem of shitty parents who neglect and abuse their children. (And who suffers most in the case of shitty parents?) OK. I will hereby issue my official blue milk free pass for judging parents.

Then.. scroll down through the comments on Harding’s piece and….. a more toxic collection of irrational, anti-social, and utterly intolerant hatred towards parents and children you’ll rarely come across.

And you wonder, what was Harding’s point again?

 

Sixth

The Sixth Carnival of Feminist Parenting is up over at Mothers for Women’s Lib. This is a carnival with quite a few blogs I am not familiar with so happy clicking for me.

You can click too. Yes you can.

And here’s a picture for you. A belated Halloween photo. Halloween was my pumpkin’s third night and it was starting to collapse a little, thus the sticks inside halting the cave-in. But check out how gorgeously wizened the cat was getting by that time. Oh those spindly legs. Nice.

It is alive.. and still spreading misinformation

Aww nostalgia. I heard that old blue milk myth again (sometimes the story changes to ‘green milk’), it was in the context of being given ‘advice’ for New Year’s Eve. You know, in case I was considering drinking alcohol and endangering my precious, precious baby. I didn’t correct them. I couldn’t be bothered, we’d already disagreed on so much.