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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Leave a draft post long enough and the discussion will move on entirely from your half-completed thoughts and you can scrap the entire piece. So without further fuss, and while the baby is reluctantly occupying himself in the playroom, here is my quick response to all this:

Several questions hover, largely unnoticed over the discussion that has emerged around this thought-provoking article by Gaby Hinsliff, where she wonders if a majority of mothers, like herself, would now be happier at home.

• First of all, why is Hinsliff’s very interesting story being turned into fodder for the ‘women can’t have it all’ campaign? Having it all doesn’t necessarily mean at the same time. Surely? Careers can ramp up and slow down at various points. Career changes, study breaks, caring responsibilities, the pursuit of passions/hobbies/charity work, health problems etc. Why is the question of whether women can combine demanding full-time careers with motherhood so focused on a short-term view (ie. can they make it to the top while also getting a baby from zero to five years old)? Why aren’t we instead looking at women’s careers as lifetime works and then evaluating whether we can have it all?

• Why are we still allowing anyone to entertain notions that a woman like Hinsliff is a traitor to the feminist cause for leaving her job? With or without a child her job sounded unsustainable.

And if there wasn’t enough time for him, there was less for me. Sunday newspaper life is relatively relaxed early in the week, frantic at the end: I might be in the office on a Friday until 2am, snatch three hours’ sleep before the baby woke, then put in another 15 hours’ work. On days off I still dragged myself out of bed at dawn, not wanting to miss any more of him.

• Also, why do so many continue to see Hinsliff’s decision to leave a full-time job (admittedly an amazing one) as opting out of the workforce? Hinsliff doesn’t identify as a ‘homemaker’, her career change is simply a move towards a more flexible job, in this case, freelance and home-based. She has also explained that part-time work was available if negotiated at The Observer but that it would also mean downgrading the job. The bigger question is why aren’t there more meaningful part-time jobs around for parents and non-parents alike?

• And yes, there is a sizeable group of mothers (and fathers) who would be happier at home with their children than trying to combine both work and family life. We should start talking about that more too, but let’s not fold the rest of these problems in with that discussion.

Download the Radio National interview with Hinsliff on Australian ABC radio here. Also, check out Hinsliff’s blog used to be somebody for more as her adventure unfolds.

(Thanks yellow_ruff for the tip off).

When we are fighting I think about this research I once saw that found couples with children under the age of five are pretty much the unhappiest people on the planet. It is reassuring to have such a low benchmark to live up to.

And when we are not fighting, especially when we are on holidays, I like him so very much that I find his feet sexy. Which is to like someone a lot, because right now I also love these feet and any other feet can look quite shabby in comparison. Unless you are in luuuurve, people.

(Though this time the jolt to a relationship and its focus that comes with a baby has not been a shock to either of us).

From the back seat of the car on our way home from grocery shopping Lauca (a vegetarian, you may recall) was flipping through a free promotional magazine examining Christmas recipes. She stopped to take in a double page spread on roast chicken and to hazard a guess at what the critter might be, then sighed and declared “oh, poor toad”.