Harris feels that, lately, there's an unprecedented amount of vitriol directed at moms.

Maybe people were nicer to our moms, maybe people weren't. In one way or another, our culture has always been weird about mothers. Love/hate, Jocasta/Joan Crawford, supermom/"evil" stepmom, you name it. But right now, in some circles, it seems we're leaning toward hate. Yes, even when you control for the anonymous online jerkwad factor. And yes, even — perhaps especially? — as more and more blogs, books, sitcoms and movies, successful or not, explore with unprecedented candor the experience of being a (white, middle-class) mother.

In Harris' view, it's no coincidence that this is all about women.

And it's not only about "parenting," either. No, I am telling you, it's about mothers. (White mothers, generally, and usually urban ones — if in part because they're out and about on sidewalks and subways, not cloistered in carpools and playrooms.) You know them, or at least their epithets: "Stroller moms," the "stroller mafia," the particularly objectionable "stroller Nazis" — and while we're at it, the "helicopter moms" and "sanctimommies."

She adds,

Women — still — are not "supposed" to take up space. Mothers, in particular. We are — still — supposed to remain in the background, doing whatever it is mothers do, smiling. We grow a belly, we need a seat, we say "excuse me, please," we speak up (or, God forbid, blog), and we've crossed the line, said or asked too much, become "entitled."

Okay. I love children. I dote on babies. I plan to have kids at some point. I'm not a child-hating grinch with a vendetta against "breeders," as the haters would have it. And yet, I totally get the mommy rage. And Harris' reaction is disingenuous: It's not about the kids. It's not even about the stroller-blocking. It's about the parents. And as she makes very clear, it's a self-selecting, moneyed, privileged and child-centric group of parents - a tiny percentage of the parents in this country and in the world at large. Much of the baby industry may be geared towards this population, but it's still a very small one. Yes, I said parents. Now, while I'm well able to believe that there's plenty of societal ambivalence coming out here towards women, this is an equal-opportunity resentment. While it's usually moms we see, when one does see an indulgent helicopter dad (and do you ever!) it provokes exactly the same reactions. I could spin you a little yarn about a father, an ill-behaved, angelic flaxen-haired child named after a jazz musician and the artisanal bread booth at the greenmarket, but there's been enough snarking. And the problem with satirizing such a population (and again - it's a specific population, as Harris makes very clear) is that it's beyond parody.

Yes, there's a class element here. But, come on, it's not just a class thing: if this were just a bunch of wealthy parents with nannies and fancy baby clothes, it would be a very different matter. It's the combination of smugness and obliviousness, Berkeley ethics funded by serious money, of campaigning for liberal politicians while complaining about nanny problems. It's people talking knowingly about the obliviousness of the 50s and Betty Draper's terrible parenting and knowing they're superior, while a toddler rolls on the floor under other coffee drinkers' feet (also this weekend). It's not that people just mind the strollers taking up the street; it's then getting mad when you won't move for those strollers. In short, it's the narcissism of single people, but expanded to fit a whole family. As Neal Pollack told the Times, "'I don't think it's a bad thing that people want to continue a semblance of their pre-parenthood lifestyle...Going to rock shows and bars, he added, is "just what their lives were.'" This is really it in a nutshell: the sense some of these parents give is that they'll have it all, on their terms. There will be no concessions made: instead, the world will concede.

Harris brings up Park Slope, the nexus of all New York's fabled mommy-snark. There was a minor fracas in '08 when Union Hall, a bar and music venue in that neighborhood, asked moms not to bring strollers and mobile kids to the bar, because the space was not kid-proof and it was a legal issue. Parents across the blogs were up in arms - so much so that the bar had to take it back. This was, in some eyes, a good answer to Harris's question.

In sum, no one reasonable hates parents. What people don't like is inconsiderate self-absorbed parents who expect the world to be reordered. Of course, what's hard is that defensive, self-righteous and oblivious parents are more than matched by total assholes on the other side of the aisle, who shout their kid-hate from the rooftops. My initial reaction to Harris' piece was, what? We don't dislike moms! And then I read the comments. Here are a few, just from page 1:

"we don't want to hate you, but we will if you deserve it."

"I resent that my choice to be child-free subjects me to condescension and pity, even though I'm not the one taking up the whole aisle at Target with said SUV stroller and screaming, unruly brats named after medieval professions."

"Quite simply I hate your baby."

"Having children these days is something that highly uncreative women do to fill their lives. PERIOD."

"You write vapid, pointless articles about how hard it is to have a kid during the most wide-open, accepting and privileged time and place(s) in history."

"One child per person. Period. The right we all share is to ensure life for everyone not just our own."

Helpful as these comments are, they do serve to underlie the total fruitlessness of this argument. No one is backing down. It's like oil and water coming together, forming a translucent puddle on the internet. Now, in some lights, that oil floating on top of the water is beautiful. But most of us would rather step over it - and help our kids do the same. "I hate moms," sighed my friend Cora the other day. We were pushing her one-year-old in a stroller. And I knew what she meant.

Everybody Hates Mommy [Salon]
Look Who's Getting Rolled Out Of The Bar [New York Times]

Citing research that stepmothers suffer from depression at higher rates than both mothers and stepfathers, and the fact that parenting advice for stepmothers is often woefully biased, Martin writes, "the woman with younger stepchildren finds herself in a position of having no say about parenting practices in her own home. The stepmother with older or even adult stepchildren is not necessarily exempt from this problem. Many women told me they had endured snippy remarks and barely veiled hostility from their adult stepchildren." Stepmothers, because they are so eager to be accepted into the family unit, are vulnerable to manipulation. This doesn't sound like a very good deal.

There are all kinds of psychological reasons why this might be so, and Martin points to them: fathers feel guilt for subjecting the kids to the disruption of divorce. Children may project their feelings of upset and loss onto the new woman they, consciously or not, consider at fault. Stepmothers are left to tolerate intentional slights because conventional wisdom encourages them to refer parenting decisions — especially regarding discipline — to the children's "real" parent.

But there are also plenty of cultural reasons for these lamentable family dynamics that came to my mind. for one thing, it's possible that stepmothers are made to feel like "interlopers" for violating that most sacred cultural bond: that between mother and child. Part and parcel with our culture's fetishization of squeaky-clean motherhood is its demonization of anything, or anyone, that gets in motherhood's way. To a lot of women, there may seem something fundamentally unfair about another woman raising their kids. (Look at the outcry that ensued when Gisele Bundchen dared tell Vanity Fair that she loved Bridget Moynahan's baby son, Jack, "the same way as if he were mine.") The abuse — whether it's the cute kid in the movie heckling the lady daddy's dating, or something altogether more serious — becomes a kind of righteous payback.

And of course, throughout history, there are many examples of women's power being limited by disinformation and counterfactual stereotypes; think of how the ideal body, as presented by advertising and the fashion industry, has shrunk during the 20th Century, as real women everywhere have made great strides toward equal treatment. It's obvious that the "evil stepmother" never really existed — but it is worth asking why we had to make her up.

What Makes Stepmothering A Feminist Issue? [Psychology Today]

The study looked at 12,500 five-year-olds, and controlled for factors like socioeconomic status and mothers' education. Researchers found that children of working mothers were more likely to drink soda and eat "crisps and sweets" between meals, and less likely to snack on fruits and vegetables, than their peers with stay-at-home moms. Kids whose mothers worked were also more likely to be driven to school, rather than walking or biking, and more likely to spend two or more hours a day watching TV or using the computer. The effect on kids' eating and exercise habits was less when mothers worked part-time than when they work full-time, but still significant, and in fact, the average employed mom in the study worked only 21 hours a week. According to the Guardian, "flexible working had an impact, but [...] no strong effect on the health of the children."

Study author Catherine Law says, "Our results do not imply that mothers should not work. Rather they highlight the need for policies and programmes to help support parents." But coverage of the study in the British media is sending a more alarmist message. The BBC calls the kids' soda-drinking and TV-watching "health behaviours likely to promote excess weight gain," and cites an earlier study on the same population that found children of working mothers (and, interestingly, children of wealthy parents) have higher obesity risk. The Guardian helpfully illustrates the study with a picture of a pudgy kid eating chips in front of the TV. And the Daily Fail sums up the study thus:

[R]esearchers insist the results 'do not imply that mothers should not work'.

But they say there is a definite link between paid employment and a lifestyle that leaves children more at risk from obesity and disease.

Translation: better stay in the kitchen baking wholesome treats (like the mom in the Daily Mail's accompanying picture), or your kids will get fat and sick. Of course, there's little actual mention of the children's health in the coverage of the study — we don't know if kids of working moms are at higher risk for diabetes, if they have more trouble running a mile, et cetera. We do know that flexible work hours supposedly influenced kids' "unhealthy behaviors" but not their overall health, which is confusing but may indicate that the behaviors of the poor abandoned latchkey kids are less dire than they're made out to be. But if kids' health really does suffer when moms work outside the home, the solution isn't to heap more guilt on moms, who often don't have much choice. Instead, as Law says, parents and kids need better support and facilities to make healthy food and exercise more accessible. The BBC mentions Britain's Change4Life program, which provides education about nutrition and exercise, and sounds like a good start.

The study brings up another question, though. Amid all the headlines like "Working Mums 'Harm Child's Progress'" and "Working Mums' 'Child Weight Risk'" (BBC articles linked from the study coverage), where are those other parents? You know, dads? BBC commenter Naomi says,

I'm cross on so many levels, but mainly a personal one! I work, my husband doesn't, he is our daughter's main carer. He walks her to school, he looks after her after school stuff and cooks her meals every day. She has restricted TV time and is not allowed sweets. Why do people insist on saying 'mother' when they often mean 'parent'. It's wrong on other levels too of course, but for me it's the stupidity of assuming a mum should stay at home and a dad should work - are we still in the 50s?

From the Daily Mail photo, it looks like we are.

Image via Daily Mail.

Working Mothers' Children Unfit [BBC]
Working Mothers Have Unhealthiest Children, Study Finds [Guardian]
Working Mums Beware: Why Children Of Stay-At-Home Mothers Have Healthier Lifestyles [Daily Mail]

Sohn's novel lampoons a specific neighborhood - the ultra-yuppie, ultra-P.C, ultra-stroller-mobbed-out, beyond-parody Brooklyn neighborhood that's a byword for "smugness" and nice houses in the tri-State area. But she could just as easily be talking about parent populations all across the country - and online. These are the women who populate the "momopshere," those fabled helicopter parents who assume everyone shares the same level of fascination with their children's diets and can afford to worry about the provenance of a cloth diaper.

It's a population that's an easy target, and PPW won't be the first time: since the 80s we've seen the overly-involved parent lampooned, and everyone from SATC to Desperate Housewives. If this is different, it's because these moms, for once, will be the protagonists - something we haven't really seen since Thirtysomething, and not in the age of modern helicopter parenting. According to the New York Times, Park Slope's denizens are already bridling at their fictional portrayal at Sohn's hands. One mother sniffs that she's in fact a "non-frumpy, non-cargo-wearing mom who actually has a good marriage, unlike PPW would have us believe."

Indeed, Prospect Park West isn't that far a cry from Candace Bushnell's "social anthropology." The "mix of social satire, interpersonal drama and urban glamour - there's a movie star character, Melora Leigh, based in part on the actress Jennifer Connelly, who lived in a mansion on Prospect Park West until last year" doesn't sound that different from a slew of shows we've seen - and waved goodbye to - in the past few years. But this has The Mommy Wars - an always fraught subject that's as contentious right now as it's ever been. From Women Obsessed with their Kids to Moms Paranoid About Nannies to Feminists Hating Babies to Feminists Loving Babies to I Secretly Hate My Kids, if this does become a show there's fertile ground here for discussion - and very fertile ground for simplistic misrepresentation of the kind that keeps these wars going. Potentially, a show about moms - and the Great Conversation - could be a chance for something really engaging. Or it could be Sex and The (Nursing) Titty.

A Park Slope Novel Seems a Little Too Real [NYT]

Thirtysomething wasn't a show I grew up watching.

In my house, prime-time TV watching was done by consensus; the only TVs in the house were in the master bedroom and in the den, and we - my brother, sister, and parents - usually crowded into my parents' room after we'd done our homework and eaten dinner. And so our list of shows in the '80s was crowd-pleasing and family-oriented. After school I could watch as much 3-2-1 Contact as I wanted, but in the evening we watched The Cosby Show and Who's the Boss and Family Ties and Silver Spoons and Punky Brewster. But never Thirtysomething - it sort of missed my family's demographic. My parents were a few years older than the adults featured in the show and I was a few years older than the kids, but perhaps more importantly, the adults in Thirtysomething - whose first season was released earlier this week on DVD - were unabashedly yuppies, children of the '80s in a way that I don't think my parents identified with.

However, I wondered whether the series would resonate with me more now that I'm pretty much exactly the age of its protagonists. Or have things changed so much in the last 22 years that their concerns would seem completely dated? (It certainly did a good enough job of entering the cultural lexicon that it was an obvious choice for the name of this column.)

In a scene in the first episode, Hope Steadman, the former lawyer and now stay-at-home mom, gets into a fight with Ellyn, her single, childless friend, when they meet for lunch. Ellyn is a total cliche of a hard-charging '80s career woman, right down to her shoulder pads. "I've been in the office til 10 every night this week," she says to Hope as they sit down. "Do you know how many people I have under me? 27!" she continues, as Hope's baby cries. Eventually, Hope has to leave because the baby won't stop wailing, much to her friend's chagrin.

Maybe, at the time, Thirtysomething was considered revolutionary because it explored the nature of female friendships through this lens, and pointed out how neither woman was truly happy. But talk about painting women with broad strokes. Either you're a self-absorbed careerist bitch, or all you can think about is feeding schedules.

But ultimately, our sympathy is supposed to lie with Hope. The stories are mostly told from her perspective; Ellyn comes across as an interloper who deigns to drop in on Hope when she feels like it, or when she feels like Hope is neglecting her. Hope is always portrayed as taking the high road—diffusing the situation by being the bigger person, placating her selfish friend who doesn't understand the rigors and responsibilities of child-rearing, because all she cares about is herself. It's what ultimately makes Thirtysomething a retro, reactionary show. Even as it shows that Hope is conflicted about the choice she made to stay at home with her daughter, the show serves to glorify its version of modern-day motherhood.

Later in the same episode, Ellyn comes to the playground where Hope is hanging out with her daughter.

"How'd you find us?" Hope asks, though it's clear that Ellyn knew exactly where to find her. "It occurs to me we haven't spoken in six days," Ellyn says. She's hurt that her friendship with Hope has changed. "Ellyn, my life! Everything is chaos," Hope responds, smiling broadly. "And you don't feel ready to do anything about it?" Ellyn says sadly. We're again led to understand that Ellyn is somehow incomplete, an unrealized version of what a real woman should be.

I found watching these episodes sort of excruciating - not because they exposed any deep essential truths about the nature of being in your thirties, or being a woman, or the choices we all have to make, but because they were cliched and, frankly, boring. So it was sort of depressing to read Katie Roiphe's article in Double X the other day, in which she excoriated feminists for not allowing themselves to admit the pleasure of infants - she writes that she's addicted to her six-week-old baby-and realize that as far as we've come, we still have a long way to go when it comes to not only respecting other women's choices, but not presenting everything as black and white. It's all too easy to set yourself up in opposition to a feminist straw woman, as Roiphe does, as though feminism is completely monolithic. Why can't Roiphe just write that she's addicted to her child (like plenty of mothers have been before her), instead of turning it into an overgeneralized commentary about the nature of feminism?

The article also made me sad because, as a woman who has yet to have kids, I dread being swept up into these debates. One aspect of being in my thirties that I've come to embrace is I'm finding myself much less prone to offer unsolicited advice about the choices my friends make. You're living with a guy I think is a turd? That's your choice, and-as I learned the hard way at some point in my twenties-nothing I say is going to make you break up with him. (Though I will feel some small bit of vindication when you do, finally, break up.) I'm hoping that I'll likewise feel disinclined to pass judgment on friends of mine who make choices that run counter to what I feel is best for myself-whether it's staying home with the kids or moving to a faraway city for a husband's career. Feminism is, I think, also about empathy, about putting yourself in someone else's shoes and acknowledging that what is best for one woman isn't necessarily the choice that every woman should make. It's a lesson that the creators of Thirtysomething should have taken to heart.

Thirtysomething: The Complete First Season [Amazon]

Related: My Newborn is a Narcotic [Double X]

Earlier: Why Sarah Haskins Turning 30 Didn't Send Me Down the Rabbit Hole

For those who haven't yet read it, Roiphe's piece, subtitled, "Why won't feminists admit the pleasure of infants?" is basically about the "narcotic" effect of new motherhood on Roiphe's brain. It's mostly a highly personal account of her desire to be with her baby at all times — except for this paragraph:

One of the minor dishonesties of the feminist movement has been to underestimate the passion of this time, to try for a rational, politically expedient assessment. Historically, feminists have emphasized the difficulty, the drudgery of new motherhood. They have tried to analogize childcare to the work of men; and so for a long time, women have called motherhood a "vocation." The act of caring for a baby is demanding, and arduous, of course, but it is wilder and more narcotic than any kind of work I have ever done.

Double X editor Hanna Rosin, who edited Roiphe's piece, claims not to know what all the fuss is about. She says, "I am baffled by the enraged responses from otherwise very intelligent feminists," and that Roiphe's language in the above paragraph is "a fairly mild and gentle way to make what is an obvious and undeniable point." It is pretty mild, on the face of it — although the phrase "one of the minor dishonesties" hints not only at more minor dishonesties but possibly some major dishonesties as well. But is Roiphe's point — that feminists have painted motherhood as both drudgery and "a job like any other" — actually "obvious and undeniable?"

In a guest post on the site, writer Amy Bloom responds,

What baffles me is her claim that somehow feminists have failed to acknowledge, in writing, that many lucky mothers love their babies. (We do understand that that is a gift, right? That many mothers find themselves unable to experience that lovely, dopey, mind-altering attachment?) Really? No word on this from Grace Paley,Tillie Olson, Adrienne Rich, Ursula LeGuin, Bronwen Wallace?

I'd add Sharon Olds, whose poetry about her children often details exactly the kind of narcotic feeling Roiphe describes. And Jayne Anne Phillips, who says her research for the novel Motherkind consisted of "laundry, cooking, nursing, mothering, grocery shopping, driving, driving, driving, reading, listening, talking, birthdays and all holidays." These women may not be who Roiphe thinks of when she thinks "feminist," but they reveal that motherhood has frequently served as literary inspiration.

Rosin's surprise is a little disingenuous — Double X chose the subhead "Why won't feminists admit the pleasure of infants," so they must've known they were stirring the pot. In fact, the feminism-motherhood-drudgery paragraph they clearly chose to foreground with this subhead isn't even the one that bothered childless, feminist me. That would be this one:

I remember visiting one of my closest friends on her maternity leave last summer. We sat on a wooden bench in her garden and drank iced coffees, and gazed at her second baby. She is a writer, and we talked about how the women writers we most admired had no children, or have had one child, at the absolute most, but never two. (Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen had no children; Mary McCarthy, Rebecca West, Joan Didion, and Janet Malcolm all had one.) My friend looked down at her newborn and her tiny eyelashes. She could entertain this conversation in an academic way, but as she adjusted the baby's hat I could see how far removed it was from anything that mattered to her. Here, sitting in the garden, looking at the eyelashes, would you trade the baby for the possibility of writing The House of Mirth? You would not.

I'm sure this is merely a rhetorical use of the second person here, and elsewhere Roiphe's essay is personal and non-prescriptive. But what bugged me about Roiphe's assertion that "you" would choose a baby over The House of Mirth is its combination of exceptionalism and universalism. It implies both that motherhood is totally unique — no intellectual endeavor can compare to it — and yet somehow the same for everyone. Roiphe's not the only writer to take this tack — Caitlin Flanagan makes a similar point when she says you're "just guessing about love" until you've had a kid. And these kinds of blanket assertions about motherhood may be why we keep getting into "mommy wars" (having said this twice now, I'm going to try never to say it again) in the first place.

As Bloom points out, it's "a gift" to feel an all-encompassing, addictive love for your baby — not every mother feels it. And unlike Roiphe, a lot of women aren't privileged enough to have the time or economic resources to indulge it — plenty have to leave their babies to go to work. Some choose to even if they don't have to — and still love their children. Some want to do nothing but admire the new life they've created. Others are inspired to — yes — write about that life. But when they write, they don't speak for everyone.

Part of my problem with Roiphe's piece was that it scared me. It described a kind of surrender of the self and the intellect that I found terrifying, even though Roiphe described it as transcendent. If I ever have a child, will I have to surrender like that? Maybe. And maybe I'd like it. But I'm willing to bet that motherhood, like personhood, takes many different forms — and that if everyone acknowledged this, we'd fight about it a lot less.

Katie Roiphe: My Newborn Is Like a Narcotic [Double X]
Feminists Do Write About Newborn Addiction [Double X]
What Did Katie Roiphe Say That's So Offensive? [Daily Dish]
This Round To Katie Roiphe [Daily Dish]
Straw Feminist Weekly: The Baby-Hater [Shapely Prose]
In Defense Of Katie Roiphe [Double X]

Well, as the Orthodox Rabbi Burstein explains, it's for the kids: on an Israeli panel titled "Parenthood at any Cost," he condemned the selfishness of single women who go in for in-vitro, citing the dire consequences for family structure and the "suffering" of said much-desired children. For a while, the rabbinate was okay with single Jewish women having kids. (After all, Puah's stated mission is "bringing more Jewish children into the world.") But they've changed their minds. Maybe. Possibly. Says ynetnews,

Speaking during an event at the Ono Academic College, Rabbi Burstein claimed that Rabbi Yuval Cherlow has reconsidered an approval given in the past to a single woman approaching the age of 40 to get pregnant from a sperm donation.

But Cherlow, the alleged single-mom-frowner, will neither confirm nor deny, saying only, "Those who want to know my stand on this matter should turn to me."

Whatever the hell the official word is - not that I don't love ridiculously cryptic obfuscation - it remains true that Rabbis don't actually have the power to prevent insemination, birth, or the raising of children, however much they may declare it "not allowed." They do, however, have the power to alienate a large number of people, lose a lot of women, and generally risk undermining their overall authority, all the while causing a greater rift between the religious orthodoxy and the rest of Israel. They're also tackling the issue of gay parents, you'll be glad to know: as Transracial puts it with admirable understatement, "We can't wait to hear what they think about that."

Rabbi Burstein: Single Women Not Allowed To Procreate [ynetnews]
BANNED: Rabbs Say Single Jewish Woman Can Never Have Kids [Transracial]
Puah Institute: Ensuring Kosher Embryos [Wahrman]

We've read Liz Jones' opus against the stomach-softening joys of childbearing. But she's not alone. Last month, Polly Vernon wrote a similar screed in The Guardian, in which she confessed to being "appalled by the idea, both instinctually (‘Euuuw! You think I should do what to my body?') and intellectually (‘And also to my career, my finances, my lifestyle and my independence?')." Meanwhile, No Kidding!, a non-parents club, has more than 40 chapters in five countries. French psychotherapist Corinne Maier has penned No Kids: 40 Good Reasons Not to Have Children. The book, which will be published in English this week, is, ahem, controversial. Can't imagine why, when the mother of two includes bromides like, "if you really want to be host to a parasite, get a gigolo."

Is this still shocking? Bold? Or is it merely... infantile, and a bit misogynistic? Yes, the cult of motherhood is annoying, and no one should, in this day and age, be considered less of a woman for having children. But biting back in the same key is hardly the way to exact revenge or encourage respect for different choices. Are people going to be defensive when you call pregnancy and childbirth parasitic, disgusting, germ-ridden? Um, yes. I don't have children, but I can see how goes beyond irreverence into insulting something fundamental. I can't comprehend the bond, physical and emotional, that a mother feels for her children - which is why I wouldn't presume to demean it, any more than I'd insult someone who'd chosen not to have children for any reason. You shouldn't need to, but you can justify your desire not to reproduce on any number of environmental and personal grounds - more than 40, I should think. But when the arguments become emotional or degenerate into contempt, it's as futile and destructive as promoting a retrograde earth-mother cult of maternity. Bottom line: not wanting kids does not make someone more interesting or a better woman than wanting them.

This whole thing reminds me of the "I hate my kids! I hated my kids! I hate girls! I hate boys! I'm a bad dad! I'm a worse mom!" movement, which seems to confuse these sorts of self-indulgent exposes with barrier-breaking courage. Indeed, Maier does the double-whammy!

She admits there are times she regretted having her own children, now aged 14 and 11, a declaration that has predictably branded her a "bad mother" whose children are destined for a lifetime of therapy. (Yet she's only saying what many mothers silently think but aren't allowed to say. In 1975, Ann Landers famously asked readers: "If you had it to do over again, would you have children?" Seventy per cent of respondents said "no.") Maier reports that when she had her children she was madly in love, a hostage to her hormones. She too bought into the modern parenting mythology that children could be psychic curatives. Raised as an only child, she believed children would end her feelings of loneliness. Instead, she says, their arrival created new forms of loneliness.

Yes. Having kids is hard. It's not all roses and pregnant-belly sculptures (thank dog.) Some people don't want them. Other people do. I don't understand the point of this provocation - okay, I do, but not from the, I don't know, Socratic point of view. Is this line of thought actually going to make people who want kids stop reproducing? No. It might give those who don't want children more ammunition, but rather than upping the ante, I would so much rather see this girl-on-girl debate die a mature death. Not everyone loves the doctrine of "choose your choices," which can feel lax and laissez-faire. But if there's one case that calls for it, I think we've found it. (And why do I get the feeling that in those nations where there's no access to birth control - or women are compelled to abort their children - the mother's moral superiority is less of a topic of debate?) The Maclean's article concludes with one woman, who's happily childless, saying the following: "Why did we fight so hard for the right to make this choice, only to have it not respected when we do?" Oh, the irony.

The Case Against Having Kids [Macleans]

Related:It Takes Guts To Say: 'I Don't Want Children' [Guardian]
Related: Daily Mail's Liz Jones Strengthens Her Case For Biggest Crazypants In World

Apparently, graffiti artist Claw Money and her husband have continued the internet war by hurling accusations and threatening to kick Moeller's expanding stomach.

For those who don't know, Claw is a self-described "legendary Graffiti Artist." In a post on Blogue, she addressed the business failure of Missbehave, in a biased — to say the least — way, feigning outrage over the way Moeller let her freelancers know about the site closing, and making veiled accusations of cocaine use, apparent privilege, and how the magazine "never really addressed anything particularly relevant to young women and girls." (A comment on this post also claims that Claw was an advertiser with the magazine.)

Yanking a few strings, her mini-mogul hubby, founder of the classic, but now defunct graffiti and lifestyle rag Mass Appeal, awarded her her very own magazine…Beyond tired street-wear editorial, bits on "How to Ménage", addiction justification blurbs, and clueless bastardizing stabs at new-agey post-fem empowerment like "In Defense of the Porno Blowjob", Missbehave, much like their emaciated demographic, had little to grab on to, other than their cutting edge cover personalities.

As Street Carnage reports, Moeller Tweeted about Claw's post, comparing it the one on Jezebel, saying, "Judging by article, can you guess who's husband I used to sleep with?" According to a post on Moeller's blog, The Hipster Mom, she dated Claw's husband for three years once upon a time, and that's where this hostility is stemming from.

Claw's husband then entered the comments of Blogue, under the name "Jesse James," and said, "And watch how you come out the side of your face with Claw, you know she don't wanna kick a bitch in the stomach on her first trimester - but believe me, she will." The threat has since been modified to the equally mature: "And watch how you come out the side of your face with Claw, or your corny husband might get bitch-slapped in front of your kid." He went on to threaten to release naked pictures of Moeller that he apparently has held onto for years:

Oh, by the way, I was feeling sentimental and dug up some interesting pics of the Hipster Mom recently. I think they'd be really cute wallet sized for Adrian, or maybe on the fridge next to shorty's artwork??? Hoe to a Housewife huh? You're still a hoe, just with a nanny and some stretch-marks.

OK, so a few things: first of all, beyond being fucked up, disgusting, and violent, why is this guy coming to his wife's defense by talking about naked pictures of his ex-girlfriend? Secondly, Claw's assertion that Moeller is privileged is outrageously hypocritical. I don't know of any typical, inner-city graffiti taggers who have started their own clothing and accessory lines. Just sayin'. Also, way to call someone out for "not being real" when you've made a career of co-opting another culture.

It almost seems as if this 40-year-old woman and her husband are trying so hard to appear youthful that they've actually become stupid kids. In her interest of "address[ing] what's relevant to young girls and women," Claw — and her spouse — come off as incredibly anti-woman, masking it as some distorted brand of feminism. Because in the end, what's important is not what choices we make, but that we are able to have choices period. I guess Claw made hers. As Gavin McInnes points out, "Everyone's for choice unless of course a woman chooses something remotely traditional or inherently natural. Now it's sexist to be a woman. Who knew? What's next, Girl Power hysterectomies?"

Update: Claw Money has sent us a response:

ok kids - here is the real skinny coming from the self described head bitch in charge. i have know samantha for 10 years or so - she used to beg me to work as one of my assistants and (for me) to take her to paint graffiti. at that time she was dating my NOW husband very seriously. he used to pay me a lot of attention and draw my name when he was bored. she got very angry because of this. sadly for her, i never hired her or took her out for a night of artistic mayhem. months later after their break up (she was already in a serious relationship with her NOW husband) I started to date Jesse. now she is extra mad. fast forward years later when Sam's husband let her take the reigns as a quasi fashion stylist for the magazine - she would pull my clothes from my showroom, h ave them messengered at my expense - just to spy on me and then tell the mag staff "we will never shooot claw for mass appeal!" hence doing the same thing over and over with her own publication. in fact her team are my fans and would tell me story after story of her inspecting my products with intense interest. and so when the missbehave went down, i wrote a post about a girl i never had any respect for. can we stop now? no!!!! she twittered about sleeping with my husband (i think it was a relationship) and he saw it and responded with some blog rage. please like all you bitches haven't gotten gangsta online.

claw one - a legend in my own mind.

cLAw MoNeY

Update: She emailed us again!

honestly - who cares? this is a real low for jezebel.
i am friends with moe and dodai - i can't believe this chick tracie is rabble rousing - for nothing.

And again!

your journalism sucks, just like you taste in friends.

Claudia, your grammar sucks, just like your taste in husbands.

GIRL POWER! [Street Carnage]
More Dirty Laundry: Would She Really Kick Me In The Stomach While Pregnant?? [The Hipster Mom]
Oh Behave! Missbehave Magazine (ok, Blog) Gone…. [Blogue]
TheSuperVixen [Twitter]
Earlier: The Mommy Wars Hit Missbehave Magazine

Missbehave, the Brooklyn-based alternative ladymag with a cult following, is hanging up its Poste Mistress heels. While the print version folded last year, the quick demise of the online entity - and the fact that Samantha Moeller chose to announce it casually on her personal blog, has taken some aback. Writes Moeller,"The Hipster Mom" (which just might have been a sign of changing winds to the observant)

I've been doing a lot of thinking since I went away and well I might as well just come straight out with it….I'm not going to be working on Missbehave anymore. Ouch. It hurts to say out loud. I haven't issued a statement on the site yet but I thought that I would take baby steps and start here. It's sad because Missbehave was my life for so long. It was once a great Magazine and with time could have become a really great website, but it seemed like each week my pregnancy sunk in, the more my head was somewhere else, like here, writing about funny stuff that happens at the playground or my toddler shopping addiction. I'll admit it, my lifestyle is changing. I can hardly believe that I'm going to have 2 f*cking kids! It all happened so fast, and let me tell you, the idea of the second is a doozy. A toddler and an infant scares the sh*t outta me! It's not that Missbehave won't always be part of my lifestyle, but the fact is I'm ready to move on. My first piece of business is to be a, I can't believe I'm about to say this…a s-s-s-tay at home m-m-m-om or a housewife or whatever you call it, for a little while anyway. Actually, I'm going to name my new position ‘Mom About Town'. That's better!

While some are critical of the way Moeller handled the news (we're not even going to get into the kerfuffle in the comments section with a disgruntled employee) the vast majority of her commenters are very supportive of her decision.

Supportive: good luck with everything samantha-if you have the means to stay at home and raise your kids then that is awesome and you are truly blessed.

Defiant: Why do we have to lose our identity over life changes?...since when now do we have to do what society dictate.if you want to be a housewife or a stay at home mom, so be it!
there is not enough cool, hot and hip moms like you in that area; so welcome to the dark side!

Philosophical: I congratulate you on your decision. Its not that I have to agree with it, or that anyone else has to, other than yourself...what is important is that you are comfortable with your decision and that it suits you. In the end that is what feminism is about, not doing something because society or a handful of people suggest you should but rather doing what you feel is best for you and your life. Whether that decision is staying in a job or staying home matters not.

Just sayin': Sam working hard and creating missbehave entitles her to do whatever the fuck she wants. just sayin.

Angry: Way to fucking set an example for thousands of young women everywhere. In 2009, it's okay to be a manicured, bon-bon eating housewife?...Bitch please. Get a nanny. I'll be your fucking nanny. Just do something positive, instead of being stuck in the goddamn fifties.

The Last Word: We as women need to support each other because only we know what an amazing journey it is to be a female. When other bitches bash girls on blogs and shit like this especially in such a low blow catty, crazed with jealousy way it really disgusts me and makes my skin crawl. I've had it done to me before and it just sucks. And its just such a bad look!

Missbehave, R.I.P.

This Hoe Just Got Turned Into A Housewife… [The Hipster Mom]
Missbehave Mag [Official Site]

The article, by India Knight, seems to be inspired by a British TV special called "The Trouble with Working Women." But Knight spends her entire first page chronicling the dissatisfaction of her working-mom friends. One of these friends, "an ultra-successful, glass-ceiling-busting woman with an enviable job," says of her daughters: "I'd like them to marry rich men and do a little light charity work."

Again and again, women tell night they are unhappy with their lives and that they want something different for their offspring. And although Knight takes a stab at objectivity ("Admittedly, two hard-working, successful individuals wishing nothing more than haut-bourgeois domesticity for their daughters does not exactly constitute a sea change"), her piece still lays the blame for the unhappiness not with an inhumane system that doesn't allow for a balance between work and family, but with women and their choices. Knight writes,

The model we are desperately trying to adhere to - the old 'you can have it all' chestnut - is fundamentally broken and, it increasingly seems, always has been. The great plan for 'equality' didn't work because it never took motherhood and its practical and emotional ramifications properly into account. It is therefore ironic - and possibly quite stupid - that we should still be chasing after it.

It's not a new idea, but it's still infuriating: "having it all," according to Knight, it's impossible not because of lingering sexism or because of capitalism's total lack of a concept of work-life balance, but because motherhood is somehow emotionally incompatible with having a job.

Things get even worse when Knight starts quoting women's shelter founder Erin Pizzey, a contributor to "The Trouble with Working Women." Pizzey says, "There has been a subterranean war between men and women which has largely been won by women, who don't understand what they've lost." She goes on:

The traditional family has been going for thousands of years and it works. What I see now is men disenfranchised from their roles and women who are lost because they have to work full-time. They don't have a choice: there's no proper provision for children.

And on:

Of course, some women can do it - some women can have it all. But they are a tiny, tiny minority. The great myth was that men would get feminised and everything would change. Yes, you now get men pushing prams and so on. But 99% of the work still falls on a woman's shoulders and that is simply a fact.

This kind of gender essentialism and historical oversimplification hurts women and families far more than any job ever did. The idea that women historically have always been able to stay "home" with their children, the idea that men who are no longer breadwinners become "disenfranchised," the idea that the work of making it home and raising children is naturally female and that men would have to be feminized in order to do it: all of these keep us from making real provisions to help parents work and raise their kids, because they promote the false premise that the real problem is women trying to work in the first place. Essentialists like Pizzey forget not only that gender roles have never been completely cut and dried, but also that culture is as important to parenting as biology, and culture has been and can be changed.

At the end of her article, Knight does reject the marry-a-rich-man solution. Instead, she says, women should plan out their lives better. But it would be much fairer — for women and for men — if the working world would plan how to better accommodate families. To say that this is never going to happen, and that women just need to accept their lot in life, is to admit defeat.

Having it all is a myth girls, so just make sure your daughters marry rich men [Times of London]

There have always been a few cranks who subscribed to this controversial - but awesome, and ecological-sounding! - theory of potty-training, "EC." (which apparently refers not to the European Commission nor to Emergency Contraception, but rather "Elimination Communication!" The more you know!) The more militant talk about the psychological harm of letting a child stew in his own, ahem, juices. The official medical line, however, has it that the toilet approach can itself be damaging - the pressure to perform leading to a host of long-term troubles - and, in any case, prolong the toilet-training process. And I guess we can see how being suspended over a pit of water for hours at a time on the off-chance of doing one's business could be somewhat traumatic. Still, one mom, Ronda Kaysen, wanted to try it.

I hate changing dirty diapers. They're messy and gross and throwing human waste in a landfill is disgusting. So when my son was eight months old, despite warnings from experts about the dire effects my efforts might have on his psyche, I put him on the potty. To my surprise, he pooped and peed. He did this nearly every morning with astonishing regularity. His willingness left me with two options: either these experts don't know what they're talking about or I am unwittingly causing irrevocable harm to my child's core.

At one year, they dispense with the diaper. The results?

My son stands before a puddle of pee on the living room floor. "Pee pee, yay!" he cheers....The word regression comes to mind. For days, he'll pee in the potty enthusiastically and then, without warning or reason, reject the whole business for a week. His wavering makes me wonder if the experts have a point: maybe we rushed into this whole bathroom business.

Kaysen, not shockingly, gets conflicting advice from different experts. One says not to pressure her son. Another says to stand firm, practically chaining him to the toilet if need be. Kaysen ultimately decides to take the relaxed approach: either way, she concludes, he'll turn out okay. Ah, but is any discussion of parenting that simple? Obviously not, say the comments, Some parents applaud the author. Many boast that their kids were out of diapers by "13 months" and cite American puritanism. A few are defensive and angry. Various people cite human development and "developing nations," which seems to have exactly nothing to say to the discussion save that all forms of "toilet training" are essentially "unnatural." Says one mom, sensibly, "Expert advice can be helpful, but should be taken with a big grain of salt, and without the extra helping of shame." But the impression we get is that, whatever choices moms make, shame is the one constant! Well, that and the certainty of "accidents."

Potty-Training Regression [Babble]

Alexandra Starr moves to New York and declares,

In a city obsessed with self-improvement and status, becoming big with child is not a mellow experience. New Yorkers may appear to be concerned about your baby, but in fact it's all about you, not your child. How you eat during pregnancy is seen as a reflection of your character and social standing....Pregnancy in Manhattan combines crunchy-granola wholesomeness - go organic, absolutely no drinking (to say nothing of lighting up a cigarette), cut out the caffeine - with an urban prejudice against growing anything bigger than the ‘Perfect Bump' (as the title of a New York magazine article describing the city's epidemic of skinny pregnancies put it).

She bridles at the injunctions against everything from camomile tea to deli meats, at message boards' obsessions with staying slim and jogging through pregnancies, at her doctor's desire that she not gain more than 25 pounds and her injunction, "I would ask you whether the baby needs that slice of cake. For that matter, I would ask if you do." Ultimately, Starr decides to stick to the more laid-back NHS pregnancy guidelines, which allow for a little wine wiggle room and the occasional slice of meat. She's much happier.

While everything she says is well-taken, and the cult of pregnancy is obviously way out of control, I maintain that no mother can write about pregnancy objectively. It all seems to be a continuing search to justify one's own choices, or dismiss others as silly, because no one can live with the thought that she's not doing the best for her baby. In some ways, aren't all these discussions "about you?" As a few million men once said, women have been having babies for thousands of years, and while this sort of smug pronouncement seems to hinge on the notion that moms can pop them out like someone in a Pearl Buck novel, it's pretty clear that to a degree ignorance was bliss. Because it does seem like, in the U.S. at least, this isn't a conversation you can opt pout of - and ironically, Starr's article proves this as much as anything.

In New York, Pregnancy Is A Form Of Tyranny [SpectatorUK]

Namely, that highly-skilled mothers are so starved for an intellectual stimulation they'll sell their services for rock-bottom temp salaries, to large for-profit corporations like LendingTree, just to get out of the house? I mean, it does kind of undermine the whole notion that people sell out to Corporate America for the money. On the other hand, isn't that what these highly-skilled ex-fund managers and marketing executive moms were thinking when they sold out to Corporate America the first time around? Otherwise wouldn't they have just gone to work for nonprofits? And where are the nonprofits to hire these broads now?

How Stay-At-Home Moms Are Filling An Executive Niche [WSJ]