Tiger Mom, Mormon Mom, Indian Chief,

French Mom, 

Working Mom, 

Georgia O'Keefe**

Dark Flower - Georgia O'Keefe

I'm bored and annoyed, again. And I've got a few more hates.

I'm loathe to even post about it here, knowing that I'm just contributing more muck to the overall muckiness of it, but a few people have asked, so I'll say a few words and then I'll desist.

I'm bored and annoyed by the latest mommy war -- you know, the one about Hillary Rosen taking a swipe at Ann Romney by saying she's never worked a day in her life and then Romney snapping back that she raised five children and that's work enough or something to that effect. And now all the blowhards have jumped in and everyone is freaking out on both sides, people are outraged and insulted, the Catholic Church is throwing a conniption that Rosen is a lesbian mother (horrors!) and therefore in no position to speak for mothers, and poor Ann Romney who has triumphed over breast cancer and struggles with multiple sclerosis, not to mention a complete Ken-doll of a husband is caught in her very first political crossfire. No one's even paying attention to the apparent fact that Secret Service agents have been frolicking with prostitutes in Columbia which has, apparently, affected the serious economic talks The President is supposed to be having, and once again the news that consumes Americans is -- well -- just plain dumb.

I've had short and terse tirades about most of the other mommy wars -- the Tiger Mother thing and then the French Mother thing, and I've always found the whole Working Mother versus Non-working Mother thing an enormous yawn. I get even more bored when the whiners step in and say something to the effect of why can't we all just get along? and expect that just because we share the same sex chromosome we're somehow irrevocably bonded as women and shouldn't argue but support one another, recognize what we have in common, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Don't get me wrong, Reader. I'm grateful to the legion of women who have paved the way to my equality, to my ability to speak my mind, vote, choose whether or not I will bear children and have a shot at doing a job that used to be denied to my sex. I guess the main reason why it all bores me to tears is because I'm a mother in an extra-special sub-category of mothers -- the extreme mothers -- and because I'm also a mother to some typical kids, I can justifiably say that the problems of the aforementioned (the Tigers, the French, the working, the non-working, the lesbians, the Mormons) are ridiculous in comparison. And for all you psycho-babblers out there, I'm perfectly aware that I could perhaps be projecting, except that I'm not.

I hate the word mommy except when it's used by very young children, and I hate even more the words mommy war.


I think it's all manufactured outrage, and I wish everyone would just shut up and move on (including myself).

**Just a little ditty that I sang to myself while I tapped out this post. O'Keefe was the only word I could think of to rhyme with chief, and then I remembered that she never had any children but painted a lot of vagina flowers, so it all seemed to fit. Humor me.