6 Reasons (Jewish) Mommy Blogs Suck
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These days, it’s all the rage to knock mommy blogs, but I disagree. I’m a big fan of online mommies, especially the celebrities — I’m looking at you, Gwyneth, Mayim, Tori — I say, you go girls! Because while my friends are reading your tips on how to decorate the playroom, or “Twelve Things My 14-Month-Old Definitely Believes,” I am training my kid to kick the crap out of yours.
Metaphorically speaking, of course — I wouldn’t actually encourage any of my five geniuses-in-development to commit themselves to physical aggression. No, in the age of Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Sheryl Sandberg and Michael Bloomberg, I am teaching my offspring the programming and social codes necessary for them to one day place their figurative feet on your offspring’s figurative neck. Plus actual karate for self-defense and mental discipline.
And sure, that involves making some sacrifices. It takes real energy to monitor the sleep, breathing and peeing patterns of my brood to ensure ideal growth and development, and then to run regression analysis to spot any emerging trends. Would I like to lie down for a nap every now and then, kick back with a copy of The New Yorker or throw on the latest episode of “True Detective”? Sure, I’m only human. After all, my parents didn’t adequately hone my endurance and my emotional resilience so that I could obliterate all obstacles.
And yeah, it’s natural, even a relief, to curse under my breath when my 2-year-old meets my gaze, hurls an empty sippy cup at me and says, “More milk! Warm it up!” like a deranged Third World dictator. Or when my eldest does the same with his protein shake.
Sometimes I even begin to doubt myself. Am I really doing the right thing? Should I really teach them that tikkun olam is the perfect way to weaken the softhearted, to make them the grazing gazelles to my kids’ lions? I have doubts, deep and troubling doubts — the same doubts that most parents have.
And that’s my opening. I take those doubts and I nurture them, grow them like hothouse flowers, and then turn them into mommy blog posts. Oh yes, it is I, I who wrote the clickbait that has winnowed away your precious hours. Remember “This Will Totally Change the Way You Think About Parenting!!”? It didn’t, did it? But you know what it did do? Sucked up a precious 4.6 minutes of your time while you were finding that out. Those are precious minutes that I have, and that you don’t have, to spend planning, plotting. Those are the moments when I know that I’m earning my children those essential few extra points on the SAT, faster fingers to code, that extra inch of height that will subconsciously impress the executive headhunter.
Meanwhile, you’re mooning about coverlets instead of refining sleep schedules, spooning out the Ben & Jerry’s instead of packing more protein into their paleo-vegan diet, reading parenting blog posts and neglecting that all-important Purim card to the head of the best preschool. Translation: You’re raising the Winklevosses of tomorrow.
And guess what? You just did it again. Hope your kid likes middle management.
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