
It's a cultural law of physics: for every trend, there's a backlash, and maybe deservedly so. This may be the latest, a response to the wave of news magazine articles and parenting books and mommy lit and message boards and (gasp) maybe even parenting blogs. Kathleen Deveny
says our obsession with the tribulations of motherhood and our intense need to defend every parenting choice has led us to become narcissist mommies. There's too much whining and it's time to buck up. She's over it.
Deveny believes some of the overwrought overwriting about diapers and sleeping and how haaard it all is comes from a reaction to the feminist focus of the last generation on professional lives. She cites Camille Paglia: "Younger women today, Paglia says, are simply rebelling against the
legacy of women who prized their professional roles at the expense of
family. They want to talk about how to balance work and home. A lot."
Personally, I don't care if you whine, as long as you make it funny. But I have sympathy for this point of view: even I get a little tired of reading righteous and earnest treatises on co-sleeping and lactation and mean old husbands who never help out. I also think part of our obsession with being good parents comes from the fact that with therapy and talk shows, we now get to blame our parents for lots of stuff. But that, in turn, amps up the pressure to be good parents ourselves. Parents who nurse and soothe and nurture and encourage and protect. And yeah, parents who whine a little too much. So whaddya think? Are we narcissists?