5-Minute Time Out: Stefanie Wilder-Taylor
Stefanie Wilder-Taylor has more parenting/drinking advice.
by Jennifer V. Hughes
May 23, 2008
Pick up Stefanie Wilder-Taylor's new book, Naptime is the New Happy Hour: and Other Ways Toddlers Turn Your Life Upside Down and you'll get familiar topics like tantrums and sick kids. You'll love chapters like, "Oh, the places you'll go! (Or Won't.)" and "Preschool Psychosis." But Wilder-Taylor is at her savage best when she's mocking Mommy and Me-style music classes and Crafty Moms; when she's skewering annoying hipster parents, whom she calls Too Cools or "Tools."
Wilder-Taylor doesn't trust people who don't drink. She suggests Tico the Squirrel in Dora-land might be gay. And when contemplating a second child she lists "Demerol in the hospital," in the plus column. On her popular blog, she offered this quiz: "My Little Pony names or Porn Stars," and she once referred to her unborn twin daughters as "womb bitches."
Wilder-Taylor is the BFF you wish you had.
Babble talked to Wilder-Taylor about the Mommy Lit trend and her first book, Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay, about why moms lie and whether she's writing about her twins, who were born in November, six weeks premature. — Jennifer V. Hughes
So what do you think about this whole Mommy Lit trend? How long will it last?
I think it's done — I wish it wasn't. Even though motherhood will always be around, and I think it's great we can be communal about it and hear about each other's experience,. Unfortunately, I think you just get a glut and then people get turned off. It's like how no one reads Daddy books — they just don't buy them.
Why do you think that is?
I think that most people like that I call moms out for being liars.
In general, dads go to work and they're not hanging out with their dad friends, going on playdates and to the gym. They should be — but the audience is just not there.
I wonder why the Mommy Lit trend never hit before.
It's just like any other trend. It's the same thing as addiction memoirs. They were this big secret thing that no one talked about until Augusten Burroughs wrote Dry, and then suddenly it became very sexy. Now, suddenly it's okay to say you don't love every minute of being a mom. Once that wall is broken, then everyone goes, "Oh my God - me too! I want to write a book!"
When you were writing Naptime, what experience did you find to be the most profound and surprising?
I think that most people like that I call moms out for being liars. I realized as my daughter got older that, oh my God, everyone is lying! Even my friends lie to me! People have this weird need to pretend that they are a superparent. I really believe that none of us are. I cannot believe that there are moms who do not let their kids have any sugar or watch any television. How can you possibly get through the day without at least a half hour of Sesame Street ?
©2008 Jennifer V. Hughes and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Jennifer V. Hughes is a writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Mothering magazine and the Columbia Law School Report. She also makes a killer sangria. |
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