The Ironic Thing
Why I hate parenting memoirs like Alternadad.
by Lisa Carver
January 25, 2007
Why do parents bullshit/candycoat so much? I think because we're scared. Scared of having our parenting or our children criticized or ostracized even an itty, bitty bit. As thinkers, the thing we are now thinking about is so very precious to us that we have become uncertain and sensitive. We suck!
And yes, the moms are even worse than the dads — if for no other reason than the dads are at least trying to be more involved in their children's lives than past generations of fathers. But that's great for culture, not for literature. I take it back. The moms aren't even worse. The message of Neal's book (and the avalanche of new fatherhood books) is: "Hey, I'm a good daddy! Me! Can you believe it?" Yes, I do believe Neal Pollack is a good dad. But I don't think he should charge people $23.95 to find that out.
Conversely, the not-quite-as-new "momoirs" (I started noticing these about three years ago) — in which chicklitists finally snag that ex-band member/current mid-level-something-respectable-yet-still-creative man and the fruit of their conjoined loins come out, are cute for five minutes, teach their parents about adulthood and infinite love, and then completely destroy life as mom knew it — each I did read an actual book about parenting that I liked once, about twenty years ago.make the same spectacular confession: "Hey, I'm not a perfect mom! Really! I'm not! Isn't that kind of funny?"
It feels to the author as if she's taking a risk to admit to sometimes wondering if she's a bad parent, because society is still clinging to these anachronistic expectations for the woman to suppress or abandon her individuality when she becomes part of a family. That prejudice is just a bad habit; it has no power anymore. No one is really surprised at someone admitting to, say, when exhausted, leaving puke to dry under the couch all day and your child could have (gasp) gone and grabbed a chunk and eaten it (but didn't). I think one owes one or the other to one's readers, whether writing about finance, the Middle East, or parenting: either be elegant and glamorous with language or else tell a truth in any manner as long as it's a truth that isn't already being already part of a zeitgeist flood, and therefore watered down and useless to awaken.
You know who I would read a parenting book by, regardless of the quality of the writing? Tiger Lady and Jigsaw Man.
I did read an actual book about parenting that I liked once, about twenty years ago. It was by a woman who was utterly unpretentious, almost without any style at all, because she was of a generation acclimated to the idea of raising children before they even popped out, so she didn't have to question her identity as a mother all book long — she just got on with the story. Neal Pollack's publicist calls the book "a hysterical read." It's not.Her husband — a farmer, I think — died, and she wrote about how she pickled things and killed pigs and kept her six children alive through the Maine winter. A neighbor helped her plow her long mud driveway in the spring; one thing led to another, and right away they married and had two more kids, much to the consternation of the neighbors. Also, one of the kids was autistic, and when he turned into a teenager, he became violent, and she described putting him into an institution, what it felt like to drive away as the guards locked the metal doors behind her.
On a final, petty-but-I-have-no-self control note, Neal Pollack's publicist calls the book "a hysterical read." First of all, it's not. Secondly, it's "an" hysterical. Thirdly, no one should say that, ever. I won't even order a meal if the menu calls it "melt-in-your-mouth delicious." Because how do they know? They're not in my mouth. Taste is subjective, just like humor. I don't care for my senses being coerced. Fascists.
©2007 Lisa Carver and Nerve Media
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