Notes From A Non-Breeder: Be All You Can't Be
I'm a single guy, but on YouBeMom, I'm a mother of three.
by Billy Gray
July 21, 2009
My husband spent New Year's Eve with underage prostitutes in Bangkok. At least, that's what hundreds of women told me he'd do when I announced his plans for a spontaneous Thai golf vacation on the
YouBeMom message boards. "Yeah, he's going to eff young girls. So sorry," one compassionate poster told me. "I would divorce," opined another. There was gynecological advice: "For your sake, do not have sex with him when he returns. VERY dangerous."
Noted, except I don't have a husband. Nor was I ever a Park Avenue mother moving to Park Slope who asked if it was safe to drink Brooklyn tap water. Nor did my three water births produce a brood of indigo children. I'm a childless twenty-five-year-old man.
And I'm a
YouBeMom addict.
YouBeMom is a parenting message board. It spun off of
UrbanBaby, a similar site that underwent a disastrous design change last year. I discovered
UrbanBaby two years ago during a spell of unemployment. I can't say what initially drew me in. It was interactive. It was utterly anonymous — no screen names, no avatars, nothing. It moved quicker than any website I'd seen. A schizophrenic's dream —
Choose Your Own Misadventure — the threads veered from one ridiculous topic to another:
"Yes, I'd like to throttle Ayelet Waldman too!"
"Hard to find formula in Turks and Caiqos???"
"So is Anderson Cooper gay or WHAT?"
The more I read, the more transfixed I became. YouBeMom, like a Tolkien novel, creates and sucks you into its own unique cosmos. There is a lexicon to master. Your husband is your DH ("Darling Husband," as per the site's essential glossary). The same pleasant
descriptor applies to your darling son ("DS") and daughter ("DD"), but not, tellingly, to your mother-in-law (plain old "MIL" if you're forced to bring her up in an exasperated rant).
YBM'ers agree on a shorthand language and little else.YBM'ers agree on a shorthand language and little else. It's tough to choose the most contentious topic. Clashes rage between stay-at-home moms (SAHMs) and work-out-of-the-home moms (WOHMs); moms who exclusively breastfeed (EBF) and formula feeders (FF);
those who let their children cry it out (CIO) and the others who succumb to the screeching. Every subject is a battlefield. You think couscous is a grain? "LISTEN BITCH, IT'S A PASTA."
Not to mention the anxiety stemming from squabbles among the site's inner-circle. The Old Guard complains that YBM has been diluted, its witty, New York-centric charm befouled by flyover country dolts who endorse French manicures and offer tater tot casserole
recipes. They give their children Wal-Mart names (Hayden/Kayden/Jayden) and recommend Nicolas Sparks books for something other than kindling.
Current events occasionally intrude on YBM's Bugaboo fisticuffs and meta-battles. During the 2008 presidential primaries, an alleged Hillary Clinton supporter known as Curb Mom (she'd been "ahead of the curb" in supporting her gal) terrorized the boards.
Her posts were later attributed to conservative New York Post columnist John Podhoretz. (He was also blamed for Anti-Muslim Mom's hateful rants.)
Wall Street's implosion last fall widened the debt-ridden gap between affluent moms and Bitter Poor Persons (BPPs), a rift exposed all too often during the boards incessant household income (HHI) polls. Nowadays, any perceived declaration of affluence ("Ugh,
my nannies are fighting again"; "My engagement ring is too big, hate it") is met with the dreaded mark of the Veiled Brag Alert (VBA).
©2009 Billy Gray and Babble.com
About the Author
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Billy Gray was raised in the gin-soaked, Cheever-esque wilds of Westchester County. A movie buff, his Harvard thesis research entailed little more than video store late fees in its investigation of the 1980s John Hughes canon. He is a retired swimmer whose proudest achievement in the sport was prank calling Michael Phelps about a failed drug test. His current fitness regime includes climbing the stairs of his East Village walk-up.
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