Just when we thought the pendulum was swinging toward the slacker moms, or at least to the great mass of relatively sane mothers in America, New York Magazine gives us cover story Alpha Mom , about a new Cablevision TV station that's set to give us the best, best, best new absolutely up to date research by experts to tell us how to raise our kids. No doubt there'll be a fair amount of air time devoted to how we should look, dress, do our hair, and accessorize our kids.
Is this what we mothers, fathers and parents in America really need? I don't think so. Thanks to yet another magazine for featuring a motherhood cover story on all the wrong issues.
Alpha Mom apparently is a former Wall Street broker who just couldn't continue her 80 hour a week job once she had kids. Now she works from home, almost as hard, but she has a nanny to watch her son, and her office is near where he plays, so she gets to work and be near him, and life is better. That's a good individual solution for her. However: how much better it would be if Wall Street and the financial industry in general had good jobs that require say 30 or 40 hours a week. Then Alpha Mom could have kept working, and we'd all be spared another media outlet aimed to keep affluent mothers very anxious and off-kilter, and of course, above all, to keep them shopping. Instead of the Alpha Mom channel, what about Political Mom Network? How's that for an idea? Cablevision contract, anyone?
4 comments:
Miriam, I think your observation that the powers that be want to "keep them shopping" is unfortunately very apt. Having to explain the world to my curious eight-year-old is making me more and more aware of how much is distorted in our culture to get us to spend money. I remember Naomi Wolf's analysis of The Beauty Myth and the idea that our images of perfect beauty kept women spending money rather than working for change. I think the myth of the perfect mommy does the same.
Wow. Unbelievable. I think this woman needs counseling, not a new 80 hour per week career reinforcing the most repressive views of parenting ...
As a spoof, that article would be hilarious. As it is not, it's a frightful tale.
Thanks for the link, Miriam! I blogged about it, but failed to credit you, just RebelDad who pointed me to it because of you.
Error fixed.
Thanks for being such an eloquent voice for us moms, working or otherwise.
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