Is Motherhood Boring?

Here's the latest that's circling around the mom-blog-and-listserv-world, a British article about how boring it is to be a mom. In a way, I don't even want to be continuing this discussion. In part, it's really important to challenge all the "I love being a mom and every minute is wonderful" celebrity dish that's being passed around--by mothers who have nannies and night nurses to help them through the day. But the tone, oh why does every article about motherhood these days have the same awful, petulant, "it's-all-those-other-moms-against-me,the-only-one-who-sees-the-world-as-it-really-is" tone. Oh, that's right, its the mommy wars theme, once again.

The thing that also bugs me about every new article about motherhood--unlike other sorts of politics, no one feels like they should pay attention to what other mothers, writers and journalists have already said. It's all about reinventing the wheel, getting a contract, finding an edge against others. We've already seen the motherhood-can-be-boring-and-annoying theme before. It's from the book Mother Shock, which says the same thing without the venom. In every other field of writing, the theme has to be new, but when it comes to writing about motherhood, newspaper and magazine editors lower their standards and keep contracting the same old, same old. Too bad for us.