Seething

From The New York Times: Protests Over a Rule to Protect Health Providers

What disgusts me most is knowing that this is being pandered as something good and protective for the persecuted Christian majority. *sigh*

Well, it's not. It doesn't "protect" anyone or anything. It ridicules the laws against religious discrimination already in place and opens the door to further restriction and bastardization of women's rights.

The uber-patriarchal subcultures may insist otherwise, but make no mistake: Women's Rights are an essential Family Value. The nuclear family unit trumpeted so loudly and repeatedly by the religious right usually includes at least one female and therefore necessitates that restrictions on the female become restrictions for the whole family. And no, that's NOT a good thing.

Somehow they've been able to market the idea that Women's Healthcare = Baby Killing. It just ain't so. Even if one is not comfortable with the ins and outs of abortion, consider how abortion numbers could be decreased with proper education, healthcare (BIRTH CONTROL OPTIONS!) and increased value of women in positions other than sex object (and really - how is woman-as-breeding-machine anything other than the ultimate sex object?). I would think that the anti-abortionists would embrace sex education and promote access to bc! Unless their agenda has little to do with fetal rights and everything to do with controlling women and their sexuality.

Women without access to birth control have almost no ability, in this society, to work in any but the most menial professions. And no - I'm not talking about the "welfare queens" the right concocted to spit upon. I'm talking about all of us... even (especially?) your average, happily married, decently educated woman. Right now it would be very difficult for me to work outside the home because I elected to have three children. Any job I could get would provide little more than the reimbursement of childcare costs it necessitated (assuming I used competent, certified childcare resources). I've been in the very fortunate situation where I can "choose" to stay home with the kids, and that's a reassuring thought - except that there's not much choice to be made. It's just much more enjoyable because I want to be home.

So women (occassionally men, but more often women) have to choose whether they want financial security or children.

That is - they choose (at somewhere around 99% certainty) if they have birth control. No birth control? Barefoot and pregnant.

Abstinence you say? That would do great things for the divorce rate. Rhythm method? *sigh* Yes, when done perfectly it is more effective than having sex all willy-nilly... possibly.

I know it ultimately comes down to the fundamental notion that sex must have consequences (for women). I'm afraid I'll never understand why that could be beyond deeply rooted misogyny. I totally get the idea of considering sex a sacred thing... All that oxytocin and the endorphin fireworks... well, if that isn't a recipe for a beyond-the-mundane experience, I don't know what is. It doesn't mean that other people's lives should be controlled by rules about how/when/where/how often some unrelated party decreed it should be.

And here's an idea for pharmacists who don't believe in dispensing birth control: get a new job. A pharmacist's role is to dispense meds according to physician instruction. Want more input into what is prescribed? Become a doctor. Or get out of healthcare. Be a janitor. Or underwater basketweaver. Whatever. Just pick a job you're willing to do. I'm unaware of doctors being coerced into providing abortions or birth control. They bear the onus of determining the best care for the health and well-being of their patients. So let them do their job.

Meanwhile, let's stop the legislation that restricts our loves and lives and roles. Stop it. Don't support bigotry like this. Or proposition 8. (Aside - oh my LDS brothers and sisters (I'm talking to all y'all - not just my biological siblings)... I may no longer be numbered among you, but I am very much a product of that upbringing - I just have to say, what is up with the huge outpouring of support for proposition 8? I don't care if you consider homosexuality a sin (OK, that's not true, I do care, but that's beside my point, right now), how can you possibly justify such money and efforts from The LDS CHURCH going to restrict marriage for anyone else? Even from the versions of history offered from within the church, you have to know that's hugely hypocritical? I would hope that you, as a people, would understand that the right thing to do is to get the government OUT OF marriages, so people would be free to solemnize partnerships according to their own consciences. Think how your own lives might be different if The Saints hadn't been forced to alter their own sacred practices to appease the laws of the U.S. and attain statehood. Marriage = 1 man + 1 woman? Oh - and I don't want to get any comments from other flavors of Christianity bashing Mormons, here. If your favorite books involve Abram/Abraham/Ibrahim, your god isn't into monogamy, either.)

Alternative Views and Cultural Relativism

Just for the record - any comments to me blog that are not spam or spewing hateful ignorance are welcome. Views different than mine, especially when well-written and thoughtful, are enjoyed and very much appreciated.

So a few thoughts on the Somalia rape victim story -

The reason stories like that reflect our need to vigilantly separate the muddling of church and state is that such barbarism seems distantly divorced from our own freedom and safety. But it has not always been so, and the root of the thinking that allows (or mandates, in their view) people to behave so abominably is still alive and well.

Right now - in our country - civil rights are denied based on the authority of religion. Every fight on the path of equality and justice for all has been against this same way of thinking. Right now people are denied the right to secular marriages or to adopt children, based on the twisting of the already morphed and altered words of an ancient book... Not that long ago, people with more melanin couldn't marry people with less - due to governance based on this same supposedly unquestionable authority. Women's rights were and are continually threated based on roles foisted upon them by religiosity (and I'm not just talking about access to healthcare, but even the vote and "permission" to work outside the home or being granted status as people rather than chattel). So when people raise a ruckus about getting back to the good old days, getting the 10 commandments into courthouses, time to pray in school and teach intelligent design or ban discussions on evolution, banning books, keeping "under God" (a fairly recent addition, by the way) in the Pledge and mandating that children in schools must recite the Pledge of Allegiance and making sure that "In God We Trust" is printed on all currency we use... well, to those of us who don't believe in this God it's scary and oppressive.

Many countries now ruled by Islamic law can provide valuable insight into how small the gap is between having a free and progressive society and what can happen when the law of the land changes from secular to religious. The recent histories of Iran and Afghanistan might be especially good teachers.

So, setting aside our own national issues, and focusing on the Somalia story: What in the world do we do?

As someone who's fascinated by human cultures and societies, I tend to find myself stepping back from my own humanity in order to see every side of the story. I can imagine the groupthink going on... a crowd in a stadium being told by angry authoratative men with guns that this "woman" was a lawbreaker and must be stoned - according to God's own words. I can only imagine the violence and horror these people see on a daily basis. Not enough food. Clean water hard to come by. Not participating in the stoning would probably mean death or treatment harsh enough that death would follow... in brutal enough environments even social spurning can be a death sentence. And yet, participating would become desensitizing. Even men who would otherwise be more reasonable would be likely to work out a rationalization for violently killing a child. They'd have to in order to be able to go home and look their own children in the eye. They'd have to destroy a little of their own humanity in the name of survival for themselves and their own families.

Would I be any better? I don't know. I believe I would do anything to protect my own children. What would I do if protecting my own family meant directly contributing to the destruction of someone else's? I honestly don't know what I'd do.

So how can I condemn the people who did this? Why don't I just shrug off the story and hold fast to my thankfulness that I live in a safer place?

Because the bottom line is that the people stoning this girl didn't arrive at that situation overnight. The path was paved with increased rejection of rational thinking and embracing of religious authority. And there is a very vocal population in this country - my country - who would erode secular rights and rationality in favor of the laws (as they interpret them) of their god. Keep in mind, too, that our society is pretty tight-lipped about how prisoners of war are being treated in our very own facilities. Water-boarding anyone? Our country sees fit to torture people... but right now the sub-human people it's OK to treat like this are Arab and/or Muslim. It's here. And anyone who isn't fighting it or who is looking the other way implies approval... not everyone at that stadium in Somalia threw rocks. Most just stood by.

OK - so what can we do? Forcibly spreading our form of democracy into other cultures doesn's seem to work so well. We can't just abolish the sects who promote this brutality.

I think the only way to prevent stories like this is to destroy the mechanisms that allow and fuel them. Obviously I can't dramatically change the world right now, but the secret is that all the things we think they need to change are things we need to address in our own backyards first.

1. 13 year-old-girl is raped
Increase the perceived value of girls and women. Call attention to traditional methods of denigrating and objectifying them. Pass and enforce laws that support female healthcare and allow girls and women to safely report abuse. Punish rapists.
2. Stop social approval for condemning victims.
See 1. Then remove the socially acceptable gag order that arises out of the notion that it is not OK to criticize people's spiritual beliefs. Loudly challenge pockets of sexism, racism, etc. when they are revealed.
3. Insist upon separation of church and state.
This ideal is constantly under attack. Even laws that ultimately seem nice, comfortable and right - when based on religion pave the way for abuses and fundamentalism.
4. Refuse to look the other way or accept the platitudes of corrupt authority figures.
Cowards inflict harm on others because they can.


Jeez. I'm just a housewife who needs to go make breakfast. ;o) Better minds than mine have worked on this one. These are just my NON-expert thoughts. Obviously I don't have much in the way of answers.

Despite my limited knowledge, I do think my "voice" is a valuable yop amidst the Who-ville cacophany. Please feel free to tell me where you agree or disagree. I love to learn and usually learn more from those who disagree with me than those who don't.

Religious Law

Those of you who wish your children to pray in schools, to continue to recite oaths to God and country, to keep your religion forming the backbone of secular law... please consider how governments rule when they have the freedom from accountability allowed by religious governance.

It seems so safe and normal when it's *your* particular flavor of religion, but as you contemplate the horrors granted through sharia law, remember that your god is just as strange to non-Christians as Allah is to you.

Stoning victim 'begged for mercy'

I have a teething baby and a sick husband to take care of, so I'll link to some reviews of this story that explain my thoughts on this story better than I can, right now.

Pharyngula - God and sex: two potent ideas that never get along well together

Cuttlefish - 13 Years Old

Men do Sports, Women ... ?

Do me a favor:

Next time you visit your favorite bookstore, do a recon mission on the magazine organization and report back to me.

Yesterday, at Barnes & Noble in the Vancouver Plaza, I hunted through the Sports section of the periodicals for fitness magazines. They had all the sports genre mags. And Fitness magazines for men. I know there are fitness magazines aimed at women. And that most of them are put out as "sister" magazines to the men's versions. Where were they?

Oh, that's right. In a different aisle, filed under Women's Interests. With the Wedding magazines and Fashion fluff.

I'd love to hear if this is a universal bookstore organizational method... and if anyone else has noticed.

But Seriously...

I have to admit that I kind of wanted to like Sarah Palin. You know, small-town girl makes good... Grrrrl power... Hear me roar... Need I go on? I didn't think so.

Unfortunately for the GOP, we women can't be counted on to go all hysterical. My uterus will not magically jump from my body and run off to the polls, leaving my brain behind (hmm... strange imagery) to impotently seethe while the sex organs obliterate any risk of hanging chads in order to cast their vote for that other uterus person. Yes, the GOP may indeed be undone by research and the resulting logical choices.

Here's a fun little example of the difference between the people I'll be voting for and the people I won't: Wasilla Charges Rape Victims.

Think about it. A victim is raped... so in order to press charges (which is a shaky proposition under even the most pristine investigative circumstances) she must have something in the ballpark of $1200 - for the rape kit. And a rape kit is performed in a hospital, which is likely to run up quite a bill beyond that. Lovely. I find it interesting to contemplate what kind of environment this creates, coupled with a chief of police who is clearly antagonistic about the costs related to pursuing rape charges. And a mayor (governor-to-be, and perhaps our next VP) who is opposed to abortion, even in the case of rape and incest. According to Feminists for Life, a group with which Palin identifies, Plan B is out of the question, too.

Wow.

Objet d'Art

Now for yet ANOTHER subject near and dear to my heart...

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/24614666/?GT1=43001

This makes me want to cry. Makes me disappointed in the world I'm presenting to my daughters. It makes me want to scream and pull out my hair.

Every direction you turn, the message is loud and clear. Women are objects. Subjects if they're uppity. And they'll soon be deserving victims if they don't learn their place. Which puts us back to the woman-as-object. Vicious circle.

Growing up I wanted to be a ballerina. Yeah, me and every other little girl in the world. The difference was that most little girls outgrew the ballerina thing. They found that what they really wanted was the tiara and tulle and the attention of an audience. Ballet is sweaty and painful and tiaras are hard to come by. So most girls move on to other goals. I didn't. The biggest problem with this whole situation was that I was terribly serious about ballet, but I wasn't very good at it.

One year... I think I was fourteen or fifteen years old... I was at a dance camp at a University in Montana. I loved it! I can't think of many times in my life happier than the hours spent torturing myself with technique classes, trying new dance genres and finally flopping into bed at night, muscles cramping, my mind running through classic variations from romantic ballets. But that old problem of not being very good at the whole ballet thing kept rearing it's awkward head. If the current Me could go back in time and talk to the young Me, I'd beg myself not to take it so seriously. I would try to convince Young Me to relax and enjoy the time. But Young Me couldn't because if I wasn't the best, I shouldn't be wasting my time... or that's what I thought, anyway. I can't think of anyone else who was pushing that message. It was just my own insecurity. I wish I could tell Young Me to quit competing and just enjoy the happiness of moving.

Regardless, through each two-hour block of Classical Ballet instruction (including pointe and variations), I would torture myself. I tried to force my pigeon toes into some semblance of adequate turn-out. I tried to suck my little pot belly flat against my back. I tried to feel like I belonged there. But in the mirror-lined rooms, my reflection never matched up with my expectations. The biggest problem? I was big. Not fat (though I thought so at the time). I was 5'8" in a room where everyone else was barely 5'. I was 128 lbs. Everyone else was under 100. I was visibly muscular where everyone else was just... tiny. And - for some reason - I had absorbed the ideal of femininity as being small.

And not just physically small. But I digress.

At one point I overheard my teachers from home (who were attending with us, a few girls from their school) talking about The Prodigy who was performing in the student show, that night. She was only 10, and so technically precise - she was going somewhere! And the crucial detail that caught my attention - her mother only fed her ONE apple at lunch, even though we were dancing at least nine hours per day. So somehow my adolescent brain twisted that around and I seized upon THAT as the difference between her and me. Genetic body type, training and physical discipline? Not so much. Regimented eating to stay super thin? That had to be it!

So I quit eating as best I could, eliminating one food at a time, and eating as little as I could of the few foods I would eat. It became obsessive. 3/4 of one slice of dry toast for breakfast. NO lunch. I would watch what my little sister ate at dinner and try to eat less than half of that. I decided that my little sister was beautiful (with the assumption being that I was huge and hideous) and I resented her for naturally (or so I thought, anyway) being what I thought I was supposed to be. Cute. Petite. Smart. Social. Strong. Girlie.

My weight went down. And down some more. Compliments came more plentifully as did more general social approval. I became a cheerleader. I became mean and increasingly emotionally unbalanced. Until it all fell apart when I was 16. Before I attempted suicide it had gotten to the point where I was genuinely scared of eating at all. I remember one specific occassion when my boyfriend at the time took me to McDonalds for some dinner before ballet. I wouldn't order anything, claiming (as usual) that I wasn't hungry. He bought me a salad. Again I insisted I wasn't hungry. He said he wouldn't take me to ballet until I ate something. I was so embarrassed. But I just couldn't do it. Finally he took me to ballet, but I think he was pretty disgusted.

What really stands out to me from that time is that my focus on controlling my weight - and that the number on the scale determined whether or not I was worthy to have some measure of happiness - ruined what could have been golden years. And what really pisses me off is how much power that number still has over my view of self.

For instance, today I'm feelin like a hottie. Why? Because I'm a pound less than I was yesterday. Granted, I'm still appalled by my belly and the feel of my thighs rubbing together. But I can handle it because at least the weight is going down. I still avoid mirrors and cameras, but I'll go out in public today. I can live with being ugly. I just can't handle being fat.

That's sick. My logical, feminist side wants to scream in the face of my ego-centric insecure side, "What the hell are you thinking?" I don't want to care. I don't want to buy into some weird standard of beauty being sold by men who ultimately like women to look like pre-adolescent boys. I really don't want to be bullied into feeling inferior by all the other women who have bought into this and need other women to feel that crappy too (so they'll feel validated for torturing themselves).

And yet I have bought into it at a price I can't afford.

I would give anything to prevent my girls from succumbing to this ridiculous misogynistic view of beauty. But my eight-year-old is already trying on some other misogynistic views, spread by her mainstream friends (if I ever get around to it, I'll have to blog about that). It is impossible to protect her from this sickness. All I can hope is that I can raise her to like herself enough to not let it consume her.

I can't fight off demons for my children when I haven't conquered my own.

So, back to the original story. Models. Stick-thin and killing themselves to be so. That stinks.

But one issue totally neglected in that story is the youth glorification going hand-in-hand with the anorexic expectations.

How hateful is it to not only insist that 51% of the population starve themselves to the brink of death, but that it also tells them that life peaks for them at about 15.

I was once talking to a guy about some images he had on his computer of models on a Paris runway. No, he wasn't into fashion in the slightest. That season's collections were all about sheer fabrics, so even though the models were dressed... well... no one could really claim anything was covered up. So he had massive megabytes of photos on his hard drive of barely covered nipples attached to scowling, skeletal "women" in heavy makeup.

"You do know she's only 13, right?" I asked him, pointing out one scantily clad figure. He hotly denied that there could possibly be anyone under 18 working that catwalk. He didn't know any better. He had never been a self-hating pre-teen girl who scoured the teeny bopper magazines trying to discover the secrets to being pretty and popular. I remember readin YM and Teen, back when Milla Jovovich was the hottest young model. She was my age, half-dressed and pouting, oozing sex appeal at 13. I haven't hunted for statistics, but I don't think many models continue that line of work past their teen years.

That scares the crap out of me.

I don't want my girls to be all sexed up so young - and no matter what anyone says about that getting worse over the past few years, there is nothing new under the sun. Sure, the issue of the past few years has been words printed on sweat-pants butts and thongs marketed to teens, but that's no worse than the miniskirts and strategically ripped up jeans I remember.

I find it curious, though. I mean, it's the ADULTS who have the money, right? So ultimately the marketers are trying to appeal to us. American marketing is all about making a person feel insecure so that they will buy the item marketed in order to feel less inferior. And we're buying it.

We buy the fashion magazines and the exercise gear and the fad diet books and the crappy cheap "stylish" clothes (and sometimes the crappy expensive clothes too) and whatever latest, greates makeup and face creams promising to make us look like a younger airbrushed version of a woman - and they can still manage to help us hate ourselves after we've bought all that, we can spend thousands more to have someone cut us up and rearrange our features so we can look totally unlike our Selves in every way.

Why? How is this OK?

Because for centuries we've been objects.

Even the fairy tales we're spoonfed in childhood orbit around the idea that men have adventures and go out to seek their fortunes while young girls are prizes to be won. We see this replayed over and over as the template for the pinnacle of happiness. Older women? Evil hags and stepmothers. The stories end with "Happily ever after" because the young wife conveniently dies in childbirth (how romantic!) leaving the tragic figure of a rich older man to move on to the next young damsel - whether she be ingenue or beautiful evil stepmother doesn't seem to be much of an issue. As long as she's young, pretty, and disappears before she gets old.

Somehow we've managed to move away from child brides in our culture at large. But instead of that bringing us, as a society, closer to an egalitarian utopia, we just parade our girls on the catwalk and slap their faces on the covers of our magazines. Thousands of people make money. These "virgin sacrifices" are then paraded to the modern equivalent of the market square where the tabloids can finally finish them off. Sucked dry. Used up. The men who've tired of them and the women who've resented them (for being all the admired things we are not) gleefully watch them self-destruct on what passes for the evening news.

They are expendable. The machine will just churn out another.

Young girls will continue to sell their bodies, the image of their bodies, and the sexuality freely superimposed upon them and will continue to buy into the notion that this makes them tough and self-posessed. Young women will continue to believe in the fairy tale and will find themselves married with kids, either trapped in the role of wetnurse/nanny or forsaken "starter wife" while men move up, move on (having been sold the idea that the image of power and success requires barely-legal arm candy). Ultimately everyone ends up miserable. Not cool.

So how do I get off this wacked out horror house carnival ride? How do I keep my daughters from getting stuck on it with me?

The best I can come up with is to call attention to it every chance I get. And teach them about the suffrage movement and civil rights and the fight for reproductive rights. I suppose there will always be women who end up working the poles at the strip joints and the girls, desperate for attention and approval, posting provocative images in their online social networking profiles. I will point out the erroneous thinking being pushed by marketers telling them that Bratz and The Pussycat Dolls are examples of Grrrl Power. All that is easy enough.

But I have no clue how we fight the idea that the ultimate indicator of feminine beauty is emaciation. I fell for it. The majority of women in this culture would rather lose a finger than be fat. Would trade IQ points for weight loss. A significant number trade their health. There are an awful lot of people out there who would rather be dead than fat... even the kind of "fat" where a 5'9" 107 lb young woman is denied work for having fat legs. (I'm not saying that the designers don't have the right to hire whom they please - it just sucks that we keep giving them money, rewarding choices that undermine our own health and happiness.)

I'd love to be able to tell you all to give 'em all the bird and join me in my love-fest of bellies and boobs and thighs and all things curvy and womanly. But I can't. Because I cling to my scale. And my body fat %. And my fantasies of what I'll do when I'm thin enough. And the disgust I feel when I see a picture of myself or look in the mirror.

I still want to be a shiny pretty thing. A beautiful, desirable objet d'art.

Pathetic.

Human, but pathetic.

The Real World

In the midst of waiting for a new stove, and waiting for my husband to get home so I can go to the dentist, I'm reminded how thankful I am to be who I am, living where I do. I don't have time to do my whole rant. I'll get to that later, if I can.

Meanwhile, please read this news story:
Saudis defend punishment for rape victim

And by all means, comment!

I may come across (in fact, I may be) a bit of a cultural relativist... but there are boundaries which - when pushed - find my sympathetic nature shutting down. This is one of those.

Mommy Wars and Other Nonsense

This morning I was reading my email and an MSN headline caught my attention: Five tips to handle competitive moms. This is a topic that interests me - but perhaps not for the obvious content.

If you read the article (which will take all of 5 minutes... it has all the depth of a pancake), the basic idea is that many women have difficulty adapting to the notion of self-as-mother and so alienate the women around them by wrapping up their identities in their kids and bragging/competing constantly. Sorry, but I call BS on this tired issue.

Do some parents get competitive? Sure. Are some parents overly involved in the achievements of their kids? Probably. But there's so much gray area between being too involved vs. not involved enough... and every article you read will make you worry that perhaps you're too ______ (pick any quality, there's a parenting magazine article out there that can make you feel inferior, if you take it seriously).

But these particular missives are the most distasteful to me. It falls into the manufactured "Mommy Wars" category. If I believed the headlines or the characters on popular shows, I'd think that women were a bunch of shallow materialistic jerks who thought about little besides using their kids to satisfy their own egos. Whatever. I'm tired of articles that state that work-outside-the-home mommies think stay-at-home mommies are spoiled and backwards. I'm tired of essays suggesting that stay-at-home mommies think work-outside-the-home mommies are selfish women who put material comforts above the welfare of their kids.

I have yet to meet or talk to any woman who truly discounts the mothers around her in such a judgemental, cavalier manner.

I have many friends who work outside the home and do a fabulous job of parenting... and from what they say, they've usually found that this arrangement works the best for their family for many reasons. They've never passed judgement on me for doing what works best for our family - even when it's different. I have many stay-at-home mama friends and don't know any of them to have harshly judged another mother for having a paid career.

The insidious message of such media - as I see it - is that women should believe that they are constantly under attack from the people they most need to support them.

Seriously. Popular media would have us believe that we are lazy and indulgent if we stay at home with our kids. They would have us believe that we are selfish if we choose to work for a paycheck. They would call us unwise if we don't put our kids in preschool and alarmist or over-protective if we homeschool... all the while trying to terrify us with stories of school violence and promiscuity. News would have us believe that all men are likely child molesters and that there is mortal danger around every corner. Don't praise your kids or they'll never find self-motivation. Don't be too critical or your kids will never have decent self-esteem. Don't feed them sugar or they'll suffer from countless health maladies. Don't deprive them of sugar or they'll have eating disorders. Put them in sports, piano lessons, countless enrichment activities or they'll always lag behind their peers and never get into good colleges. Don't overbook them or they might burn out.

Basically, everything you do will probably be wrong and any hardship your child ever encounters will be your fault.

And don't bother trying to have friends, because they're just judging you anyway.

Aaaaaargh! Enough already! Stop it!

I want to hear about my friends' accomplishments and the accomplishments of their children. I want to be included in their joys and sorrows. I want to be party of the good, the bad and the ugly. It's all part of life, and the more you make taboo - off-limits to discussion - the bigger the rift grows between people who should be supporting each other.

And whom, exactly, does this serve?

Well, I think it's pretty obvious. It serves all the companies who post the neat, colorful ads in strategic places around the article. The best way to make us buy crap we don't need is to make us fearful and overwhelmed with a false sense of inferiority. The more alienated we feel, the more desperate we'll feel to belong to something... to fit somewhere... and the more desperate we are for camaraderie and closeness, the more likely we are to keep our mouths shut and not rock the boat when we think the people around us concur with all the crap we're being fed.

Enough.

There is no Mommy War. Your friends really do want to hear about the great things junior did, yesterday... and when they share their moments of joy and pride, it's not because they're competing, it's because they want to have someone to share in their happiness. Most of the other mamas out there support you! No matter what is said or unsaid. Is your child throwing a tantrum in the middle of the mall? Those looks you're getting probably aren't judgement. They probably mean that the people around you have been where you are and sympathize! They just don't dare say anything because they're so afraid it will come out wrong or you'll be mad if you know they noticed you're having a tough time.

Yes, sometimes the sahms will be jealous that the wohms get a paycheck and some adult conversation. Sometimes the wohms might feel a little jealous that the sahms are getting more one-on-one time with their little ones. That's HUMAN and has nothing to do with whether one group supports the decisions of the other.

The vast majority of us are doing our very best to navigate this life and do the best we can for our families. Don't let some advertising agenda convince you otherwise.