Drive By of the Day

And, of course, the drive-bys can be funny. Milkbreath and Me has a very smart reply to a comment she received in response to a post in which she compared a small mark on her son's face to a Charlie Chaplin moustache (and wrote paranthetically that she deliberately did not say Hitler's moustache.) The commenter couldn't believe she'd compared "a mark on her child's face to Hitler's moustache" (which, of course, she had not), and her response was both funny and to the point. Here's a brief excerpt from near the end of the post--The one you've been waiting for . . .

Do NOT say "How can a MOTHER X, Y, and Z?!?" It's cowardly. It's passive-aggressive. It's implying that I don't live up to some amorphous ideal of motherhood in your head -- something I know for a fact I CAN'T live up to.

Because the one secret of motherhood I have been privileged to understand is this: you can't do it right. No matter what you do, someone, somewhere, is going to have big problems with it.

But contrary to what you might expect, that is not a depressing thought. It's a liberating thought. If there is no way to do it right, then everything you do must be wrong. And if everything you do is wrong just by default, then you can stop worrying about whether it's wrong. Of course it's wrong! Revel in the wrongness! Because everybody else is wrong too! You're free!

Rubbernecking the drive-bys?

When I first thought about starting this blog many months ago (and again when I finally starting posting this week), I wondered why I was so interested in the examples of such awful behavior. Was I just a rubbernecker wanting to get a better view of the crash?

I don't think so.

I do think part of the reason is that the few times I've been subjected to a drive-by [have I been "drive-byed"? "drive-by'd"?], they've felt like punches to the gut. And the two that stand out for me were from people I knew fairly well, so it was even more surprising, and I really couldn't understand how either could think what they had said was appropriate.

One aspect of my interest in these comments is in looking at communication and miscommunication. I've put my foot in my mouth enough times to understand that it happens, and I'm sure there are many other times when I stuck it in and didn't even know it was there. So I thought one value of sharing stories is to understand how messages might be perceived by the speaker and the recipient. That subject is certainly one I've been interested in for a while, particularly from reading Deborah Tannen's books You Just Don't Understand and I Only Say This Because I Love You. I haven't read her latest book--You're Wearing That?--but I know the other two books have helped me not only to understand the possibly meanings behind messages I receive but also to be aware of the meanings my own message might send. I know I still make mistakes--and spend way too long wondering how I could be so stupid--but it's definitely a subject I'm interested in.

Another reason I think I'm interested in these lovely exchanges, is that too often there actually isn't an exchange because the recipient is too stunned to reply. That's why, for me, I loved reading Cecily's response to her anonymous commenter. I only wish I could be that forceful and direct in person (and probably in writing, too, although I'd like to think I would have an easier time in writing.) But reading this post on The Biscuit Report gave me at least one possible response to a certain class of drive-bys . . .

The best response I have found to a mommy drive-by is this: "Show me the double-blind study." No such study of parenting exists, and none ever could. Raising kids is not a science. Science has something to say about it, no doubt (for example, regarding the wisdom of feeding your infant homemade vegan formula), but less than some people claim. We do not know what will become of our children, and we cannot know precisely what difference we'll make in what they will become. And who, after all, would bother to have kids if they knew in advance exactly how to do it, and how it would all turn out in the end? It's terrifying, of course, not to know, which is why I suspect we are all sometimes overcome with the certainty that we are doing it the 'right way'. But darlings, we have no idea.

And I think this quotation reflects yet another reason I'm interested in these exchanges--the desire to get parenting "right". I'm a historian, and one of the subjects I've both studied and taught is family history. Having looked at historical studies of parenting advice, I wonder how much of this "mommy drive-by" phenomenon is new, and how much is part of a longer pattern of experts and others telling mothers that they aren't raising their children the right way.

I guess this all to say that I don't want to celebrate the unpleasant "angels of our nature", but I would like to have a better understanding of why these exchanges happen.

Drive By of the Day

A Crooked Timber posted a number of the stories from the comments on the original Chez Miscarriage thread (the archives for Chez Miscarriage are no longer available.) Some are shocking in a terrible way, others are shocking but funny. Here's one of the latter . . .

After I had my third baby I took a shower (at the hospital, literally within an hour of his birth) and there were no towels, so I rang for the nurse. She comes in with some tiny, threadbare towels for me, looks at my naked, wet, just-had-a-baby body, and says, “You sure haven’t lost that belly yet!”

You can check out the entire post here:

Mother Drive-By’s

Drive By of the Day

What a coincidence! Just as I finally get this blog up and running, the writer of a blog I read frequently--and I wasted all that birth control--is the recipient of a drive by from an anonymous commenter. I would never use the word "victim" when Cecily so eloquently skewers the perpetrator.

Oh no! Someone call the authorities! All this time I thought it was the leg shackles and the cage we bought to discipline Tori when she's older that would make people think I was a bad mother. But no! It's my language! In my blog! That Tori can't read (and five points to anyone that gets why that sentence is mildly ironic)!

Here's the link, enjoy!

Why I Love Comments

Mommy Drive-Bys

I'm not sure where I first read the term--probably at The Leery Polyp or A Little Pregnant--but it's a great descriptive term for when someone tells a mother exactly how her parenting skills are lacking. Chez Miscarriage had a wonderful post with tons of responses and many, many examples of this unique art form.

I thought it would be great to gather these stories on a single blog. A place to find other stories that are worse than yours. A place to vent about particularly awful drive-bys. Maybe even a place to mention to the drive-by perpetrators.

I'll also search for stories to link to, and Making Light has a great post about the original Chez Miscarriage thread. Check it out here:

The mother drive-by

Feel free to post stories in comments or email them to me at mama at mommydriveby dot com