Parenting by the book

Every once in a while, I get the urge to read a parenting book or two. Of the "parenting memoir" variety, that is. I find being a parent a fascinating experience, and obviously I enjoy writing about my kids and my experience. So of course I'm interested in reading about the parenting experiences of others.

Next time I get the urge to read a few parenting books, however, I will announce it here. At that point, please remind me that I should really be doing something else with my time. Like cleaning my basement. Or cleaning the garage. Or even sticking nail files up my nose. Because EVERY TIME I've picked up a parenting book lately, I've ended up rolling my eyes and saying, "God. What a twit. I can't believe someone got paid to write that."

On the parenting bookshelf lately:

Alternadad. I grabbed this book off of the freebie table at my former office, and then didn't get around to reading it for quite a while (mostly because I grabbed it about an hour before the place became "my former office"). If you spend a lot of time online, you've probably heard Neal Pollack's name at some point. He writes for Salon.com, and sometime last year he wrote a piece about his son getting expelled from daycare for having a biting problem. Many, many people had many, many strong reactions to this piece. I wasn't fond of it either; I recall reading it and thinking, "Boy, he and his wife sound like a couple of twits. Really unsympathetic twits, too. And if I were the parent of the other kid and read this story, I would be livid. I can't believe he got paid to write that." (He writes about it in more detail in this book, and makes everyone involved seem a bit more sympathetic.) But he also inserts lots of references to smoking weed, and about how he is a WRITER, and his wife is an ARTIST. It got distracting, rather like the Slacker Mom's constant references to her childhood on a Wyoming ranch.

I'm Too Sexy for my Volvo: A Mom's Guide to Staying Fabulous!. Oh, man. This one is for affluent women who live on either coast, and not for normal people who live in flyover country. She lost me at the part where you're supposed to take the money you'd spend on fine wines, which you're not drinking during pregnancy, and spend it on fifty-dollar soap to pamper yourself.

It may not seem like the two books I'm snarking on here have a lot in common, but. One focuses on being a cool dad with a creatively fulfilling career, smoking a lot of pot and delighting in the kid dancing and saying, "Rock and roll!" And the other is subtitled A Mom's Guide to Staying Fabulous! Seems to be a lot of concern about parenthood not changing Who You Are, and having the need to trumpet that from the rooftops. Perhaps it's because I was never cool or fabulous to begin with, but I was never worried that becoming a parent would drastically alter my personality. Pre-kids, I read a lot, and had a couple of favorite TV shows. Sometimes, I went to book discussion groups, or out to a movie with a friend. Now, I watch a lot more TV (yay DVR), but I'm still reading a moderate amount. And once, I went to a movie with a friend.

The Motherhood Manifesto: What America's Moms Want--and What to Do About It. A foray into nonfiction! This book certainly seemed to have some valid points (American women would probably really love having flexible work schedules, and being able to work from home, and being able to find high-quality daycare that fits their schedule and their budget, and having longer, and paid, maternity leaves to start with). Unfortunately, I couldn't concentrate on those points, because this book was edited by a crew of drunken monkeys. What with the misplaced modifiers, misuse of commas, and general grammatical hilarity, I was too distracted to read more than a couple of pages without giggling, rolling my eyes, or both.*

So, that's enough of that. Until next time, when I pick up a paperback with an interesting jacket design and some intriguing back cover copy about One Person's (or One Family's ) Unique and Special Parenting Experience. Coming soon to a bookstore near all of us, I'm sure.

*If you find a typo here, sorry. I try to self-edit as much as I can, but if you decided that I'm hypocritical and go looking for typos, I'm sure you'll find some. Anyway, keep in mind that this is a BLOG, and it's FREE; it's not an actual published book produced by an actual publishing house, which presumably has some sort of editing process in place.