was not any of the animals, but: the unsolicited kindness of other women: the solo one who, while walking the opposite direction, saw my three-year-old trip and fall, and stopped to make sure he was okay before proceeding on; the field trip chaperone who, in the cramped and stuffy indoor desert exhibit, noticed me trying to get through with a stroller and barked at her pack of unruly adolescent boys (who either didn’t see me or didn’t care) to move over, there’s a baby right there, and allowed me to pass; the older one in the ladies’ room who saw me trying to manage my four- and six-year-olds while also trying to change baby’s diaper, and asked me if there were anything I needed; the college lacrosse player in line for the restroom at sheetz, where we stopped on the way home, who noticed me holding my three-year-old and was the only one of her large group of teammates who allowed me to cut in front of her in line; and all the other moms pushing strollers and holding tiny hands who smiled at me in quiet acknowledgement as we crossed paths: I see all of you, God sees all of you, & I hope that He rewards you greatly. Because women who, for no reason at all other than plain & simple kindness, go out of their way to help other women as we try to navigate this hectic world: you really are, imo, some of His best ideas.
Tag: parenting
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I know I’ve already addressed this topic in a previous post, but I saw a reel today that brought the question once again to the forefront of my mind. (Here it is, if you’re curious.)
The gist of the reel is this: a young mom posted a sweet little video clip of her husband playing with their toddler, and wrote something along the lines of: “I wish more moms knew that it’s possible to have a family on a single income.” She explained in the caption that she’s a stay-at-home mom, and in order to make that work they make a lot of sacrifices. As new parents, she and her husband had faced financial hardship, even resorting to a local food bank once or twice when times were especially hard — but that it was all worth it. Basically, encouraging young women to stop fearing financial hardship, because family is the real wealth.
Lovely, right? I thought so.
But who do we find in the comments but the inevitable crowd of social media mom-shamers: “newsflash, if you need to go to a food bank to feed your kids, then you actually can’t afford kids!” “get a job! By going to the food bank, you’re stealing from people who have no other option! You could get a job but you’re selfishly choosing to stay home with your kids!” “Sure, it’s fine now while he’s a baby, but what happens when that kid grows up and asks for Disney World vacations and the trendy new sneakers like all his classmates are wearing?” Basically, telling her that she should not have had this child.
Wow! Teeth and claws came out. Some of these arguments are more interesting than others. Let’s break them down, shall we.
Keeping in mind this one truth that most people on social media, and in our world today in general, seem to have forgotten: having kids, and raising them well, is a good and important thing to do!
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Argument One: “If you need to go to a food bank to feed your kids, then you actually can’t afford kids!”
She fed her child, didn’t she? For him, it doesn’t matter if the food came from her own paycheck or a food bank (which she only used once or twice anyway, as a last resort). Now, if assistance were unavailable, and there were actually no food to be had (like, I dunno, an extreme wartime ration situation or something), that’d be different. Then maybe it would be unwise to have a kid, because there would be literally no way to legally feed it.
But (and Americans might really need to try and stretch their brains to comprehend this): it is okay to receive help. We should, in fact, help each other. Americans really suffer from this obsession with self-reliance, this isolationist notion that we shouldn’t have to help anyone and shouldn’t accept help from anyone — unless, perhaps, we are literally on the brink of death. Humans in a society are meant to help and support each other.
Moms these days, especially in modern America, don’t have a village around them the way they used to historically. Family units are islands now, expected to do it all themselves. It’s unnatural. It’s not supposed to be like that. People, especially new parents, are supposed to receive help. That’s just how the human race has always functioned.
Caveat here: obviously, a family shouldn’t have a child expecting not to have to work to provide for it. The parents should have a plan for how they will provide for it, doing as much as they reasonably can to be self-sufficient while still prioritizing the wellness of all family members. (There’s a difference between, e.g., an already-exhausted parent taking on a second full time job and sacrificing their sleep, which is probably not an overall good choice for the health of the family, and a parent sacrificing something like hair appointments, “fun” money, vacations, streaming services, etc.: sacrifices that don’t adversely affect the family’s health.) Parents absolutely should plan on making sacrifices and working as hard as they can to feed their kid. You must not start a family with the mindset that “oh, it’s fine, I’ll just go to the food bank or get food stamps or whatever.” That would be absolutely deplorable.
But knowing it’s there for you to use in a real pinch, if plans A and B fail — that’s totally fine and good! That’s what it’s for.
Accepting help in a pinch is not a crime — and, as some wise commenters pointed out, is actually beneficial because it keeps the “help” system running. Food banks are there to be utilized; they only exist if people continue to use them.
This mom did nothing wrong by using her local food bank when she needed to.
And she’s right: parents should be okay with accepting help if they need to. That’s part of being a parent, and one of the reasons assistance programs exist. Having kids is good and important (especially nowadays, with drastically-declining birth rates). It is something that our society should encourage by offering things like food banks and government assistance for parents.
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Argument Two: “Get a job! By going to the food bank, you’re stealing from people who have no other option! You could get a job but you’re selfishly choosing to stay home with your kids!”
This accusation is a bold one!, but, I can tell it’s coming from a place of hurt and frustration, so I will try and be gentle here.
“Selfishly choosing to stay home with your kids.” Let’s think about that. What is the best thing for a child? To be with its mom. You can’t argue with that.
“But Mith, little kids need socialization” — no, they don’t. Not in the form of daycare, at least. That much is certain. Going out to play groups and such with mom, sure! But daycare is neither good nor necessary.
Being around its mom is what a little kid needs, more than luxuries, more than toys or vacations or a big house or whatever. A mom who chooses to stay home is doing the best thing for her kid. She’s not being selfish.
I think people mistake this decision, the decision to stay home, for selfishness, because it is appealing. It is the thing that most moms would like to do. And of course they would! That’s because it’s natural! A mom naturally wants to stay with her kids and take care of her home and husband. That’s the dream job, and the most important job in the world! As C.S. Lewis said, the homemaker’s job is the job that all other jobs exist for.
But sadly, most moms think they “can’t” stay home. And these moms who are suffering from a misguided belief that they “have” to work, get very angry when they see another mom doing the thing they wish they could justify for themselves, but are too afraid to, too hung up on financial comfort.
But the mom who made this post is exactly right. Barring extraordinary situations (like a husband who’s unable to work for health reasons, or a husband whose job pays minimum wage), most moms could stay home with their kids if they were willing to be financially uncomfortable.
And the other thing is, do the people making this accusation realize how expensive daycare is? Do they realize that, for many moms, the cost of daycare would eat up the entire paycheck that they’d be bringing in if they got a job, so literally what’s the point? Net zero gain, or maybe a couple dollars, and a ton of lost time with their kids, not to mention the psychological burden of the separation on both mom and kid. (Even if you’re a mom who likes to be away from your kids, you can’t deny that it’s scary sending your kid to daycare; all these horror stories in the news about kids getting abused and neglected, or worse, at daycare. If you’re a mom and that doesn’t scare you… I dunno what to tell you. Daycare is always a risk.)
Staying home with mom is the best thing for a little kid. Families should do everything they can to make that arrangement work. I daresay they have an obligation to try and keep mom home.
“But what if mom actually thrives at her job, Mith? What if she has a really meaningful career, or even a divine calling of sorts?” Totally valid. Doctors, pediatricians, midwives, teachers and professors, anything, you name it — all meaningful jobs that I can understand a woman feeling called to. But I would argue: can this career really not wait five years? Is it really more important to you than your child’s early years? Can’t you at least cut your hours back? It’s important for moms to stay home with their kids, especially before age six or so.
Which is why it’s anything but selfish for the mom in question to choose to stay home with her kids. She’s doing the best thing for her kid. Her kid needs her more than anything else. That is her duty, her obligation that takes precedence over any other.
“But she technically could get a job! She has the option! Which means that, when she takes from a food bank, she’s stealing food from people who, through no fault of their own, cannot work!”
Let’s be real now. I don’t have a source to back this up, but I’m willing to bet that most people who use food banks probably have, or could have, some kind of income. I don’t think it’s true that the only people who use (or should use) a food bank are those who are completely incapable of working any job. (For those people, there are disability benefits and SNAP, anyway.) If that were the case, food banks would be a lot smaller and less prevalent a thing than they are, and there would be much stricter regulations about who could use them. As we discussed above, food banks exist for anyone in a pinch.
And let’s be realistic here: I seriously doubt that this one mom was stripping the food bank shelves bare. They don’t even let you do that — they have limits on how much each household can receive (at least, the church food pantry where I used to volunteer had such limits, and enforced them strictly). I’m sure they have enough supplies to go around. How likely is it, seriously, that some other family somewhere went hungry because this one mom took her share that day? Come on now.
“But Mith, it’s the principle.” You know what: fair. I agree with that. If we were talking about a lazy mom with no work ethic, no plan to become more self-reliant, no goals, and no remorse, just waltzing into the food bank week after week and scooping up as much as she possibly could, then yes, that would be deplorable and shameful, and would even amount to stealing from the needy. But that is not the same as a motivated mom accepting help in a pinch here and there. Let’s stop reacting emotionally and making ridiculously extreme assumptions about people, just because we’re frustrated about our own situation.
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And, Argument Three: “Sure, it’s fine now while he’s a baby, but what happens when that kid grows up and asks for Disney World vacations and the trendy new sneakers like all his classmates are wearing?”
This is the dumbest and saddest of all the arguments, and one that I already addressed in the aforementioned previous post, but I’ll touch on it again since folks are bringing it up.
Seriously? You think a person’s life is not worth living because that person couldn’t afford the trendy sneakers or the Disney World vacation? You really think a person with financial hardship is just better off not existing? That their entire life and future is automatically a waste? If you genuinely believe that, then I really dunno what to say to you, but I’ll keep you in my prayers.
It’s a sad world where people really think the point of life is to have nice things and be comfortable.
“But Mith, when poor people have kids, it just perpetuates the vicious cycle: the 1% filthy rich minority are in control; this world is their resort, and the rest of us are just their underpaid staff. If poor people stop breeding, the rich won’t have laborers anymore. You are in fact morally obligated to not breed, if you’re poor, for the good of the world.”
Interesting take — I appreciate the commitment, taking the philosophy all the way to its logical conclusion. Because sure, if you really believe that life is only about getting what you want, if that’s really true, then yeah! Absolutely stop breeding and let humanity die out. In fact, let’s all go ahead and kill ourselves right now, because it’s all meaningless.
It’s such a sad and cynical way to think. Thankfully, it’s simply wrong.
My life, my identity, and my purpose are not defined by what my job is. So what if I am a pawn in the billionaires’ game; as long as I’m getting paid my fair wages, it frankly doesn’t matter. Because I care more about my divine Employer than any earthly one. And in God’s eyes, we all have great value. The purpose of life on earth is not to get what we want and be comfortable. It’s to get ready for eternal life. (Which, btw, we can’t do without help. We have to learn to be okay with accepting help, people.)
But even without putting a religious spin on it, you surely can see that anyone who’s not a total nihilist can find value and meaning, joy and beauty and fulfillment, in their life even if they are “just a pawn.” If you really think that life is pointless and you’re better off never being born unless you’re ultra-rich with no day job… then once again, I’m sorry, I dunno what to say to you.
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So to wrap this up: a woman who’s doing something good and important for society and her child by being a SAHM, accepts a bit of help in a totally legal, above-board way, in order to be able to continue doing this thing that’s good for society and her child… and people are attacking her for this? Saying she shouldn’t have had a kid at all? Seriously?! Fuck it, that’s enough internet for today. I’m done.
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PAW Patrol: parents love to hate it. It’s the worst! It’s so ubiquitous. It’s so annoying. It’s so bad for kids’ brains. I used to feel this way, too.
Since I’m apparently now in the business of defending TV shows that other people hate, allow me, if you will, to make my little case here for PAW Patrol.
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My kids were never supposed to watch PAW Patrol. As a new mom, I found it revolting. I never wanted them to see it, or even know about it. Nowadays, I love it; I’m a big fan, and we watch it together on the regular.
So what happened?
It started with string cheese. At their grandparents’ house, my kids were given string cheese sticks that had images of PAW Patrol characters printed on the packaging. Thus, they began to learn the different characters’ names and colors. Soon they could identify them on sight when they saw them in other locations. Putting cartoon characters on food packaging really is a genius marketing move.
My kids’ intensifying fascination with these characters from the packaging on string cheese (and diapers, and graham crackers, and kids’ shampoo, and pretty much everything else for kids), led to me at last, begrudgingly, allowing them to view clips of the show in our own home. Then, when I was in the first trimester with my fourth baby, and sick 24/7, I finally gave up the fight and just let them binge-watch full episodes on Paramount+. Just all day long: PAW Patrol!, PAW Patrol!, be there on the double!
But I hated it. I hated the lazy animation style, the skull-piercing voices, the brainless music, the sheer idiotic absurdity of the plotlines, and above all, the way my kids were so obsessed with it. Just ask the internet: they say that PAW Patrol was basically lab-created (that’s laboratory, not Labrador retriever) to hypnotize your kids and get them addicted.
What garbage. I resented it, but permitted it anyway because for a couple months there I was too sick to do much of anything at all, and by the time the sickness faded around week 20, my kids were hopelessly hooked.
As time went on, I occasionally tried to banish PAW Patrol from our house, thinking it was in my kids’ best interest. I’d pack up all the plastic toy pups and their plastic vehicles, the plastic cups and plastic placemats and all the plastic merch and chuck it in a plastic trash bag and hide it in the basement because I didn’t have the heart to just throw it away entirely.
“From now on, we will only watch wholesome shows like Little Bear and Puffin Rock,” I told myself firmly. “If I just never show them PAW Patrol again, never buy any more PAW Patrol shit and never breathe another word about it from this moment forth, they have to forget about it at some point, right? From this day on, we will be a proper old-fashioned Catholic family, cleansed of the stains of all that worldly garbage!”
Inevitably, the merch would come back out several weeks or days later, because my kids asked for it and I am a softie.
Recently, I got sick of this cycle, and decided to just let go ahead and let them have their beloved PAW Patrol.
Why? What happened?
I think the biggest factor in this decision was my realization that my oldest is about to turn six, and pretty soon, she won’t even be interested in PAW Patrol anymore. She will outgrow it, probably within a year or so. My nephew, who’s only nine months older than she is, is already over PAW Patrol, and on to more mature six-year-old things. Those days will soon be upon me. And it’s actually heartbreaking: the passage of time, how quickly your baby grows up. I’ll wake up tomorrow and none of my kids will care about PAW Patrol anymore. And I’ll look back on these days and wish for just one more minute of their precious innocence.
Because that’s what PAW Patrol is. It’s innocent. I mean, come on: it’s a show about superhero puppies. If you actually sit down and watch it, you will see just how innocent it is. The music, the animation, the way the characters dress and talk: it’s all very childish, very clean and simple. It lacks the glossy flashiness and Hollywoodesque aspirations toward tweenhood that you see in something like Super Kitties (which I abhor, and nipped that obsession in the bud without a trace of guilt) or KPop Demon Hunters. It also lacks the purely hypnotic, mindless, brain-numbing singsong quality of something like Cocomelon. PAW Patrol is just simple, colorful, back-to-basics animation with childlike stories and dialogue. There’s nothing sinister, nothing suggestive of anything more mature, and the “jokes” are painfully simple; that’s exactly why kids age out of it around six or seven.
And the stories in PAW Patrol are all about helping people. That’s the whole gist of the show: cooperation is fun, you can do hard things, and helping others is cool. Literally what is the issue?
“Lab created to hijack your kids’ brains and stupefy them” – blah blah, enough with that. Sure, it’s not high quality edifying stuff, but PAW Patrol isn’t going to make good kids bad. Like most worldly pleasures, PAW Patrol can be enjoyed responsibly, in moderation. My kids are not iPad kids. They have never owned a tablet. They love reading books, drawing, playing pretend, and going outside; they’re decently well-behaved; and all of them are highly intellectually advanced for their ages. And they also happen to love PAW Patrol.
So, I’m not convinced that all of the paranoia about PAW Patrol “ruining our kids’ minds” isn’t just a bunch of tin foil hat-type blathering. I really think people love to hate things that are popular. Back in the days when novels were a recent innovation, people thought those were brainrot and a waste of time, too. Probably thirty years from now, PAW Patrol will be considered vintage and cool and “crunchy” the way Little Bear is now. Hating PAW Patrol is just as much a trend as the show itself; change my mind. Being rational: there’s simply not sufficient reason to banish PAW Patrol entirely.
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Admittedly though, my change of heart about PAW Patrol was not entirely rational. My decision was based, about 75, maybe 80 percent, on emotion.
For one, there was the aforementioned realization that my sweet babies are growing up quickly, and all too soon will no longer care a whit about PAW Patrol. You ever feel homesick for a place while you’re already there?
And for two: after a year to eighteen months or so of PAW Patrol being part of our lives, it’s gradually become, well, just that: a part of our lives. It’s weird. In the beginning, PAW Patrol felt to me like this malignant force that encroached upon my family from without. But now, for better or for worse, it has become part of us, woven into the fabric of our family life. And I like our life. The citizens of Adventure Bay have become good friends of mine, by now.
“You’re just being a lazy mom, Mith! If you really cared about your kids’ well-being, you wouldn’t show them this filth at all, much less let it infiltrate your lives to such an extent.”
Ah, the “lazy mom” accusation. Yes, this one gets thrown at moms on the internet all the time, whenever they have the audacity to try to make life easier. I honestly think people just hate moms and want them to suffer (and sometimes it’s moms who hate on other moms in this way, which imo just betrays a very-thinly-veiled self-loathing and a deep frustration with their own lives). As moms, we are, believe it or not, actually allowed to choose the easy way sometimes. Like most things, it’s not black and white (“giving screen time at all means you’re a failure!” “You don’t love your kids if you don’t cook them three meals a day from scratch!” etc.); it’s a matter of moderation. “Lazy” because sometimes I want my kids to sit still and be quiet so that I can give one of them a bath, or clean the house or, God forbid, sit down and drink a cup of coffee or something? Sure, why not. Call me lazy if you want. My kids are happy, healthy, intelligent, and loved; I’m solo parenting and homeschooling them (four five and under) on a tight budget, with no village around me, but, sure, go off I guess.
Not trying to say that I have it harder than anyone else. Parenting is hard, no matter what your situation. This is not the suffering olympics. PAW Patrol makes things a bit more fun and easy at times. And as far as I can see it does no harm. So try again to explain to me why it’s so bad.
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Finally, just for fun: being a Catholic mom and a PAW Patrol mom, I’ve taken the liberty of assigning a patron saint to each of the pups:
Chase: St. Michael the Archangel, the Prince of the Heavenly Host and defender against demons.
Skye: St. Joseph of Cupertino, obviously: famous for levitating during prayer.
Rocky: St. Joseph the Worker: quiet, responsible, happy to be in the background, good with tools.
Marshall: St. Lawrence, who was a comedian and, like Marshall, associated with fire.
Zuma: St. Brendan the Navigator, famous for sailing across oceans and exploring the world.
Rubble: St. Thomas Aquinas: bit of a counterintuitive choice, maybe, but Aquinas was a chunky fellow who was nicknamed “the dumb ox,” so I think he might actually identify with Rubble the most out of all the pups.
Is PAW Patrol a good Catholic show? No, of course not. It’s very secular. In their holiday special, they even said some cheesy line like “the real meaning of Christmas is giving!” – thankfully, my five-year-old heard that and exclaimed “no, the real meaning of Christmas is the Birth of Jesus!” Which led to a good conversation about how we need to share the Gospel with those who haven’t heard it. See? It may not be a good Catholic show, per se, but it can be part of a good Catholic life.
That’s the thing. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s just (if you’re a toddler parent in 2026 who doesn’t literally live under a rock) a part of life.
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I imagine one day when I’m old and gray and an empty nester, I’ll be sitting alone in my clean, quiet living room, reminiscing, and I’ll look around at the emptiness and lack of clutter and toys, and sigh, and pick up the remote with my withered, liver-spotted hand and switch on some PAW Patrol, just for old time’s sake, and probably sing softly along with the songs, PAW Patrol!, PAW Patrol!, in my creaky lonely old-lady voice: be there on the double! And I like to think that I won’t have too many regrets.
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Needless to say, this post contains spoilers for the show Adolescence.
A month or so ago, my husband and I watched Adolescence, which as you probably know is a highly critically-acclaimed British limited series, released earlier this year, available on Netflix. Which, btw, I just saw that that young actor just became the youngest boy ever to win an Emmy; well deserved, he acted the heck out of that role, damn. And I guess it was nominated for a ton of other Emmys as well, so I needn’t waste any time talking about what a good show it is. Personally I love the limited series format, and I wish that more shows would limit themselves to just one season; all too often, the creators keep on dragging things along long after the story’s died and rotted, just because there’s money to be had, and it’s disgusting.
But so anyway, as you know if you read this blog, I am a really stupid person and not any kind of critic or anything, so I can’t contribute anything of value to the existing discussions of this show. I don’t pay any attention to the whole “redpill” thing or to whoever Andrew Tate is, so I can’t comment on any of that, although it did seem painfully obvious to me that whoever wrote this show has like intense personal beef with this Andrew Tate. I haven’t been inside of a high school in seventeen years (thanks be to God), so I can’t comment much on the state of public education, either, although from what I’ve heard this show depicted it very accurately, which, yikes.
No, as is the case on this entire blog, I have no expertise, so the only thing I can really put out there is my personal reaction, in case anyone out there, like me, just wants to talk about it. And for me, the big takeaway, the thing that I was left thinking about for days and weeks afterwards, was: do we have any control, then, over who we are, and how our kids turn out?
As a mom of little kids, I worry about this a lot. Maybe it’s a “millennial mom” thing, but it gives me a lot of anxiety, trying not to mess up my kids. I always overthink about every single thing I say to them, and worry that I’m psychologically damaging them no matter what I do. At the end of the day: “I was too mean and strict, they’re going to be traumatized and go no-contact with me as soon as they’re grown up, and rightfully so!” Or: “I was too lenient, I’m spoiling them, what would my priest say?!, they’re not going to have any sense of respect or discipline, I am one of ‘those’ modern parents, I am part of what’s wrong with society!” It seems that no matter what I say, I always look back on it at the end of the day and think that I should have said the opposite. No matter what I do, I am damaging them somehow, and setting them up for a future full of misery and expensive psychotherapy. But, how much control do I actually have over my kids’ outcome?
In the last episode of Adolescence, it seemed like the show was simultaneously blaming Jamie’s parents, and excusing them from culpability for his actions. Yes, it was their fault, because Dad had unresolved anger issues and was at work all the time, and Mom didn’t pay attention to the warning signs, like the way that Jamie was just in his room on the computer all the time. But, also, Dad couldn’t really help it, could he, because his own dad was violent with him, and Jamie’s dad was just doing the best he could, trying to contain his rage and not take it out on his kids (but instead on things like sheds and vans). And I guess the idea was that Mom wasn’t really at fault because she lives in a world where teenagers sitting on their computers all day is normalized. Both parents were, in their ways, just products of their own upbringing and environment.
Aren’t we all? How much control do I even have over myself and my own choices? I’m not going to talk about whether or not free will exists. That question is too mind-bendy for me. As a Catholic, I know that it is somehow both true that free will exists and that God has the ultimate power as well as foreknowledge of how everything will end up – that I simultaneously have control over my actions and have no control whatsoever, which is confusing, but it makes sense as long as you don’t think about it too hard, because it certainly appears true that we have free will, and it feels weird to think otherwise. As you can tell I’m far from equipped to talk about such lofty subjects as free will.
So I guess the question here is, can anyone ever not be just a product of their own upbringing and environment? Can anyone ever not doom their children to be just products of their upbringing and environment? Is it really all just one big hopeless vicious cycle of disorder and trauma?
I admittedly stress about this a lot, and that stress definitely swelled up again, for a while, after watching Adolescence. But fortunately for me, I am, as I already mentioned, Catholic, and in the Catholic Church, we are shown the way to freedom – to breaking that hopeless cycle.
Sure, as long as you’re just being yourself, living according to your own human limitations, seeking no more than as much human satisfaction as you can get, you’re going to be stuck in the cycle. You’re probably doomed to misery. I do not know this firsthand, as I am definitely not a saint, but I know from reading the lives of the saints, that the only way to escape that cycle – to breach the surface of these whirling murky waters of human pain and struggle, and finally take a breath of air – is to become a saint. I’m pretty sure that’s the only way to be actually free. A saint is the only kind of person who’s entirely free from the world and all its emotional/psychic/material anguish. A saint lives entirely in the truth.
Hm, so, does that mean that, if I’m not a literal saint, I’m doomed to be a shitty parent, and my kids are doomed to generational trauma?
Well, first of all, I think there’s a common misconception about saints that they never do a single thing wrong. That’s not what a saint is. The saints are not the same as Christ or the Blessed Mother. On earth, they weren’t perfect. They sometimes get things wrong. But the thing that made them saints was that they loved God very much and were entirely devoted to doing His will, not their own. They are already living in eternity; they have their priorities straight. But they’re still people, i.e. imperfect. So, I don’t think it’s necessarily true that one must never ever make a single mistake in order to be a good parent, to raise mentally-healthy kids.
What, then, is the secret? – No, really, can somebody tell me? Lol. I try to do my best, but my oldest is still only five, so despite having four kids, I’m still quite new at this.
I figure probably one of the most important things one can do, when it comes to raising kids who are free from the vicious cycle that is the human condition – i.e., kids who have the best chance at true happiness – is to pass on the Faith to them. That is the most important thing that we can give them. But of course, we should also practice what we preach. It’s not going to help our kids much if we teach certain habits and virtues but behave completely differently in our own everyday lives. That will just lead to confusion and fallen-away souls. The responsibility of being a Catholic parent is incredibly daunting. Which is why stories like Adolescence make me so anxious. Am I doing enough to save my kids? Am I doing enough, am I doing enough, am I doing enough?? If you’re a mom, even a secular mom, you get it!
I’m never doing enough, it seems – but, at least my children will know their Blessed Mother, who is perfect, and who will never fail them like I inevitably will to some degree.
It’s always interesting to me when secular stories like this accidentally profess the truth of God and His infinite love. Yes, every person is indeed doomed to a cycle of hopelessness and ruin, evil and pain, if they try to live without God. I guess all good art tells us something about God, really, and that’s why it is good.
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As you may have noticed, I haven’t posted on this blog in over a month – not because I’m done with blogging, but because I was busy having a baby. My fourth kid was born earlier this month. Now, I don’t typically like to share a lot about physical stuff. But I thought I’d share my birth story on here, because for the first time I feel like I got it right, and am actually proud of how it went, and feel like it could potentially be useful to someone.
In the third trimester I spent a lot of time reading birth stories as I tried to mentally prepare myself; so, I figure I’ll pay it forward or whatever and go ahead and share mine for any mom out there who might happen to be reading this as she prepares for her own birth.
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Four days before my son was born, I went to confession, which I try to do every two-to-three weeks regularly. This time, the priest was one that I’d never been to confession with before. And for penance, he assigned me a prayer I’d never been assigned before, in my ten years of being Catholic: the Anima Christi prayer.
Of course I was familiar with the prayer, but it wasn’t one that I had memorized or anything. So as soon as Mass was over, I looked it up and prayed it and studied it. I was 39 weeks pregnant, and really nervous about labor for some reason, even though this was my fourth baby. I thought to myself: maybe this prayer will be a good tool to bring into labor. I repeated the first three lines over and over in my mind on the drive home, and over the coming days.
Why was I so nervous about birth? If you’ve read my post on epidurals, you already know a little about my previous three birth experiences. I’d never had a purely unmedicated, all-natural birth. My first was an induction, and even though I didn’t get an epidural, I did get IV pain meds to help me cope (fentanyl, and it didn’t even help much anyway, lol). My second was surgical. My third, my VBAC1, I had intended to go all-natural, but got discouraged and gave up, and ended up getting an epidural right at transition. So I was haunted by feelings of failure and inferiority, like I was not a real mom somehow.
Was I going to be able to do it this time? Doubt. Maybe I shouldn’t even bother trying. I’d been reading “Made For This” by Mary Haseltine, as well as re-reading Ina May’s guide, and feeling called out and accused by every word on the pages, feeling like a failure as a woman and a Catholic; I was sure that I would end up tapping out again. I couldn’t do it; I already knew that. But, Mary Haseltine suggests embracing that: accepting and admitting that we can’t do it on our own, and totally surrendering to God. I didn’t know if I could do that or not.
The same author also suggested offering up your labor for a specific intention. I figured I could do that, in any case. I read a lot of advice and tried to internalize it all. Basically, I lost a lot of sleep, and said a lot of prayers. I tried to focus on preparing myself mentally. Because I knew that having an all-natural birth would be more of a psychological than physical feat.
I had certain expectations. I expected that I would go into labor on or around my due date, which was the coming Saturday. I expected that it would be very similar to my labor with my third, which began slowly, with very mild contractions that gradually intensified. I expected that it would be slow and grueling. For personal reasons, I did not want to have a baby on Wednesday; that was incredibly important to me, and I’d lost sleep over this too. Any day but Wednesday! (Don’t ask me why.) I’d do anything to avoid having a baby on Wednesday!
Then, Tuesday night, out of nowhere, my water broke.
Well, I say “out of nowhere,” but it wasn’t really. I guess I hadn’t recognized the signs. I’ll describe some of those signs just in case you’re curious.
I had gestational diabetes in this pregnancy, which was easily diet-controlled, and I’d noticed for the past week that my glucose numbers had suddenly dropped a lot. Things that typically spiked my blood sugar no longer did. It was like I could suddenly throw caution to the winds, with food, if I wanted to; I was actually afraid my monitor was broken or something. Apparently, this is a sign that labor is about to start. But I didn’t want to believe it.
Also, I’d been queasy for days, with a very low appetite, experiencing waves of nausea that got a little worse on Tuesday. I thought nothing of this, because I’d had a stomach bug at 38 weeks, which had me incapacitated for two or three days, and after it passed, I simply didn’t fully recover. The nausea stuck around. It was like I was back in the first trimester. I assumed I was just having a hard time shaking the stomach bug.
And I was in an absolutely shitty mood, that Tuesday. I had no patience, snapped at the slightest provocation, was irritable with my kids, and generally a crappy mom. It was like PMS. But, I assumed that it was just fatigue, and the damned stomach bug getting to me.
Despite feeling like crap, I also had this mad wave of productivity on Tuesday afternoon. I had to clean the upstairs. There was going to be a baby sleeping there soon, I needed to clean it! So I went into a cleaning frenzy for a few hours, and got the whole upstairs relatively sparkling (for a house with two toddlers and a kindergartener, that is). I assumed this was just normal third trimester nesting.
So those were the warning signs that I was ignoring. I assumed I had more time. I hadn’t even finished packing my hospital bag! Like I said, I was expecting to have plenty of warning before time to head to the hospital; with my third, I was in early labor for about a day and a half before I even felt uncomfortable. I was waiting to pack stuff until the actual signs of labor showed up.
Well, but then, like I said, at about a quarter to nine, my water broke.
What the hell? What the helly?! This had never happened to me before. With my first, my water didn’t break until I was already having painful contractions, and then it was only a cautious trickle; my third, the OB manually broke my water at seven centimeters, to move things along. I had never before experienced this Hollywood-esque moment of being surprised by a sudden gush of water out of nowhere. And on Tuesday night, of all nights?!
There went my plans! So much for not having a baby on Wednesday. I was GBS positive2, so I knew that I had to get to the hospital ASAP, and that there was no way this baby would be arriving any later than a day from now, but also no way they’d be arriving before midnight tonight.
I’d also been hoping that labor might, for once, not happen overnight; I was really hoping it’d start during the day this time, when I was awake and alert, so that I wouldn’t be going into it with zero energy; but alas, here we were again.
It did not bode well. Furthermore, I wasn’t even having painful contractions yet. I knew from reading zillions of birth stories that it was almost never good when water broke without contractions. That generally meant that Pitocin3 would be needed to move things along; providers don’t like to wait too long to deliver a baby once water has broken, because of the risk of infection. I’d never had Pitocin in labor before (my previous induction was with Cytotec 4), and I wanted to keep it that way. We’ve all heard the horror stories about how painful Pitocin contractions are. I knew that, if I had to suffer through those, I’d probably end up getting an epidural, which would probably slow things down, and the cascade of interventions would begin, and I could very well end up in the OR. (I hated my c-section, and did not want to go through that again.)
So I chucked a few things in my hospital bag (not enough, lol I forgot quite a few things) and we were off, in a mild panic. But my anxiety and dread were balanced out by an even greater excitement. For better or for worse, it was happening; I’d get to meet this baby soon.
But at the hospital, it was kind of a cluster. The nurses couldn’t find their equipment. They accidentally clicked “discharge” on their computer and checked me out of the hospital and had to re-check me in. Then they couldn’t find my vein to start the IV (that’s always fun). Nothing seemed to be going right. It was almost ten, and I still wasn’t having painful contractions. I really had no idea how this was going to go.
So I said a little prayer of surrender, trying to let go of all my personal wants and desires for how the birth would proceed. Then, between interruptions, I prayed the sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary.
Here’s a cool thing. The midwife didn’t check for dilation at this point, and I’m so grateful she did not. What’s the point of all these cervical exams that women are always given during pregnancy? They don’t tell you anything about when baby will come. I wasn’t having painful contractions, so the midwife said she didn’t expect to see dilation yet, and she’d just wait to check me later. Cool! Fine with me! I didn’t need that kind of stress in my life! I was so happy to be working with midwives this time instead of OBs. Nothing against the OBs who’d helped me with my other babies, but I will always recommend midwives over OBs to any low-risk pregnant mom. It’s a world of difference, a whole different philosophy. I only had to endure two cervical exams this entire pregnancy, both of them in active labor (more on that later).
Well, they got me sorted out with the IV block, then moved me from triage to a delivery room. There, they hooked me up to a fetal monitor (this was, after all, a 2VBAC1), gave me my first dose of penicillin, and then let me be. Still no pain. I remembered the advice of the doula who’d helped me with my third birth: sometimes relaxing actually gets things moving along. So, I took a shower, got in my fuzzy bathrobe and sleep hat, grabbed my teddy bear, and laid down for a rest. The braxton-hicks5 were starting to feel a little bit more intense, but nothing serious or uncomfortable. I figured I’d rest while I still could. There was a long night ahead of me.
It worked. I probably only rested for thirty, forty minutes or so, before the contractions picked up. This was around midnight. So I got up and started walking around, moving through them. I wanted to to make progress, and plus, in the early part of active labor, walking or rocking or swaying through the contractions seriously helps.
But I could feel things were moving quickly. At one point my teeth started chattering uncontrollably, which meant the hormones were doing crazy things. Each contraction was a bit more intense than the last. I was feeling lots of nausea, so was pretty much just hanging out in the bathroom, at this point, and I started having to really focus to get through the pain. This was the point at which time becomes weird and you go into this strange primal otherworldly place, mentally. If you’ve ever been in labor you know what I mean.
I will share some things that helped me cope with the pain, in case you’re a pregnant mom reading this and mentally preparing for your own labor like I was.
I kept on praying. I brought out from my little toolbox the Anima Christi prayer, which I’d been dwelling on over the past few days. With each contraction I’d think about one of the first three lines:
“Soul of Christ, sanctify me.
Body of Christ, save me.
Blood of Christ, embolden me.“
It wasn’t even an intentional thing, where I set out to meditate on one of these lines. It just kind of happened. I’d be praying and as the pain picked up my brain would slow to a stop and just kind of linger over one of these lines while I thought about the Passion or remembered my last Holy Communion just four days prior.
And – this bit sounds super uncharacteristic of me, because I’m a very negative and pessimistic person, lol – I guess the other thing that helped was staying positive about it. This was a mind game, I knew. I had to make myself like the pain. I had to be really intentional. Yes, I’d say to myself, yes, this is good. I’m coping with this so well. At one point, I could sense myself starting to get frustrated and mad at the pain, wanting to say to it, “fucking hell!, just leave me alone, stop doing this to my body!” Which created a sensation of fear. So I caught myself, and changed the narrative real quick, because that was the very path that led me to the epidural with my last baby: feeling like a victim of the pain, like the pain was something bad happening to me. This time, I intentionally took ownership of it. It wasn’t happening to me, as they say; it was me. And that actually helped. It’s seriously psychological warfare, in labor.
(A few other little sensory tricks that really help, if you’re curious: movement, vocalization, and squeezing the shit out of wide-toothed wooden combs in each hand. Randomly, I also took a weird comfort in running my hands under the faucet in the bathroom sink.)
Well, by now I was in the zone, and it was about two AM. The midwife came in to check me. She’d said she was going to wait to check me until it was time for the second dose of antibiotics, which wasn’t supposed to be for another hour; but I guess she could see that I had progressed pretty far, and she was probably afraid I’d have the baby on the bathroom floor, lol. I was pretty uncomfortable by now, so I was really hoping that she’d tell me I was at like a six, at least a five.
Imagine my relief when she told me I was at a nine! Thank God! That far already? So I was coping with this pretty well, after all?! That gave me a fresh burst of motivation: it would be over soon. She stayed with me, and directed me into this-that-and-the-other position through the contractions (which, btw, an OB would not have done), and when she checked me again at about 2:30 (all of these time estimates are very approximate, because like I said I was in that zone where everything is spacey and time doesn’t really exist), I was at a ten.
I’ll spare you the details of the next half-hour, not because anything went wrong, but just because this phase is particularly bodily. Suffice it to say that baby was born about thirty minutes later, just before 3 AM, with no interventions or pain meds of any kind.
But then came the biggest surprise of all. We were team green, in this pregnancy, waiting to find out the baby’s gender until birth. I was completely certain, the entire nine months, that it was a girl. I called the baby “she” the whole time, thinking of her as my daughter and calling her by our chosen girl name. I barely ever even considered that it might be a boy; that felt so unlikely as to not even be a real possibility. My intuition had been correct for my other three kids, so I knew, I simply knew, that this was going to be a girl.
But: he was a boy!
A boy, born all natural, only six hours from the time my water broke, only three hours from the onset of actual discomfort. What the helly!
Later that day, recovering in our room in the mother-baby ward, I was lying there watching EWTN on my TV. Daily Mass was on. It was the Novus Ordo Mass, which I generally avoid, but it was a solemn and reverent one – EWTN is great; Mother Angelica, ora pro nobis! – so I watched it anyway. If you’ve ever watched Mass on TV, you know that, when it comes time for Communion, they cut to an Act of Spiritual Communion for the viewers at home who can’t receive physically. On EWTN, they don’t always use the same prayer every single time; it changes day by day, as there are many prayers one can say for this intention.
Guess which prayer they broadcast that day, my son’s birthday, for the Spiritual Communion?
It felt like a small reassurance that Wednesday was the right day for him to be born, after all.
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Footnotes for those who might not be familiar with pregnancy terminology:
1. VBAC: vaginal birth after cesarean. Whenever you give birth the normal way after a prior c-section, there’s a risk (extremely minute) of uterine rupture at the incision site, which is terrifying and life-threatening if it happens. So when you’re in labor after a prior C, they make you wear a fetal monitor the whole time to make sure baby is doing okay. It’s not too bad, because you can still walk around and even get in the water if you want to; you just have a device strapped around your belly. 2VBAC: second VBAC, still treated the same way during labor, even if you’ve already done it once successfully before.
2. Group B strep is a bacteria that we sometimes carry and sometimes don’t. It comes and goes, and isn’t at all harmful to mom (or her husband; it’s not an STI); you can actually test positive for it one week and negative the next. But, if it gets passed to a baby during birth, it can sometimes cause them to get sick, and if that happens it’s deathly serious. So, if you test positive in late pregnancy, they just give you antibiotics during labor: two doses, four hours apart. Normally if your water breaks you don’t necessarily need to rush to the hospital unless you’re having 5-1-1 contractionsA , but, if you are GBS+, they tell you to come to the hospital immediately if your water breaks, because risk of infection goes up.
A. that is, contractions five minutes apart, lasting one minute, for one straight hour.
3. Pitocin is synthetic oxytocin, given through an IV, to induce labor or help it progress when contractions aren’t happening or aren’t strong enough.
4. Cytotec is a different kind of medication, not an IV med, but a tablet that they actually insert into your body to soften the cervix to encourage labor. When I had Cytotec I was already 40 and a half weeks along and only needed one dose, so it barely even felt like an induction, honestly.
5. Braxton-hicks contractions are these random, painless but weird contractions that most moms experience a few times a day in later pregnancy; they’re called “practice contractions,” because they’re how your uterus practices to get ready for labor. Your whole stomach gets really tight and sometimes you can feel a bit breathless, almost like you’re doing a crunch, but they don’t hurt.
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(Please note that, in this post, I am not talking about special needs or neurodivergent children. I’m aware that they are in a different situation entirely.)
A few years ago, on Writer Twitter, I met a fellow aspiring author, a really cool lady, and we agreed to try being critique partners, and traded the first few chapters of our novels for each other to mark up (which was an absolutely sickeningly terrifying experience, for me, but I was really trying, at that point, to become a Serious Writer, lol). She was a generation or two my senior, but we wrote in the same genre, and I liked and trusted her. She left me a lot of thoughtful feedback — but the comment that jumped out to me the most was on a part where I mentioned a two-year-old child that was wearing a diaper to bed. My critique partner wrote in red: “A two-year-old in diapers?? Really??!”
At the time, I had a two-year-old and an almost-one-year-old, both still decidedly in diapers. So, I just laughed in confusion, reading that. I figured my critique partner must not have much experience with kids. I seriously had no idea, at that point, that anyone on earth could consider it at all weird for a two-year-old to be wearing diapers!
But then, some time later, I read somewhere that it’s only in recent decades, since the advent of disposable diapers, that parents have delayed potty training until age two/three. According to this source I read, back in the ‘50s and earlier, kids would be potty training around their first birthday – pretty much as soon as they could walk. So, some parents look down on us modern moms, for whom disposable diapers make it easier to be “lazy.”
A confession: I’m a mom of three, soon to be four, and I do not do cloth diapers. Womp womp. I know that that would be the morally superior, crunchy thing to do. And I did do some research about it and seriously considered it – but honestly, I’m overwhelmed with laundry as it is, and just don’t want to.
I’ve potty trained two girls so far, and am working on it with my son, who’s currently two. I’ve found, thus far, that each kid is extremely different. My eldest was unconventional: she was pooping in the potty every single time by the time she was two years old, but despite all my efforts, refused to pee in the potty until after she was three (and we had a real battle about it). But once it clicked, she never looked back, and has had almost zero accidents since. My second was a bit more normal about it. She was agreeable and a good learner, and fully trained by around two-and-a-half, well before three years old — but is more prone to accidents, even now, at almost four. My third (my only boy) currently hates the potty, doesn’t want anything to do with it, and at this point I’m resorting to rewarding him just for sitting on the thing at all. And my methods and process have been pretty much the same with each of them. I’m not super rigid about it; I start introducing the potty before they’re two, but the training process is more gradual than rigorous. It’s just what works for us.
Is this a moral failing? Do I deserve the harsh judgment of these old-school, early-potty-training moms online? I don’t know.
Maybe if I did cloth diapers, it would compel me to potty train my kids earlier. I know a mom from church who cloth diapers, and is currently potty training her fourteen-month-old because she simply can’t stand the laundry anymore – which, I imagine I’d feel the same way! But I also can’t help feeling like maybe she is the superior mom and human for this.
My family’s pediatrician (who is a “normal” pediatrician, not a crunchy/holistic one) doesn’t start talking about potty training until two years old. When I told her my son was still pretty averse to the potty, at his two-year well check, she was totally unconcerned, and said that was still normal, that it was still early. So I guess this is the norm, in 2025. But just because something is the norm in modern times, certainly doesn’t mean it’s the best! If anything, maybe we should be wary of what’s considered normal in these modern times!
So why don’t I just train my kids earlier, if I’m that concerned about it?: well, basically, because it’s easier.
For one, less cleanup. I hate cleaning up pee. The earlier you train, the more accidents you have. Training my eldest when she was three years old was a pain in its own way, but there were relatively few pee spills to mop up.
For two, it’s easier to instruct a slightly older child. With my two-to-three year old, I was able to have a slightly more rational conversation with her about the potty; and, although we butted heads, I found this approach far more intuitive than trying to teach a one-year-old about it. Maybe this is just because of my personality type. Being ILI in socionics/INTJ in MBTI/LVEF in psychosophy, I have a “logical” way of thinking, and so it makes the most sense for me to solve problems and approach obstacles that way.
So yeah. It’s easier, for me, to potty train at a slightly older age, around two and a half. Parenting is hard, as we all know. I do try to make it easier where I can. Don’t we all?
I do worry that I’m a bad or lazy mom or human for trying to make my life easier this way. Am I doing my kids a disservice somehow? Would they be more confident, and get off to a more self-assured start in life, if I had them out of diapers by age two? I don’t know. Some might say yes. But on the other hand, I worry that the struggle of going through potty training at a very early age might disrupt the peace in our house and end up affecting them negatively. Keeping stress low and moods positive as much as possible is not a luxury, but a necessity, I’ve found, when parenting.
There’s also the argument that all those disposable diapers are wasteful and terrible for the environment. Although, the older I get, the less certain I am that the environment is as big of a concern as we’re made to believe it is (I don’t know, though; I’m on the fence, still) – and if it is, I know for absolute certain that there’s nothing a little person like me can do about it, that no matter how many reusable grocery bags and cloth diapers I use, no matter how much I inconvenience myself, it won’t matter a whit as long as all these big corporations, the air travel industry and meat production industry – the ones who actually have it in their power to change things – continue to not change. So, I’m honestly not super swayed by the whole “waste” argument.
And I haven’t read up a lot on the psychology of potty training earlier vs. later, but, I’m not aware of any compelling evidence that a child is happier or healthier if they potty train earlier. Am I wrong?
I guess in the ’50s and earlier, they were just more used to doing more cleanup. Nowadays, we don’t have to worry that much about that. Certain things are just easier now, because of advancements like disposable diapers. We also have things like washers, dryers, refrigerators, microwaves, all of which make life easier now than it used to be. Is it a moral failing to utilize such things? I can’t imagine that it is.
Like I said, I’m just trying to make our lives easier, because when life is going smoothly, I’m a more patient, happier, and successful mom. Maybe if I were a tougher and stronger type of individual, I’d do cloth diapers instead of disposables. Maybe if I were more resilient and patient in general, I’d potty train at one instead of two.
Maybe these are moral failings. I like to think it’s more like they are imperfections, or even maybe just morally neutral characteristics, of mine that I’m aware of and doing my best to work with, to make sure my family is as happy and mentally healthy as possible. Being flexible and low-stress about the potty is what’s been working for us.
But if you have a really strong argument against potty training at two-three, or in favor of doing it earlier, my inbox is open.
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Here is an unpopular opinion that a lot of people are going to hate me for: people should drive the speed limit.
First of all for the pretty obvious reason that it’s the law, and we shouldn’t break the law.
But also: when I was learning to drive, one of my best instructors was my older sister; and one of the best pieces of advice that she gave me was: “So many accidents could be avoided if people would just slow the f*** down.”
And it’s absolutely true. So I really try to live by that. Sure, like most people, I’ve gotten a couple of speeding tickets in my day. I tend to drive faster if I’m comfortably familiar with the location, have a lot on my mind, and/or am listening to music, all of which sometimes make me forget that I’m driving a car. But the vast majority of the time, I’m that driver that you hate to get stuck behind because I drive the freaking speed limit; five over or under, depending.
I mean come on. Why are you in such a hurry? Didn’t you leave on time? Maybe you should try waking up on time and leaving your house in a timely manner. Or what else is it? Is it just that you’re so important and cool that you just gotta drive fast because that’s what cool important people do?
One of my biggest pet peeves is tailgaters. If I’m driving the speed limit, or even five or ten over, for goodness’ sake, and you are tailgating me – or even if I’m driving under the speed limit, for that matter: I have two questions for you.
One: what are you trying to accomplish? Do you think that, by sitting there half an inch from my rear bumper, you are going to make me go faster? When has that ever worked for you? Tell me, has there ever been a time when you thought “gee, I wish this person in front of me would drive faster, maybe if I ride their butt they’ll get the message and speed up,” and they proceeded to actually speed up enough to appease you? Does that really work?
And two: did you pause to consider that, when you are half an inch from my rear bumper, you have no reaction time whatsoever if I should brake? At such a short distance, even me lightly and gradually pressing the brakes is going to put us both in a dangerous situation, because frankly you can’t even see my tail lights you’re so close.
Reaction time is something that I stress about a lot, in a car. In driver’s ed it was taught that there should always be at least one car length between you and the car in front of you, and that’s another thing that I live by. When passing, I always wait until the entirety of the vehicle that I’m passing is visible in my rearview – that I can see its tires touching the road – before I move back into the right lane. People sliding back and forth between cars with inches to spare, always give me a heart attack. What are you doing? Do you think this is freaking Tokyo Drift? Calm down.
“Calm down” – I suppose you’re probably thinking that I should take that advice myself. And yes, it’s true that I have some driving anxiety. In my driving test in high school, I got dinged for waiting too long to turn left out of a parking lot, because I got nervous every time I saw a car coming. That was literally half my life ago, and I still do this. Sometimes I will turn right and add twenty minutes to my drive to avoid turning left! (I’m like Zoolander, allergic to left turns.) And yes, I hate merging, and yes, I drive the speed limit. I am nervous.
But why the heck would anyone in their right mind not be nervous about driving? The average car weighs, according to Google, about 4100 pounds. And on average there are 114 fatal car crashes in the US daily. It’s a terrifying means of travel. I hate cars. Can more people start to take seriously how dangerous driving is, and how just a mere blink of a moment of inattention or the slightest lapse in judgment can kill people?
Especially if you’re going too fast!!!
This has annoyed me more, and made me angrier, ever since becoming a parent. I now drive with three little kids in the car. And when you are speeding around me, or tailgating, or pretending it’s Tokyo Drift like you’re some important hotshot, you are putting my kids in danger. The Christian charity to which I am obligated admittedly runs out, at this point. I have no patience with you.
So many accidents could be avoided if people would just slow the f*** down. Don’t even get me started on screen use in cars. I can’t tell you how many dinkuses I see driving around with their smartphones in front of their faces. It’s enough to make me seriously consider moving to a city like NYC or some European metropolis where there are trains and subways and I’ll never have to drive again, or worry about teaching my children to drive. Cars are an abomination; even more so when you put self-important, arrogant idiots behind their wheels.
In conclusion: slow the f*** down. Stop riding my bumper. You think I’m annoying by driving the speed limit? Cry about it. At least I’m not putting lives at stake.
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Let’s stop commenting on people’s body size. Pregnant or not.
As a mom who’s currently 26 weeks and change with my fourth baby, this has become a serious pet peeve of mine. You wouldn’t comment on a woman’s body size in casual conversation if she’s not pregnant (unless you’re a complete asshole); so why do we assume it’s okay to do to a pregnant lady?
The comment I get most frequently – from strangers, acquaintances, and even from doctors and midwives, who you would think would know better – is: “You’re barely showing! You’re so small! You’re tiny!” And, I hate that shit. I don’t know if these people think they’re giving me a compliment, but I wish they’d just stop.
I hate being told I’m tiny and barely showing, because it makes me self-conscious about my general, non-pregnant body size. When someone says “you’re tiny,” what I hear is, “you’re such a fat fucking tank of a person that your body hides the entire pregnancy inside its great bulk, and we can’t even tell, like, compared to a normal, attractive, stick-thin mom with an actual waistline, who would already have a round visible bump at like 8 weeks along.”
(Which, is actually not even true of me. Objectively, I’m a medium-sized person with a very “normal” BMI (not that the BMI scale is at all meaningful w/r/t a person’s health or appearance – it’s definitely not, in fact it’s BS, but that’s a rant for another day). I unfortunately just have the sort of wide, sturdy body frame that carries babies really comfortably. Big hands, big feet, no waist, thick ankles: built like a freaking tree trunk. But, on the plus side, I never get serious back pain or groin pain or swelling or anything like that, during pregnancy, and have worked out daily, with relative ease, right up until delivery, every single time. I’ve never needed a pregnancy pillow for my bed or a support band for my belly. I also don’t get stretch marks at all, and bounce back to my normal size pretty much immediately after birth every time. So, you win some, you lose some.)
It’s also triggering because, for many years, I never knew if I’d be able to get pregnant, and always dreamed of being visibly pregnant, so that people would look at me and know. I wanted to need a pregnancy pillow and a support band; I wanted to complain about back pain. And in reality I pretty much don’t get to have that experience – which, I’m lucky that this is the thing I get to complain about; I ended up having no trouble conceiving or giving birth, unlike many women out there, and in the grand scheme of things this is not that big a deal; but, it definitely makes me feel like less of a mom, less of a pregnant woman, less of a woman in general, when people say “you’re due so soon?! But you’re barely showing, I never would have guessed!”
Maybe these people really mean well, with the “you’re barely showing” comments, and it’s just my ED history piping up, making me take their words the wrong way. But even if that’s the case, I don’t think that makes it appropriate at all to comment on someone’s body size.
And I’ve been guilty of this myself, in the past. I hate that. I remember, back before I ever had kids of my own, a coworker of mine was pregnant, and all of us at the salon, including myself, were constantly playfully teasing her like “oh my gosh, you’re huge! You’re only in the second trimester?! Are you sure it’s not twins? How could you possibly get any bigger?!” and other such horrible, insensitive nonsense. I wish I could go back in time and smack myself, and apologize to that poor girl, who was having a hard enough time already.
But then, a couple years later, I had my first pregnancy, and quickly realized how awful it is that suddenly everyone in the world thinks it’s okay to shamelessly judge your body, out loud, in public, as if you’re on freaking America’s Next Top Model or something. It’s hard enough being a female and a mom, in this world. Leave pregnant ladies alone.
The rules are pretty simple. I will spell it out in two steps. If you see a woman who looks pregnant, step one is: don’t assume that she is pregnant! No matter how obvious it seems! She might have painful inflammation, or bloat, or a tumor. You truly do not know. Don’t assume, and don’t ask. Step two is: once she tells you that she is pregnant, there is only one (1) acceptable thing that you can say about her physical appearance, and that is: “you look great!”
Never comment on someone’s body size. This includes complimenting someone’s weight loss. Never compliment someone for losing weight. This is another rule that everyone should live by. I can’t tell you how horrible it was for me, during the days of my active ED, for people to tell me: “wow, you’re so skinny! I wish I looked like you.” “Wow, you’ve really lost weight!” “You’re so lucky you’re skinny.” That absolutely fucked me up, when I was in the thick of it. Even a friendly, innocuous-seeming “congrats, you’ve lost weight, you look great” can make a person think to themselves: “oh, so I looked awful before?” It really feeds a disordered mindset. Also, a person might be losing weight due to depression, a personal crisis, or cancer. You don’t know. Just don’t comment on someone’s body size.
Even if you think you’re giving a compliment and it’s not about weight loss – just don’t comment on someone’s body size! “You’re so thin, I wish I looked like you:” that person might be super insecure about their small body, maybe they were picked on for it as a kid, or maybe they’re very sick. “You’re so pretty, your body is perfect:” that would easily make someone feel objectified, to know that people are looking at their body and rating it on some weird scale. Or worry that if they change anything or gain a single pound or age a few years, they won’t be “perfect” anymore. Just don’t comment on someone’s body size. It’s simple.
“But Mith,” you might be arguing: “not everyone is as oversensitive and paranoid as you are! Most people in the world are normal, and can take a compliment or a benign remark without it causing a whole mental breakdown.”
Maybe so, but I daresay even normies are vulnerable to developing an eating disorder or exercise addiction, if they hear these kinds of comments enough. And even normies would probably be pretty bothered if someone complimented their weight loss and it was the result of their going through a nasty divorce, or losing a loved one, or undergoing major surgery. And, even if “most people” wouldn’t be bothered, that doesn’t mean it’s okay to just disregard that lesser percentage of people who would be injured by such comments. You don’t know if you’re dealing with someone who has an ED or any kind of mental/emotional baggage about their body. If you’re a decent person, you don’t want to risk harming someone.
And it’s not even hard to do. I’m not asking you to do any mental gymnastics or make any great allowances when it comes to interacting with pregnant women. I’m not asking you to go out of your way. It literally requires no additional mental or physical effort on your behalf to simply not comment on someone’s body size or shape.
In conclusion: I will say it again: just don’t comment on someone’s body! It’s seriously not that hard! Thanks for reading.
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I know: I am, as usual, late to this story. I have never had TikTok; I am too old for that, so I rely on reposts on Instagram to get my social media news. Over the past few months, I’ve occasionally read up on this “17 diapers” mom’s story, and I find people’s reaction to her pretty troubling.
Now, as I said, I am not at all familiar with this influencer, whatever her name is – Nurse So-and-so. From what I’ve heard, she posted a lot of problematic content in addition to the video in question, like for example that she didn’t receive prenatal care during her pregnancy, or that she only changes diapers if they’re poopy, not just wet – both of which are, obviously, major red flags. I know there are also accusations of physical child abuse, based on certain behaviors that people observed in her videos. Which, I didn’t watch the videos, so can’t comment.
But! All that other stuff aside, I just want to focus on the topic that she actually went viral for. The issue of the “17 diapers.” Let’s pretend, for the purposes of this post, that she’s an otherwise harmless mom, and consider this issue in isolation.
In case you’re not familiar: Nurse So-and-so posted a video about her life at home when she was a few days postpartum, with a newborn and a toddler. Her husband had left to go on some kind of trip, abandoning her to solo parent both kids when she was fresh out of the hospital. Needless to say, she was struggling, and the house was a wreck. She posted this video, in which she says something like “let’s see how many used diapers are sitting around my house right now!” and proceeds to walk around her house counting them as she picks them up to take them to the trash for the first time in, presumably, several days. And, she ends up finding: seventeen used diapers. Just laying around her house, on the floor, on tables, in random places, not taken to the trash.
And the internet lost their mind over this. In both directions.
Half responded with: thank God! I can relate! Postpartum is so hard, thanks for being real and vulnerable and sharing, now I don’t feel so alone anymore!
And the other half was like: shame on you!! You have time to be on TikTok but no time to walk a diaper to the trash?! Your kids are going to get sick! This is child abuse, your kids are going to be traumatized, you are disgusting and don’t deserve to be a mom, etc. etc.
And it is this second group of people that really worries me.
Because, to start: how is it that, in 2024-25, people are not aware of how hard postpartum is, for a mom? The internet these days is absolutely obsessed with boasting about “my depression,” “my anxiety,” “my neurodivegence,” “my struggles” to the point where people are competing in some sort of suffering olympics, gatekeeping their “mental illnesses” with such presumptuous accusations as “you’re not really depressed, you don’t know what real depression is! I once stayed in my bed for an entire week, not bathing, not eating, just pissing myself right there in the bed because I was too depressed to go to the bathroom – and if you judge me for that, then you just don’t understand my struggle!” And people wear these types of anecdotes like a badge of honor. Their gold medal in the suffering olympics.
And yet, in the midst of this idiotic internet culture that celebrates mental illness, why is it that a postpartum mom – literally, medically speaking, a person most vulnerable to extreme depression, due to the massive hormonal changes, on top of the lack of sleep, the physical pain that she’s in, and the constant demands on her – why is it that her mental health struggle is invalid? Why is her depression not seen as real?! I’d argue that hers is probably way more real than that of a lot of these attention-hungry kids on social media.
To reiterate: it’s “cool” for some single twentysomething person to be so depressed they can’t leave their bed, and we don’t get to judge them – but, for a newly postpartum, solo-parenting mom to be so depressed that she has to prioritize keeping everyone alive, and doesn’t walk diapers to the trash? Unacceptable!
And also, why are we attacking the mom, and not her husband, who abandoned her at literally less than a week postpartum? Can anyone who doesn’t have kids really understand what a dick move that was? Where is your feminism now, internet?
Make it make sense.
“But, Mith,” you may perhaps be arguing, “of course she deserves more judgment than that single twentysomething rotting in his bed. She chose to have kids. She has a responsibility. It’s not about her anymore. She has to put on her big girl pants and take care of the house, even if it’s hard!”
First of all, yes, it is absolutely true that she has a responsibility. That is why she is up feeding her kids and changing their diapers when she would surely rather be rotting in her bed. I feel like, if you are judging her for not walking to the trash can, you have probably never been in survival mode.
I don’t know about you all, but I have three kids five and under, and our main trash can has to live in the sunroom off the kitchen, behind a door that we can lock, because otherwise they get into it, like little raccoons. And I solo parent most of the time. So yes, there have been occasions, like when I’ve been very sick, or had a rushed morning, when a used diaper gets left on the floor for a few hours before I’m able to walk it out to the trash. So, although my floor diaper count has never reached anywhere close to seventeen (because I married a decent man who would never even think of abandoning me like that!!), I can relate to her video. I’ve had a c section before. I know how painful and crippling postpartum can be. You physically can’t move around and do chores.
Second of all, let’s stop being hard on moms for choosing to have kids. Choosing to have kids should not mean subjecting oneself to judgment from strangers everywhere. Choosing to have kids is natural. It’s the most normal thing an adult in their 20s-30s can do. And it is a good thing, an objectively good thing to do, contrary to what all these sad antinatalists and misguided pro-choicers will try to tell you. Just because a woman chose to have kids, does not mean that she automatically has to be superhuman all of the time. (In fact, this expectation that moms have to be these enlightened superheroes, might be part of the reason why there are so many antinatalists and DINKs these days. Who wants all that judgment from everyone?!)
And furthermore, to get a bit gross, let’s look at the actual issue of the diapers themselves. (Let’s pretend that they’re not all fully loaded poopy diapers, as some have said that they apparently were, which is an issue.) If these were mostly just wet diapers, changed at the stage when a normal parent would normally change them – and, if they were tightly rolled up and taped into one of those neat little diaper balls that seasoned parents know how to make – then, is this seriously a bad enough offense to merit the “abuse” accusations? Obviously, if the diapers were all soiled and left unfastened and open where little hands could reach, then yes, that’s vile and that’s a huge issue; but the mere fact of a closed, wet diaper existing in a room – I don’t think that’s that terrible of an offense. Yes, it’s bad, and icky, but, child abuse? Calling CPS? Really?
Sometimes, I really think the internet just hates moms. Hates parents, hates babies, hates families – hates life. It’s a dark place.
“You’re probably really gross, then, Mith, if you’re defending this situation. I sure wouldn’t want to come to your house! Anyone who doesn’t think it’s always a terrible crime to leave used diapers out, is simply a disgusting person.”
We do have a moral obligation to keep our homes clean, especially if we have children. But the reason why we have that obligation is because we need to keep our families healthy and happy. We must take care of our families. Sometimes, in survival mode, taking care of our families means prioritizing the bare necessities: feeding, changing, clothing, washing. Cleanliness is important, but it’s not the be-all, end-all; it is not the deciding factor. You can have a clean house and still be a bad parent, just as you can have a dirty house sometimes and still be a good parent. Cleanliness of the house is only one of many things that factors into the quality of parenting.
(And, btw, is my house sparkling clean? No. Do I have any used diapers on the floor right now? Also no. I clean daily, and my kids are healthy and happy, thanks for your concern.)
And also: let’s not forget what this mom was actually doing, in her video. She was cleaning! Yes, it had been a few days, and she’s not pretending that’s okay. The thing is, just as soon as she was able, she cleaned up! It would of course be an issue if a mom left diapers around all the time, as a rule, and thought it wasn’t an issue. That would be really bad. But sometimes, a good, well-meaning mom goes through a hard time, and lets some things go; but, as soon as she’s able, she gets back up and improves things. She doesn’t let it become a pattern. The 17 diapers mom was not letting this become a pattern.
“But, if she had time to be on TikTok, then clearly she had time to pick up diapers!!”
This might be the most inane comment of them all, lol, and anyone commenting this immediately outs themselves as someone who has never met a newborn. A newborn wants one thing, and that is to lay on its mom, to snuggle with its mom 24/7. A mom with a new baby is, typically, couchbound, especially in the very early days – as she should be, as even the smoothest of births leaves a massive open wound inside your body and needs a lengthy recovery. What’s a new mom in 2024-5 going to do, while nap-trapped or nursing on the couch? Probably scroll her phone. It’s not that she’s loafing around when she could be cleaning. She cannot clean right now, so she’s scrolling to entertain herself while holding the baby. Which is also not a crime, and we all do it.
As I was saying, I’m aware that, in the specific case of Nurse So-and-so, there was more going on. Most of the responses to the viral video didn’t go into all that, though – the main shock factor was simply the “17 diapers” themselves, so that’s all I wanted to address here. And that issue, in and of itself, does not merit the harsh reactions that some people out there were having. The internet needs to leave moms alone.
MiTHology (4.0) 