THE BRAZEN CAREERIST- Mommy porn: The myth of perfect parenting

When I was growing up, there was lots of chatter in the media about how models were bad role models. Today the news is how the media portrays moms.

Take a look at the spread in People magazine of Jennifer Lopez and her one-month-old twins. At first I thought it was a parody. But it's mommy porn: the visual fantasy of what being a working mom can be– but isn't for most women. Jennifer Lopez has a household full of helpers to keep her career on track while she has kids: a cook, a trainer, two or three nannies, a cleaner, an assistant, a stylist. And probably others I can't even imagine.

Here's another example of mommy porn: Angelina Jolie. She has a rule that the nannies (plural, yes, each kid has one) cannot be photographed holding the kids, because it's bad for Angelina's image as a mom. This is the problem: It looks like these very successful women have it all, even though they don't.

Here's what happens: Some reporter interviews someone about the big job. And then the person ends up talking about the mythic work-life-balance: "Throughout my career, I did [insert something that's supposed to be wonderful for children] for my kids." So we assume the kids are doing fine. Why do we even ask? We have no hope of learning the truth. Very few people would say their career is harming their kids.

So stories about moms being moms aren't true. It's propaganda. Parents say they live their lives in a way that's good for their kids. But who really knows? All we have is the parents' subjective and hugely biased opinion that their kids are turning out fine.

I'm not saying that all kids are harmed by parents' careers. I'm just sick of famous families wanting to make us believe they're doing fine by offering mommy porn, parenting propaganda.

So in the interest of truth-telling, get this: people aren't honest about what it's like to be with kids. People are scared to admit that they'd rather be at work than with their kids because work is easier than parenting. If I have to read about how much someone loves their kids one more time, I'll puke. We all know that parents love their kids. It's not interesting. It's not helpful. It's not even very relevant. 

What's interesting is the part where parents love their kids but don't love being with them on a daily basis. It's very scary to write. But I'm telling you, if the feeling weren't ubiquitous then there would be no one to be in middle management working 9-5– they'd all be home with their kids, doing freelance work after bedtime.

People are choosing to go to work rather than stay with their kids all day. But no one talks about making this choice because they're scared their kids will read it. I'm not sure what the right answer is. I just know that we have to have a more honest discussion of parenting.

Mommy porn propaganda tries to make us think that work/life balance is possible, but mommy porn is dangerous. It makes people think every woman can parent gracefully while working full time.

But I want to tell you something: Women earn more than men in most major cities today. And in the corporate world, up and down the ladder, women and men are on equal footing in the workplace in terms of who gets paid what, as long as neither party has kids. 

The level of expectations people have for parenting is absolutely insane. And mommy porn feeds this problem. Everyone is drawn to the ideal of Angelina Jolie as the perfect combination of careerist and mother like the Pied Piper's tune, and these attitudes are more exhausting to me than any amount of actual parenting ever is. 

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