Quinn's Blog

um. i use cloth diapers. and breastfeed. and sleep with my baby. and feed him organic food. can i still play with the moms who don't? or are the other ap moms ruining it for me?

I think everyone should be allowed to play with everyone without holier-than-thou comments. I long for a "we're in this together" mentality, a "let's support one another despite our differences" mentality, a MATURE mentality.

So, where are all the smart moms online message boards? Because when I look, all I see are Militant Attachment Parenting boards, and Militant Breast Feeding Boards, and women who choose usernames that identify them as ChaseNCody'sMommy, and whose sig lines are all about being a mommy and a wife, as if the only identity they have can be summed up that way.Where are the smart, funny, non-militant moms hanging out online? Seriously - I look all the time, and haven't found a message board yet that wasn't filled with a lot of judegemental and mindnumbing stuff.

Amen sister! That is the reason I quit going to mothering.com. I don't follow the AP "rules" but I am pretty damned attached to my son. It bugs me that they think if they do all things on the list then that makes them good parents.

Excellent observation Amy! I think it's this type of thing that keeps me off 'those' boards. And probably many others. You go girl!! ;oP

Oh my god, this is such a sore spot for me. Instead of letting my head explode, I'll just say this: as long as you love your kids and you're not totally stupid? They will be fine. They will, in fact, flourish! Stay home/work, breastfeed/don't breastfeed, it doesn't matter. Love your kids the best you can and they'll turn out wonderfully.I think a lot of those "militant parents" are secretly unsure of their choices and they put others down to reassure themselves.

Holy crap. So much for peace, love and harmony and the "bonding of sisterhood". Really. I agree, amy, we should be supporting one another. Not lording our choices over one another just because you don't agree. I just feel sorry for this.

Okay, I AM a child psychologist, specializing in infancy and toddlerhood, so I do feel comfortable summing up the last 75 years of psychological research: Happy parents have happy babies. If you love spending your days and nights with your sweet little one, and can afford to do so, God bless. If you feel you are a better parent by doing work you love before reuniting with your precious, go for it. Parenting is not a competitive sport, it is an intimate relationship. To suggest that your way of parenting is inherently better than mine is similar to saying that you are better at having sex with your husband than I am with mine. :-)

Oh Boy, I think Im opening a real can o' worms here but... Im willing to bet a lot of these militant AP folks are the same ones who have online journals that do nothing but talk about how they cannot move an inch without their kids losing their minds! The same ones who moan at length about how their kids are up and down allll night long and keeping the whole 'bedfull of family members' awake etc... Heck, they can make fun of other parenting styles, why not!?

Oh wow... I'm right there with you all! It's so frustrating when other Moms let you know how much better they are then you because they made different, (and, of course by different, I mean, THE RIGHT) choices in how to raise their child(ren).Just as each Mom is different, so is each child. What works for one Mom/child, does not work well for another. What works for your first born, may not work for your second born, even!Unless you're locking your child in a closet, or otherwise doing harm to your child, no parent is better or worse than another.Happy parents make happy kids and happy kids make happy families. It's that simple.There are so many layers to each of us. We're not just MOM, and we shouldn't be. True, being a Mom is a big (wonderful, joyful, happy and sometimes frustrating) portion of our life, but being a woman with other interests, etc. is important too. Not only to ourselves, but to our child(ren) as well.Kristen, apparently the smart, funny, non-militant moms hang out with Amy, and rightly so. :)

This is exactly why I stay away from militant forums and message boards.

OMG! I read Jennifer Weiner's post first, then came here, after reading the thread. I read the first two pages of the thread with my mouth hanging open at my desk here at work, then I had to stop. Unbelievable! I've never felt so insulted in my whole life. People have lost all sense of tolerance and are so wrapped up in their only little clique-ish worlds that they've become completely close-minded. I could go on about how I chose to bottle-feed instead of breastfeed or that fact that I didn't want a bassinet in our bedroom and our daughter has slept in her crib from day one, but quite frankly, it's nobody's business. Thank you to Sara in the first comment - my baby is very happy, very healthy, very intelligent and very loved, even though we sometimes indulge in a McDonald's Happy Meal. This is the same reason I stopped subscribing to the various parenting magazines - I was sick of feeling guilty for how I was or wasn't raising my child.

i'm fed up with that crap. women should be united by the fact that they are mothers, not divided by the differences. i've all but abandoned mommy-type boards because of the guilt that's lorded over the heads of all moms - the APs vs. "mainstreams," working vs. stay at home, etc. it's incredibly sad. The AP militants drive me especially batty because it's incredibly unrealistic to expect everyone to conform to such a rigid style of parenting in this day and age - but they are the least likely to recognize that.

While I agree you that being insulting, with no other purpose than to be insulting, is a rude thing... I think to some degree this is just backlash. Most AP parents are used to being the butt end of a lot of really ignorant, insulting, rude talk. We're the minority almost everywhere and we're constantly on the defensive from people (friends, family, strangers) who tell us we are perverts raising dependent, whiny kids (or people who call CPS on us for nursing kids older than other people think is "normal" or for sleeping with our kids). So while I don't condone *anyone* who insults other people just for the fun of it, I don't find it surprising, either. I think non-AP parents are just as guilty of this kind of mean-spiritedness as AP parents are.

While I certainly believe you, Aimee and Kelly, that AP parents get grief from people who don't understand or agree with the choices you make, I've never seen anyone bash it anywhere. Not online, not in public...I guess I just frequent the right places. :)And none of the message boards I've been to that are more mainstream are as mean and self-righteous as that thread at Mothering.com is.

It's funny that everyone is running into only ap websites, forums, etc. I seem to only run into pro-elective-cesarean-dr's are gods-homebirth is for animals- kind of people. I am involved with an attachment parenting sort of playgroup in a nearby city and while there are some militant sort of people there, most people are very accepting and laid back and the playgroup is very diverse: we have everthing from fundamental christians to wicans represented.

I hate the mean-spiritedness too, and I'm pretty crunchy. I hate the long lists in the sig lines of all the AP qualifications a person has, and whose wife and whose mother they are. MDC can get very cliqueish and immature. I hate to even identify myself as AP.But you have to understand that many of these women experience rudeness almost every day regarding their parenting choices. AP moms hardly have a monopoly on divisive behavior. Why shouldn't they have a place to blow off some steam? They are not saying these things to people in their real lives, they are saying them online among a community of "safe" people. For some of those women, MDC is the only place where they feel truly comfortable. It's a shame that they have to feel so alienated.

Even when I'm blowing off steam, I'm not holier-than-thou. Why does it matter if they're among their own or not? They still sound like jerks.

I understand the feeling isolated, oppressed, etc., but I still gotta say, distain for others is not a family value. Children learn from how their parents behave, and I for one want to teach my son that even though people believe things that I disagree with, that does not make their points wrong or invalid. Let love and respect for others radiate from my home, and let me increase the peace in this world.

Maybe it's not fair, but I would expect better from this website (mothering.com). I mean, it's got "communal" right in its header!!! Being picked on does not give you the right to become mean and dismissive of others and their choices, even if it is tempting to become so.

Just having had a little boy on June 21st. I was horrified at the comments on that board. Say no to circumcision? Why, so my son can get infections, cancer, and be laughed at by the other boys? WTF? I can't believe there are people out there that put someone down for having the "wrong" opinions.

Wow. Amy II, that was a big bunch of in-your-face rhetoric. So if I *don't* circumcise my son, he'll get infections, cancer (!!) and mocked? How are statements like that any different? This is not to say that I agree with the forum topic in question, but unless I'm missing some irony, here's another pot-kettle moment.

Wow, that is so not how that was supposed to come across.*Since I believe that is best for my son why should I be put down for it? If the next person is not for circumcision that's OK too. It's their child. It's just that I wouldn't think the next person is a horrible person for opting NOT to but that same person should not impose their belief on me and try to think I'll feel bad for it. Is that better? Good.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, since I have girls, but wonder what kind of evidence you have that your son would have suffered this fate should he not have been circumcised? I'm all for making decisions personal to the family, but I hate to see people make decisions based on erroneous information. The medical community has been saying for many years that there is no medical basis for circumcision. It's a personal choice. "Sorry folks, your sons CAN live healthy productive lives with a foreskin...we were wrong." This based on a European population that is only about 3% circumcised (coinciding with the percentage of the religious population that does it) so they have a rather large control group to study from. As for being laughed at by other boys....only about 30% of the population is circumcised these days, vs. the 90% in our generation. And it's declining. Those jokes in the locker room might very well revolve around bald penises and not intact ones in 15 years. Besides, kids are cruel anyway, if it's not a penis it'll be something else...So, if you circumcise for religious or personal reasons, fine, but the reasons you give simply aren't evidence based anymore. The two things I've never understood about circumcision are this: if its illegal to circumcise a girl, why is it just ok to circumcise a boy? And why do we cut off a piece of our childs body instead of just teaching them how to keep it clean? Some things to consider for future sons.Peace,*Lil

I am a new reader of this blog (many thanks to Jennifer Weiner for bringing it to my attention via her blog), and it's just the right time for me to read this post and all the discussion around it. I hope that, as Kelli said, the smart, non-militant moms DO hang around here, cause I'm lookin' for some kindred spirits! Thanks to everyone for their opinions and insights on this particular issue. I've just returned to work on a perdiem basis (weekends only) after choosing to stay home full time with my son, Daniel, for the first three years of his life. (Holy cow, what a pile of stuff I've stepped in - according to lots of moms on either end of center, I'm wrong on all counts!) So, I'm most grateful to have a place to have an intelligent and reasonable discourse with other moms who, regardless of their individual choices, support and respect one another.

You guys are very lucky in this country to be able to chose how to have your baby. I am from Southeast Asia where homebirth with mid-wife is very common. There are Doctors but not enough to go around each village, so they have to use Mid-wife (which consists of the elder ladies in the village and the mom of the lady giving birth).Iwas born in Laos but grew up in America and my husband is Swedish-American. I am well educated, I did allot of research on type of birth and I chose to give birth the old fashion way, home birth. I got scolded by my husband's American family, saying how careless and selfish I am. How I could dare do this to my child..etc..etc.I chose to not circumcise, because in my country we just do not do that. It's cruel, the baby has gone thru so much already from birth and then to circumcise him is like a cruel punishment.In our country children sleep with thier parents. If the man do not agree he sleeps in another room, until the baby decides for himself that he/she do not want to sleep with mommy/daddy. My son decided he didn't want to sleep with us at 7 months, so he sleeps in his crib now. We give our kids thier choice. I slept with my parents until I was 5 years old. Again in our country we breast feed our child until they are ready to be weaned. My mom nursed me for 2 years and I nursed my son for 1 year. My son weaned himself because after I started menstrating I produce hormones that made him not want to nurse. Then we put him on fortified soy milk, because we believe cow's milk should be for calfs. I remember in elementry school, I told a girl my mom breastfed me (this was in the 1980's). She laughed and looked at me in disgust. She then ran and told everyone and everytime the school kids look at me they made a puking face. It was hard enough being a minority and now this, kids could be soo cruel.We should be openminded and stop criticising other parent's and how they raise thier kids. Because they might be doing it for religious purposes or traditional purposes or because they have no choice. We sh0uld also teach our kids to be open minded as well.