Ex-Lawyer Among Bloggers Who Write About Parenthood Foibles
A former lawyer writing online about her foibles as a mother is one of several bloggers chronicling their less-than-perfect child rearing tactics.
The blogger is Carole Morrell, and her tongue-in-cheek blog is titled The Drunken Housewife, the Wall Street Journal reports (sub. req.). In a post explaining her background, Morrell writes that she had always wanted to make partner, not parent. But her second husband loved kids, and Morrell came around to his way of thinking.
One of Morrell’s recent posts is titled, “Dammit, I suck as a mother.” It explains that she felt incredibly guilty after attending a private counseling session and shopping at Bloomingdale’s, only to find out later that her child had gotten sick at school. “Sometimes I hate myself, sometimes I miss the old days when I was a childless lawyer,” she writes. “God knows that being available six days out of seven sometimes isn’t enough when you’re a parent of a small child.”
Kathleen Gerson, a sociology professor at New York University, says confessions of bad parenting are becoming more popular as working women feel pressure to be perfect mothers. “It’s an indirect protest against something very real and getting more real every day,” Gerson told the Wall Street Journal blog, The Juggle.
Morrell is finding that her children, age 9 and 6, are starting to voice concern about her blog posts. Her 9-year-old learned that Mommy and Daddy are seeing a counselor through the blog, and her 6-year-old recently tried to hit the delete key when she found out Morrell was quoting her conversations online, according to the story.
Still, Morrell says the blog gives a voice to herself and other women in similar circumstances. “Every now and then, I get a comment from a stay-at-home mom who says, ‘Oh my God, I’m so glad you wrote that. That’s just what I go through with my kids,’ ” Morrell told The Juggle.
