Pahrunts on the Board

I know, nokyds4me, that it was a joke! Everyone is so touchy these days. Besides, I think the freecreditreport.com commercial is funny with the guy in the pirate outfit at the fish place...

Sara, your writing is 99.9% better than most Breeders and I want to commend you for that. I like it you don't want to talk about your kid because you could do that on the web anywhere. Makes perfect sense.

What you wrote about Mommy Boards fascinates me. I'll explain why, but it's worth repeating here:

"Nowhiggers, they're pretty much all like that. If I post about discipline, I get accused of abuse. If I post about my child's chore schedule, I get screamed at for damaging his self-esteem. If I post about gardening, there's bitching about how "nobody has tiiiiiime" from the same people who bitch about food costs. It just goes on and on, and it's even worse offline -- I have lost almost all of my friends because of how I parent (discipline, high expectations, not giving up my entire life for the sake of the kid) or because of voicing my opinion on other peoples' parenting (stop acting like a slut, you're a mother, not a sex-symbol; discipline your child or I am leaving; pointing out that a certain friend of mine could actually hold a job for longer than a month instead of expecting her ex from ten years ago to pay ridiculous child support). That's what I meant when I said I was here to rant about "parenting" these days; I'm not looking for parenting support, I just need somewhere to bitch about shit-ass breeders and their ridiculous attitudes!"

I'm 40+ and I could KISS MYSELF, EVERY DAY, that I stuck to my guns and fought hard for my tubal ligation. Not so much because I don't have to deal with children in my life...IT'S BECAUSE BY NOT HAVING KEEDZ I AM NOT REQUIRED TO HAVE CONTACT WITH THE PHENOMENON CALLED THE MODERN MOO. Because most Moos are NUT JOBS, plain and simple.

Moos like to pressure childless women to spawn. They act as if it's going to be SO. MUCH. FUN. to join the Mommy Club. But it's not really a club. It's more like a CULT. And like any CULT, once you're in, things only get more complicated and more VICIOUS if you try to deviate from the path.

You know when I realized this? I have a friend who has ONE kid. She gets harrassed ALMOST AS MUCH AS I DO about having another baybee. People tell her SHE'S selfish, her chyyyld will be warped, all kinds of nasty shit.

Moo Boards bore the shit out of me and make my head want to explode, but I can guar-antee that at any given moment, there are 105,496 Moo posters who are having bitter, grim, battles over whose the Better Mommy. Bottle versus Breast, vaginal versus c-section, attachment parunting versus let-'em-wail, work or stay home....it just never ends. They are ABSOLUTELY EVIL to each other. "Sisterhood" MY ASS. I'd rather be on the "outside" of that crap.

I try to tell people who are fence sitters about this. There is a fence sitter on another board. She kind of annoys me, actually, because she posts about how her life feels empty and she's depressed and how her family is fucked up. (And shitting out a brat will cure this how?)

Anyway, she seems rather wishy-washy and weak. I expect she'll fall on the other side. If there is one thing I've learned, it's that staying CF requires a certain level of RUTHLESS determination and she ain't got it.

Some people tried to tell her: if she's sad now because her parunts fuck with her and favor her brother over her, won't it feel just as bad when they favor GoldenSons' KID over HER KID? That all the games will only BEGIN after she sprogs?

She said, "Gee, I never thought about it that way."

WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED? Rant off.

Sara, I would be interested to know your thoughts on this. And your MIL sounds like a real piece of work.

bell_flower, I haven't experienced a lot of pressure to have another. I get asked, sometimes, if we will have another, and I just say that it's pretty unlikely and leave it at that. I have heard from a LOT of other parents that the reason they have more than one is so that the first won't be lonely or whatever, and I think that's about the dumbest reason to have a(nother) kid that there is. I'm not going to lie -- I'd like to have a little girl, sure, but that is ALSO a dumb reason to have another kid that I couldn't afford and wouldn't have time for.

The mommy wars thing... oy, it's so fucking idiotic. Not that I don't pass judgement on other parents (because... obviously; wait until I unleash my screed about my neighbors' UNHOLY SHITTY BRATS sometime -- or wait until I tell the story of the day I tore into one of my "friends" about her parenting and got ripped a new asshole by her and the entire Internet), but really, most of it is dumb. Judgement for obvious common-sense things, like not disciplining your kids or wasting hundreds of dollars on the latest crappy toy? That makes sense. Fighting about who's "better" for having not had a C-section or not used formula whatever? It's stupid, especially when your children -- breast or not, attachment or not -- are ill-behaved shits who wouldn't know proper behavior if it bit them on the ass. If more parents paid attention to their kids and their own lives instead of waging horribly spelled Internet wars about trivial stuff, maybe there would be fewer angry CF people -- or fewer angry parents!

She kind of annoys me, actually, because she posts about how her life feels empty and she's depressed and how her family is fucked up. (And shitting out a brat will cure this how?)

To me, this was the worst thing in your post. I am here to tell you that having a kid does NOT fill your life up with magic and ponies. It is hard, uncompromising work; it's time, effort, and money that you spend every single day; a child is not a cure for anything. Children don't come with solutions, they come with problems -- and when you're a parent, it's your job to fix those problems. I think parents who have children to fill some needy hole in their own lives are scum. That's a horrible thing to put on a child, and it's not going to work. The parent ends up miserable, the child ends up miserable, ill-behaved, and traumatized. And then guess what? That child becomes a "problem child" because Mommy doesn't want to PARENT, she wants to BE LOVED. Recipe for disaster every single time. Cry me a damn river, I say.

Some people tried to tell her: if she's sad now because her parunts fuck with her and favor her brother over her, won't it feel just as bad when they favor GoldenSons' KID over HER KID? That all the games will only BEGIN after she sprogs?

Or she could have a situation like mine, where the parents (in this case, my in-laws, not my own mother) favor the KID over her. Yeah, that won't make her feel even more worthless and lonely! Using yourself as a human incubator =/= gaining acceptance and love.

Sara, hats off to you. I've been lurking/posting here for a few months now because it's fun and I like it. But...Ok, here it is. I'm a MOOOO TOOO. I figured that because I agree with roughly 99% of what the posters say here that I'd just read, post occasionally but not discuss my childed status.

So here it is. Like Sara, I have 1. She was planned. Unlike Sara, I'm really too old to have anymore (I'm in my 40's). It has always been the plan for us to have just one, though. When I was still in my 30's and the rabid moomies would ride my ass about having another, I'd talk about the expense, but still got pressure. It's nice being in my 40's, because now whenever I get pressed to have another I just look at the butt-insky and say "Dude. I'm OLD." That usually shuts them up.


As for mommy boards, I don't do them. I come to the internet to do proper research and for entertainment, neither of which those places provide. If I need advice, I either do my own research or call the doc. My personal experience has been that people are much more likely to withhold judgement when they're talking to a live person than posting on a message board where they can hide behind anonymity. So I don't deal with the whole "Who's the best mawmy" one-upmanship crap. It's not a fucking contest.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, people who choose to be parents (not breeders, who don't believe in the "choice" element) often have to deal with the worst of it when it comes to brats because breeders ASSume that you're part of their padded-world cult and that they can inflict their shitspawn on you without any fear of retribution. We are also the defacto boobysitters (of course! If we're female, and we have a kid, then we just LOVE watching other people's kids for FREE, right??).

I love it when I'm in a public place with my offspring and I get hit in the back of the head with a rock by some little shit whose big, fat lazy cow of a mother is sitting there watching with a placid smile on her face. Interesting how that smile devolves into an apologetic little titter (minus an actual apology) when I get in the little shit's face and do her job for her. I strongly suspect that in an identical scenario if I were solo, I'd probably at least get an apology from moo (because I'd then be a mean, selfish, heartless non-childed cactus who knows how to file a lawsuit).

Just to be clear, I'm not here to debate, bingo or talk about my kid. I've honestly not been offended by anything I've seen here. Your rants are real, soulful and full of...torque, for lack of a better word. I don't find that many places on the internet. Respect.

Shouldn'there be an etiquette rule against hounding women why they have only one child or why they aren't breeding?

It is extremely tasteless and ill-mannered to dictate to women that they must have more than one kid because of societies idiotic ideas about only kids, and to do the same to those that choose not to have brats.

Barbara, you would think there should be, but as our friend Feh on this board got told once, society feels they have a "right" to know about one's reproductive status.

It's nobody's business. And when they do prod one for such information, a backlash complete with public humiliation should be in store for that individual.

"I am here to tell you that having a kid does NOT fill your life up with magic and ponies."
Well goddamnit!! All I want is a magic pony!!!!

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

I will never be able to plumb the depths of my revulsion at people who come out and ask about my reproductive decisions.

That being said, I tend not to trust parents I don't know, and limit my time with those I do. If they find it ok to feel up each other's stomachs, then it's clear to me that there are no boundaries to personal privacy.

Upon further examination, I'm less offended by the question of "Do you plan on having more" as long as they drop it when I say "No." Surprisingly, some actually do (usually the more gritty, down-to-earth people can accept my answer and leave it along).

For those MOOs who CAN'T let it go and feel the need to interrogate me about my evil, machiavellian desire NOT to shit out a full litter, I would like to ask them "Well, do you plan on having surgery to tighten up your stretched out, slack vagina?"

I remember when I was 15, I was visiting my then-boyfriend at his home and was talking to his morbidly obese baby-rabid mother and sister. They asked me how many children I wanted, and I knew I couldn't be bothered dealing with the reaction that "None!" would get, so I lied and said I would like one, thinking it would be enough to keep them happy and get them off the topic. *Loud buzzer noise* Wrong answer! They started wailing at me about how cruel it is to only have one child "You can't just have oonnneee, that's sooooo cruuueelll!" Ugh.

I don't understand the logic that an only child will be a lonely child. My ex-best friend was an only and she was extremely bubbly and had many friends. Meanwhile, I, who have an older brother, have always been a loner, very quiet and never had more than one or two friends at any given time. But according to the breeder logic, I should be super popular and extroverted simply because I have a sibling, and my friend should have been an introverted loner with social problems. Fools.

Serial killer Aileen Wournos had a brother, and look how she turned out, and I am sure that many persons in prison have siblings.

Having siblings is not training for making friends.
Living life is training for making friends.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

Yea, I think having siblings does serve a purpose, I just haven't figured out what it is yet.

I have friends who are only kids and ones who have siblings. There are benefits to both situations and these people are all relatively normal.

I have 1 younger brother and we are very close.

I have a brother, but he's five years younger than me. I have many of the solitary personality traits that are usually attributed to only children, which I attribute to the fact that I had to entertain myself when I was younger because he either wasn't born yet or was too young to be of any use to me (I was the queen of one person board games. No matter how you slice it, you can't teach a 3 year old to play Sorry! or Monopoly Jr.)

We get along, but we're not really that close. He grew up in his world, and I grew up in mine. These people who insist you have more than one kid don't know what they are talking about, suprise, suprise.

It's my opinion that you can do a FAR better job parenting one kid than you can to more than one. It's obivous seeing people I know with one kid vs. multiple.

Time-wise, financial, emotional, less intrusion on your job and marriage, the list of 1 child vs many goes on.

LoveToLurk Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have a brother, but he's five years younger than
> me. I have many of the solitary personality traits
> that are usually attributed to only children,
> which I attribute to the fact that I had to
> entertain myself when I was younger because he
> either wasn't born yet or was too young to be of
> any use to me (I was the queen of one person board
> games. No matter how you slice it, you can't teach
> a 3 year old to play Sorry! or Monopoly Jr.)
>
> We get along, but we're not really that close. He
> grew up in his world, and I grew up in mine. These
> people who insist you have more than one kid don't
> know what they are talking about, suprise,
> suprise.


Unless children are about 1 year (perhaps 2) apart, there is very little in common, despite the gaga-ism from breeders and the 'breed a sibling' bs. Just look at all the bingoes the moos themselves get if they only have one. Reminds me of that Aesop fable where the punchline was "One, but THAT one is a Lion.."