I don't know how many of my reviews start this way, but here goes. I was walking around Quail Ridge Books, browsing for the next great read, when I came across ...
...in this case, Smotherhood by Amanda Lamb. As you may recall, I always like to have a purse book...a book you can throw in your purse to read when you are waiting at the doctor's office, killing time between innings at Little League games or when you have a 5-minute pocket of time while the water boils for pasta. The subtitle, "Wickedly Funny Confessions from the Early Years" and the fact that the books was displayed on a table of local authors was just the one-two punch I needed to add it to my pile accumulating at the register. Final destination...purse.
I am sorry to report that this purchase became one that I regret making. When I started reading, I learned that Ms. Lamb is a crime reporter for WRAL, a local TV station. Having worked full-time myself when my children were small, I looked forward to some insight on balancing home and work, sprinkled with a bit of in-the-trenches commiseration. I didn't feel it.
To be brutally honest, the author came off to me as an elitist snob breathing the rarefied air of privilege and reading one too many new age-y parenting books. First of all, I think kids are pretty smart. I don't understand the parenting communication style that refers to oneself in the third person. "Because, as I've told you four hundred times, Mommy works. I can't be late for work..." I think it ends up sounding condescending and condescending is one of my least favorite tones regardless of the age of the one being condescended to. Second of all, referring to the same quote, Lamb says, "Once again, I'm stunned by my need to justify myself to a six-year old." Me too! I felt almost enraged reading, "I explained to Mallory that a big part of me is what I do for a living, that it helps define me and makes me who I am." Yup, that clears everything up for a six-year old!
Since when do parents have to justify ANYTHING, let alone the need to work for a paycheck to put food on the table, to a six-year old? My feeling is that the six years preceding this explanation, somehow gave that six-year old a sense that SHE was in control, that her needs outweighed the needs of the family and that she deserved an explanation for anything that she didn't like. Maybe I err a little too much on the side of, "Because I said so," but I believe that one of the best lessons we can teach our kids is the childhood version of "shit happens." Yup, sometimes you get a teacher that you don't like. Sometimes the other kids are going to leave you out of the hopscotch game (do kids today even play hopscotch?) Sometimes it's going to rain on your parade. And sometimes you just need to accept that. I think it's wonderful that kids eventually learn that what you do for your career makes you who you are, gives you a sense of accomplishment and puts food on the table...but they learn that by example, not by a rather complex thesis postulated to a six-year old!
The ongoing theme of the children as little tyrants is perpetuated when, dressed in jeans and a cute top, she explains to her daughter, "Well, Mommy is going to meet Miss Cathy [that's how our kids refer to adults in the South] after Target, just for an appetizer, not a full dinner, just a few minutes. I promise." At least Lamb recognizes that she's "negotiating with small terrorists," but I'm not sure she gets how they became terrorists.
The condescension is not limited to her children. The following happens on page 21, so I'm a little surprised that I even continued reading. Lamb states that "There's an understanding between booger-wiping, shoe-tying, boo-boo-sothing women that transcends all potential differences." Amen to that! But then goes on to tell about "Belinda, a bank teller at one of the branches I occasionally pop into during my workday...Belinda's husband drives a crane, they live in a double-wide, and she wears Christmas sweaters. But the differences melt away when we talk." Somehow I think that Belinda doesn't feel those differences melt away. I think she is well aware of Ms. Lamb's disdain for the life she leads and probably even knows that Ms. Lamb thinks her Christmas sweaters are "charming," but not in the way that she would ever want someone coming to her dinner party wearing one.
As Lamb is commiserating with Belinda (who probably just wants to cash her damn check and take the next customer), she says, "Men are like day laborers that construction companies pick up on the corner. If you tell them exactly what to do and promise them a beer afterwards, they can be hard workers. But they're not going to get off that corner or that couch without a good swift kick..." She adds that "Belinda nods fervently." but I'm thinking Belinda is thinking, "What the hell does this woman know about construction or day laborers? Um...remember...my husband drives a crane! Maybe those day laborers are struggling to put food on the table in THEIR double-wides for their kids!"
Maybe I'm a little sensitive on this subject. My Dad was a crane operator for 40 years. (He tells me that he still does a lot of construction work in his dreams, putting in an 8-hour day, helping to build a bridge or knock down a building in his sleep.) I never thought that a TV crime reporter's job was more important or more prestigious than what my Dad did for a living. The highly skilled work that he did ensured the safety of the other workers and the stability of whatever structure they were working on. And no one ever felt compelled to tell me and my sister that Dad's job was part of defining who he was or making him feel complete...we learned that by watching his work ethic, seeing the pride he took in the projects he worked on and oh yeah, seeing that there was food on the table every night and a house to sleep in. Of course, Ms. Lamb might have looked down her nose at our house, which, like the double-wide to which she refers, would certainly not have measured up to her standards.
There were some parts of Smotherhood that made me laugh and made me commiserate in that sisterhood-of-the-sweatpants kind of way that we Moms have. Regarding her kids and alcohol, she writes, "I've let [Mallory] smell it before, and she thinks it smells disgusting. Chloe, on the other hand, would drink bong water if it were offered to her in a cup, so we don't leave errant glasses of alcohol around our house, lest we might end up with a drunken kid and a visit from social services." True. Funny. Well-said.
In Lamb's defense, after being stopped for a traffic violation, trying to get out of a ticket, she notes about the officer, "He was going to have none of my privileged-white-suburban-hysterical-mother act." So maybe I just need to lighten up. Maybe Amanda Lamb has overstated and exaggerated her stories with her tongue firmly in-cheek and is self-aware enough to know that what she has described is a caricature, and not a very flattering one, of the upper middle class, suburban, working Mom. Mommy's not convinced!
Di
Sometimes another blogger's book review just stops me, grabs me by the hair, drags me to the 
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