Look out world!

A bitch is back (wink)…rested, refreshed and refueled with high octane bitchitude.

Shall we?

A very special thank you to my good friend Menekse who opened up her home to this bitch whilst I was in San Francisco! Neksher, you are the best and this bitch had a blast raiding your fridge and drinking all your vodka!

And thanks also go out to the folks at BlogHer for inviting a bitch to speak on the topic of political blogging.

Thoughts inspired from BlogHer…

This bitch was fascinated by the mommy bloggers who were out in full force at BlogHer. I usually don’t attend blogger events and when I do they are usually for political bloggers so BlogHer was a rare opportunity for me to meet with and observe folks who blog about all manner of shit. Trust that the mommy bloggers captured this bitch’s attention from jump.

Now, y’all should know that mommy bloggers aren’t one size fits all. I met some fantabulously snarky women who blog about the ups and downs of parenting and the various educational and/or socialization techniques they have tried with their chil’ren. And there were lots of moms who pretty much used their blog to interact with other folks and have grown people conversations. Then there were the mommy bloggers who kept apologizing all over themselves for being mommy bloggers…which they need to cease immediately because the world tosses plenty of shit on all of us…Lawd knows we don’t need to shovel in our own direction.

Cough.

Anyhoo, I truly enjoyed the mommy bloggers who opened a window into a world pretty much foreign to this bitch.

However…and you just knew there was a however coming…I was concerned by those mommy bloggers who seemed to be approaching their parenting as a project that would eventually be graded or as the total definition of themselves.

I acknowledge that my concern comes from my personal experiences as the child of a parent (my mother) who very much defined herself through my siblings and this bitch. My successes or failures were always weighted with how they made my mother look or feel. If I wanted to pursue something that lacked prestige it was fiercely discouraged and when I didn’t want to pursue a thing that was saturated in envy-inspiring appeal my reluctance was framed as hurting my mother's reputation. By the time I was in Junior High, I knew very well that my mother was living through us and I didn’t truly shake the drama of that shit until I was damn near 30 years old.

My memories of that style of parenting color my reaction to anyone who appears to be a project parent be they a mother or father or it be a multi-individual parenting thang.

I’m left wondering where the line is between wanting the best for your child and running your child’s life as if it were a new product launch.

I’ve certainly met parents who were way more casual about their child raising than I would think wise. A bitch has always thought there was a thick layer of privilege coating the notion that a child won’t face drama when given little or no direction. Shit, I’ve met too many people who have spent the greater part of their adult lives digging out from the whole they found their adult asses in after years of apathetic parenting. Mmmhmmm, that shit is seriously complicated by the lack of a financial safety net.

Mayhap the answer is in the middle ground represented by most of the mommy bloggers I met…in the delicate balance between offering encouragement and being the Little League parent from hell, providing discipline and dealing out punishment, and between loving a child enough to let them grow into themselves or loving yourself too much to see the individual your child needs to be.

One thing for sure is that this parenting shit certainly matters.

After all, chil'ren are our future.

Oh shit...I've summoned that motherfucking song up into my head!

Ugh.