“They’re not even an actual group!” L is so upset, she’s half crying, half shouting through the phone. She’s so upset, I think I could hang up and hear her shouting all the way from Virginia. “I don’t think they’re actually associated with the school at all. I asked. There’s no ‘booster club.’ They just declared themselves a booster club and then gave themselves a stupid name.”
Me: “Stupid name?”
“POPs.” She sighes straight down the line. “Parents of Preschoolers.”
What is at issue: Apparently, these “POPs” - the self-declared leaders of the parents at L’s son’s preschool - have decided to throw a teacher appreciation luncheon. They want the other, non-POP parents to bring a covered dish. So my friend L offers to bring her Buffalo Chicken Dip. And the POPs turned their noses up at it. “Buffalo Chicken Dip? Um. . . that’s not what we have in mind. So, no thanks.”
Apparently, they were thinking homemade mini-quiches, prunes wrapped in applewood bacon, and bite sized Beef Wellington. L’s Buffalo Chicken Dip was just too pedestrian.
“I would have made something else, but, after that, I was out! They’re all these perfect, plastic, over-streaked stepford moms,” she wails. (I do not interrupt with a reminder that I have jumped on the streaky hair bandwagon. This is her rant.) ”They’re a bunch of adult bullies. They’re the ‘popular’ girls in high school, all grown up. POPs,” she mutters. “I think they’re CRAPs: Catty, rotten attitude parents.”
“They are your own version of That Bitch, Lisa Mullins!” I declare.
L, who has heard me bitch about Lisa Mullins endlessly, “Yes! Just like Lisa Mullins!”
I’ve heard a lot about these so-called Mommy Wars, this war that is allegedly raging between working and stay-at-home moms. I have to tell you: I don’t think this Mommy War is what people think it is. I don’t think it exists at all. I have been a working mom, and I have been a stay at home mom. I never thought stay at home moms were lazy or that working moms were fobbing off their children.
Most of the parents I hang out with pass no judgement on each other for anything. There’s no Sears/Ferber debates, no jarred/homemade baby food scuffles. I’m not spending my days worrying about who uses cloth or buys Pampers. And I sure don’t care who works and who stays home.
But you know who does? The CRAPs.
They care, because if you aren’t doing what they’re doing, you are wrong. And they have to let you know that you are wrong. They pick a side, they get on it, and they start fighting with us, the . . . well, I don’t have a catchy ancronym for us, those who don’t care about the parenting choices of others, those who understand that every parent and every child are different, and we all have to do best for our kids in different ways. It isn’t working moms vs stay at home moms. It’s CRAP parents versus the rest of us. It’s their superior, better-than-you attitude that is bringing all the moms down. And it’s time to take a stand against them and their CRAPiness.
It is time for us to stand up to them. “I respect your parenting choices, but they are not mine!” Isn’t that what I tell my four-year-old to do, use his words? Why am I cowed by That Bitch, Lisa Mullins? Why do I let her make me feel bad for buying conventional groceries, for driving a domestic car, for letting my kids watch PBS when I am at the end of my rope. No! No! I am secure in my choices. I am doing ok! No, I am not Mom of the Year material, but I am doing well with what I’m working with! And I should tell her that.
All you CRAP parents: Shut up! The rest of us are doing our best. yes, we might be fumbling. But we are trying.
“Oh, goodness, are WE CRAPs?” I lament to L. “Am I a crap because I hate That Bitch, Lisa Mullins?”
“No!” she said immediately. “You are not a CRAP. You don’t dislike That Bitch, Lisa Mullins because she parents differently than you do. You dislike her based on her own merits, who she is as a person. Specifically: her bitchiness.”
And that, my friends, is the way it should be. We shouldn’t dislike each other because of whether we work in or outside the home. We shouldn’t dislike each other because of whether we are “crunchy”moms or not. If a mom is effectively and lovingly parenting her kids, we should respect that, and let it be. What we should dislike are bitchy moms, CRAP parents, those that have to make the rest of us feel bad.
And I just have to say: I pity L’s CRAPs. I have had L’s Buffalo Chicken Dip, and it is amazing and without equal. If you act like CRAP, you just miss out.
