Sick of it all, going to hang with my 'Friends'

I want to stop blogging. So stop, right?

Like one or two people read this, aside from the random times I might post a link in a comment to something else on the web.

I find that so much of what I read online is hate-reading. I know I am going to disagree or get riled about something and I read it and I do. Is this a valuable use of my time? Am I wasting precious moments of my life on foolish things?

When I first made the decision to stay home with my kid for a few years I told a friend I would have so much fun...on the side, you know...learn Portuguese, learn to play guitar...while caring for my child and working part-time, of course. She sneered, "Good luck with that!" Knowing, I guess, because her sister had kids that it might have been a bit of an ambitious hope. I also wanted to learn to code (that very generic phrase people use about getting more technical: maybe Javascript, Ajax, JQuery, Ruby, Python—but so far, it has not been something I've enjoyed after trying and I have to admit, I'm not feeling motivated toward that). Thing is, it would NOT have been all that ambitious if I didn't waste so much goddamn time reading and arguing about "parenting" (and related feminist, political, etc....) issues online!

There are just so many annoying things out there that stick in my craw and I feel compelled to respond to. But why? The people putting out that stuff surely don't care what I say. And there is a whole, huge, big nation of people in middle America...Kansas, Indiana, Minnesota...small towns in my home state of Illinois, even blue-collar background types like myself in the city of Chicago...who think all this political/feminist/parenting philosophy stuff is hogwash, bullshit, waste of time, nobody's business and they are just going along with their lives, working their low-paying retail jobs part time, or even staying home in their crappy fixer-upper houses with their 2.5 kids and having wonderfully happy lives. So, I need to stop getting stuck in the idea that everyone's a NYT-reading socialist feminist that I have to argue with.

The places I land on the web tell me different, of course. The latest annoyances being: feminists who actually think griping to Lego about their cute "Friends" line is important, worthwhile work; another article that devolves into highlighting the Lego Friends gripe as an example of modern feminism at work; and a discussion on the NYT Motherlode about the Badinter book on Conflict, bemoaning the "Depressing Lot of the Conflicted American Mother."

On the last point, a discussant caries on about how it's not an ideology that is causing the conflict for American mothers, but rather, economics. (In her post she also notes how Hanan Rosin's breastfeeding article had freed her from the notion that breastfeeding was very important, and so I can make the judgment that she's not very bright—beside the point, but worth noting.) She writes:

I suppose my parting thought about this would be that for most women who don’t have incredibly high paying jobs or wealthy spouses, these “choices,” about work and family aren’t actually choices. We weigh our particular circumstances and attempt to figure out the best course of action. The notion that scads of women are chucking fulfilling jobs to be handmaidens to idealized, natural motherhood just doesn’t ring true to me.

And my thought was that, what on earth are people spending all their money on that they can't afford either staying home, or child care, without thinking that the government should kick in to help them manage their personal affairs? Aside from any value judgment on what is better, both options seem reasonably affordable for normal middle-class working people who don't expect the world for nothing, right? Data shows that 30-40% of mothers with children under 6 do stay home, so it's not unheard of or impossible. I had neither an "incredibly high paying job" nor a "wealthy spouse" and I don't think our family is all that unique. Maybe we are? I don't know. On one hand, I am not completely closed to the idea that some government help might be, overall, in the long run, valuable to society and might help elevate everyone. But on the other hand, I don't see philosophically why these sorts of things should be the government's business and I would worry about abuse of benefits and huge waste, as well as the danger of giving the government a foothold into our personal lives...

In any case, I am so over all this. So, for my own well being I am going to take a break from the sphere of parenting "news" and instead of reading and commenting on stupid articles slamming Lego Friends blocks, I am going to play with my kid with her Lego Friends blocks...and maybe learn some Portuguese and guitar in my spare time, too! I may not have much longer in this at-home-mom gig and I don't want to waste my time!