I have never read Parenting Magazine. Well, maybe I have thumbed through it in a doctor’s office once or twice. I don’t tend to read “conventional” consumer-heavy magazines. Too much molding everyone and their kids to be the same image of “normal” that modern obstetrics and pediatrics wants to sell us: buy this, buy that, you need this gadget and that gadget.
Not my thing, but whatever. There’s something for everyone, and the “natural family living” publication, Mothering Magazine (now Mothering.com) was made for mamas like me, so fine. To each her own.
When Parenting Magazine decided to have me write a piece for them as publicity for my book last month, I was thrilled. To have a huge mainstream “conventional” magazine allow my voice was great publicity. Granted, they wanted a bit more of a controversial “spin” on what I don’t consider controversial about my parenting, but we worked it out over dozens of emails and edits and the piece they published about how we co-sleep was very well received. I got more Facebook posts about that piece than about any other, as many conventional parents felt enlightened and many “closet cosleepers” felt vindicated. Win/win, right?
Well, imagine my surprise when I saw the Parenting.com piece just weeks ago asking readers to vote on whether I (and Alicia Silverstone and January Jones) were “nuts, normal, or natural.”
Not much ruder than using a writer’s work for your own benefit and then turning around and bashing them. Tacky tacky tacky!
Make up your mind, Parenting: are you a parenting magazine or just another corporate microphone contributing to the catty, judgmental, and homogenized notion of “normal” many of us are finding does not match reality?
I know what I think; convince me otherwise if you have the gumption!
