this was a wonderful article to read today, when I've just gotten my IUD out one week ago and am now ready to try conceiving . . . and am already petrified. (it's been very strange for me to realize I'm absolutely terrified by the prospect of being a parent -- when I'm not even pregnant yet.)

assuming we can all realize irony when it's in front of our faces, it's great to see heather putting a very real face on the scary kind of Bad!Mom propaganda out there. oh sure, I stuff myself absolutely full of any reputable source of information and advice on parenting, and I have ever so many plans to be the Perfect!Mom who doesn't overindulge her kids or withhold things from them or feed them cheap, non-organic baby food or kraft mac and cheese or any of that stuff . . . but I also am old enough to recognize that there are probably going to be times in my parenting career when I f&*% up.

I'm not qualified yet to give any advice, but I can at least quote the basic gist of my mother's own advice to me: "listen to your baby. try your best, do your best. and don't sweat the small stuff." as advice goes, I have only my own happiness and sanity as an adult to recommend it, but I do find that it nicely quells some of my own pre-parent angst.

you're never going to please everyone in this world. you can hark back to the LWs who used this forum as an excuse to bash your tastes in television as an example of that. so heather, I hope you ignore this long, loud batch of still more negative propaganda, in favor of enjoying one more last movie night / spa day / lazy morning in bed / whatever . . . in the hopes of being just that much more relaxed and ready to combat the months of chaos that (they assure us) are about to befall you.

all the best!

It is possible that you need to get new friends, but I am willing to bet that you've cherry picked only the negatives of parenting, then exagerated them to a childish degree in order to get attention.

It's time for you to grow up. Did you honestly think that having a child would be a bed of roses? Much of what your friends told you is true. It happens to most all of us; the exhaustion, the questioning of one's worth, the isolation that accompanies the caring of a newborn. Having spent years and years and years around other parents I know for certain that your friends have also recounted sweet antecdotes ad nauseam. When I am out with young parents, I always order a martini so at some point I can stick the olives in my ears in order to quiet the droning on of little Jason's latest capers and malaprops. The question I have is why have you decided to only hear the negative?

As much fun as it is to make fun of your friends, perhaps you should try a little more listening and a little less judging. Children provide you with mind blowing highs and heart wrenching lows, and you'll need a few friends to share your joys and sorrows with. Trust me.

I was all ready to send a peppy .. . don't worry it'll be okay e-mail until I ran into this xenophobic mess on the second page! Are you kidding me? In 2006, we still have people writing this crap . . ..

Who said Heather could only do TV!

I laughed all the way through the article. And I have two kids--one is 10 and the other is 8--but, then again, I'm the guy.

However, when we got our little bundles of joy, my wife's and my previous lives came to an effective end. My golf clubs are still in storage, and we haven't gotten back to Jamaica since (my wife got to Virgin Gorda with her inlaws, but I had kids to watch). We do the soccer route, and the music lessons, and the really bad choral concerts, and dress-up day and teacher conferences, and...you get the picture. Oh, and the time I went running outside in my socks because my son had figured out how to work the lock on the deck gate. Fortunately, the policeman was very understanding about letting me go right back home because my sick daughter was rolling around the floor in front of the TV, watching cartoons. Yeah, that was neat...

But have hope! Your old life will end, but a new one actually does begin. Kids really are wonderful, and extremely cute. They're fun to train (I practiced with a dog first) and the more attention you pay to them, the more fun they are. Really.

Just don't expect life to be what it was before. That's a goner. But you would have gotten bored being young and single and attractive forever, anyway, wouldn't you?

You would. Just keep telling yourself that. And when you're feeling down and trashing yourself, and your kid looks up at you and says "but you're not a loser, dad, I love you!" you'll believe it.

For the record, "Mothers Who think" was first changed to, I believe, "Parents Who Think" precisely because of valid complaints (from FATHERS in particular) about it's rather self-asorbed focus on MOTHERHOOD, and MOTHERHOOD only, issues.

Imagine the problem with calling your ENTIRE "Life" type section "Mothers Who Think". Of course you can't grasp the problem with that because you'd rather play into the MOTHERHOOD martyrdom syndrome and pretend that the only people who could have a problem with it are "aggressive proselytizing child-free types". As if "every other news source on the planet" treats mothers as invisible cyphers who aren't human beings in their own right. Please! What precious rot. Perhaps you need to go micro, stfu already and get over whiny yourself.

Anyway, Heather's column was very amusing and well done. Good luck to her.

From what I've read in some of these self-righteous letters, I guess the sense of humor leaves the body with the afterbirth. What a terrifying prospect.