Picket Fence Post

You might have heard of Jen Singer from her web site/blog MommaSaid. But it’s likely you’ll be hearing more about her as her new book, You’re a Good Mom (And Your Kids Aren’t So Bad Either) starts getting more buzz. (See the book trailer — yes now there are book trailers — above.)

I sent Singer five questions about the book – which promises to provide readers with “14 Secrets to Finding Happiness Between Super Mom and Slacker Mom.” She kindly answered them below:

Meredith O’Brien, Picket Fence Post: You’ve been blogging and writing about motherhood for some time. Why did you decide to write this book and how did you come up with the idea of 14 tips for moms?

Jen Singer, author, You’re A Good Mom (And Your Kids Aren’t So Bad Either): I’m a recovering Mom-aholic. Though I spent upwards of 100 hours a week with my two toddlers as a full-time stay-at-home mom, I felt guilty folding laundry because I wasn’t giving my children “teachable moments” all 100 of those hours. But when I started to ease up on my impossibly high standards of motherhood — the standards that 21st century mothers created — I realized I was happier, and so were my kids.

Still, I saw other moms slide down the slippery slope into giving up on parenting almost entirely. They stopped being their kids’ filter, letting their fifth graders have cell phones and allow them to show The Sopranos on the back of the school bus while thinking it’s cute to let their daughters wear “Future Trophy Wife” T-shirts to middle school.

I felt that there’s a sweet spot in between where you can be happy and turn out perfectly good kids. So I boiled it down to 14 steps for finding that spot and staying there, and put it into a book.

O’Brien: You spend some time in your book comparing parenting styles when you were growing up in the 1970s, to now. Is it even possible to parent like it’s 1975 these days, or would doing so result in a visit from child protective services?

Singer: The pendulum is swinging back toward the relatively care-free era of parenting our mothers had, but it will never reach there completely. There’s a new movement toward “free-range parenting,” which gives our kids more of the unsupervised time we had as children. While I’m all for less micromanaging among the parents and more creativity among our kids, we have more negative influences to manage these days, such as commercials for raunchy TV shows in the middle of American Idol and the way-too-easy mis-click away from porn on the Internet. We have to watch our kids more than our mothers did, but we don’t have to over-schedule them, either.

O’Brien: On the whole issue of over-volunteering for everything kid-related, you urge moms NOT to pick up the phone when the class parent calls, yet you yourself have been a class mom on several occasions. How can moms strike a balance between what you call being a parental “stalker” and being an uninvolved “slacker?”

Singer: I am a serial class mom indeed, but I like to volunteer for things that bring me closer to my kids. Though I will likely end up coaching two boys’ soccer teams this fall (again) because I love it, chances are you won’t see me at a Cub Scouts pack meeting or at home and school association meetings. I pick and choose what I want to spend my time doing so I don’t burn out on volunteering.

My neighbor, on the other hand, has been working every night this month on 22 scrapbooks for each kid in her daughter’s preschool class, even though they’re four and probably don’t care. I mean, how much of preschool do you remember? She admits she on the top of the Sucker List, the first person the other moms call to volunteer for all sorts of things. Get yourself farther down on the list and you’ll be much happier (and the preschoolers won’t notice).

Even if you don’t like to volunteer, you can help out. Just do it in smaller ways, like taking the neighbors’ kids with you to the movies on a Sunday afternoon or sending a pizza to a mom with cancer.

O’Brien: One of my favorite chapters in the book is called, “Don’t Let the Youth Sports Cartel Run Your Life.” Seriously, how can you resist not fall prey to said cartel if they are in charge of all the sports, and if your kid wants to play, you’ve got to play by their rules?

Singer: I played soccer from age nine through college and beyond, and I coach now. I am saddened to find that youth sports has become a machine that churns out (and sometimes up) our young players, making it all too much, too soon. Why is there an ad for travel soccer sign-ups for kids born in 2001 in my newspaper? I have sports bras older than that.

I made a no travel sports until fifth grade rule in my house. My older son is happy on a recreation soccer team, so he won’t try out for travel next year in fifth grade. My younger son has another year to enjoy playing whatever sport he wants before deciding to make that leap. Travel coaches pressure kids to play just one sport, and I think that’s bad for the kid who loves several sports. It’s also bad on his knees.

Your kids are only partially at the mercy of the coaches. With travel sports, you can switch teams; you’re not stuck with one town’s team. So if your kid’s coach isn’t right for him or her, switch until you find the right match, even if that means your home games are three towns over.

O’Brien: You don’t just lampoon Super Moms in your book, but you also critique the other end of the spectrum, the parents who let their kids watch violent and/or sexually inappropriate TV programs and movies, as well as moms who really want to be Cool Moms. How do you see the influence of the Cool Moms as being as negative an influence as Super Moms?

Singer: The Cool Moms want to be their kids’ friends. They even dress like them. But kids need boundaries . . . they even want them. If nobody is acting like the parent, nobody is being the filter for all the increasingly violent, sexual and downright offensive media we’re being bombarded with these days. And when we all become immune to it, 12-year-olds will wear, “I want my MILF and cookies” T-shirts to school, and no one will even flinch. We might as well order our handbaskets on Amazon now.

Image credit: Sourcebooks.