Picket Fence Post

Item #1: No ‘Bliss’ for Real Moms

Galt Niederhoffer wants all of you mommies to knock it off with your mommy propaganda, saying stuff like “motherhood is bliss” because, as she says on The Huffington Post, it’s not. In her post entitled, “The Bliss Myth: Cut the Crap Mommies,” Niederhoffer wrote:

“Why not acknowledge that frustration, boredom, guilt and ambivalence are universal, unavoidable facets of motherhood? Sharing will make us better and happier mothers, affording women the comfort of community and the benefit of shared information — the very tools we need to transcend motherhood’s challenges.”

Well, if Niederhoffer had been reading the Picket Fence Post, she would’ve never gotten the misguided notion that parenthood is bliss. Maybe I should e-mail her a few links to places where she can get a reality check on what real, non-blissed-out parenting is like here on Planet Earth.

Item #2: Family Meals Good for Parents Too

Speaking of real parenting . . . Slate’s Emily Bazelton tells us that while we’ve all heard about how absolutely fantastic and grounding it is for children to sit down with their parents for family meals each night — family-meal-eating kids are less likely to get into trouble, are more likely to feel closer to their family, get higher grades, become rocket scientists, etc. – it’s also good for parents too. Bazelton wrote:

“The research by lead author Jenet Jacob of Brigham Young University found that among 1,580 parents who worked at IBM, those who said their jobs interfered less with being home for dinner tended to feel greater personal success, and success in relationships with their spouses and their children. The working parents — both mothers and fathers — had all of these buoyant feelings if they made it home for dinner more regularly, even if they still worked long hours. They also felt more kindly toward their workplace.”

I know I’d certainly feel better if The Spouse were home more often for family meals, then I wouldn’t be the only one to develop a migraine when the kids say they utterly loathe what I’ve made for dinner (there’s always at least one protester per meal), then watch them sulk and, in at least the case of one child, literally throw up all over the kitchen table in order to avoid eating the baked chicken. Good times.

Item #3: New Baby Boomlet?

Recent data from the National Center for Health Statistics indicates that a record number of babies — 4.3 million of ‘em — were born in the United States last year, the highest since 1957 which was smack dab in the middle of the Baby Boom. USA Today quoted a demographer saying, “I suspect this is the beginning of a new kind of baby boom, although it’s going to be nowhere near the baby boom of the 1950s or 60s. It will be sort of a boomlet.”

Item #4: Emmy Noms . . . ‘Mad Men’ Simply Rocks, My Friends

I’ve got an unabashed crush on AMC’s Mad Men, and, in particular, on its leading man Jon Hamm. The Golden Globe winning show, which snagged 16 Emmy nominations, has been one of my pop culture obsessions since it first aired last July. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Mad Men is set in the early 1960s and follows the lives of up-and-coming advertising executives on New York City’s Madison Avenue, and their families. It’s smart, amazingly nuanced, layered and complex from the way it portrays its haunted leading character, Jon Hamm’s Don Draper, to Draper’s wife Betty’s (January Jones) as an ambivalent, trapped housewife who longs for something more in her life.

While the show premieres its second season on July 27 at 10 p.m., AMC is airing a Mad Men marathon on Sunday, July 20. Do yourself a favor and watch. The show’s web site has the entire pilot online as well as promos for season two.

Among the other Emmy nominations announced this week that I thought were well deserved: 30 Rock’s everywoman Tina Fey got multiple comedy nominations, the insanely funny The Office secured several nominations, Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus is in the running for her divorced working mom role in The New Adventures of Old Christine, and the always poignant Chandra Wilson is up for best supporting actress in a drama for her powerhouse character of Dr. Miranda Bailey on Grey’s Anatomy.