Motherhood Smotherhood
By JJ Keith
Genre: Nonfiction, Parenting
Book Synopsis
What's the first thing a woman does when she thinks she
might be pregnant? She Googles. And it goes downhill from there. While the
internet is full of calming and cheerily supportive articles, it's also
littered with hyper-judgmental message boards and heaps of contradictory and
scolding information. Motherhood Smotherhood takes parents through the trenches
of new parenting, warning readers of the pleasures and perils of mommy blogs,
new parent groups, self-described "lactivists," sleep fascists,
incessant trend pieces on working versus non-working mothers, and the place
where free time and self-esteem goes to die: Pinterest (back away from the
hand-made flower headbands for baby!)
JJ Keith interweaves discussions of what "it takes a
village" really means (hint: a lot of unwanted advice from elderly
strangers who may have grown up in actual villages) and a take-down of the
rising "make your own baby food" movement (just mush a banana with a
fork!) with laugh-out-loud observations about the many mistakes she made as a
frantic new mother with too much access to high speed internet and a lot of
questions. Keith cuts to the truth--whether it's about "perfect"
births, parenting gurus, the growing tide of vaccine rejecters, the joy of
blanketing Facebook with baby pics, or germophobia--to move conversations about
parenting away from experts espousing blanket truths to amateurs relishing in
what a big, messy pile of delight and trauma having a baby is.
Author Bio
JJ Keith has written about being a crappy attachment parent
for Salon, explored the disturbing undertones of Thomas the Tank Engine for
TheRumpus.net, come out as pro-vaccine for The
Huffington Post, interviewed
Samantha Irby for Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, differentiated being
judgmental and having an opinion for Role/Reboot, admitted to a bare knuckled
brawl with a dude for The Nervous Breakdown, examined the phenomenon of
"don't touch the bump" t-shirts for Babble, and explained what new
moms have in common with teenage boys for The Hairpin. 
Her writing has been syndicated in the Sydney Morning
Herald, iVillage Australia, Mamamia, and Alternet, and she's taken her work to
the stage with The Moth, Happy Hour Story Experiment, Write Club, and
Expressing Motherhood and spoken about parenting issues with APM's Marketplace,
HuffPost Live, and on a panel at the 2013 LA Times Festival of Books. Her
micro-memoir won a $2,500 prize from Reader's Digest and was anthologized in
The Best Life Stories: 150 Real-life Tales of Resilience, Joy, and Hope-All 150
Words or Less!
She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and her two
children.
Book Excerpt
The vast majority of chatter surrounding parenthood is junk.
All of these seemingly divisive decisions—like pain meds in labor, newborn
sleep arrangements, and scheduling—are often phrased as moral imperatives from
both sides. Screw that. Take care of your kid. Do what works. Babies are more
durable than we give them credit for. As a parent, I can be wrong as long as I
realize it and change. That means it’s okay to make educated guesses and then sort
out the consequences. And it means I have to play this parenting gig by ear,
which is disquieting for people with control- ling tendencies like me. But I
must control my tendency to be controlling or else I will imprison myself.
Infants cannot be micro- managed, nor can toddlers, children, teenagers,
spouses, or nan- nies. Parents who want to be perfect can knock themselves out,
but I’d rather they not blame the institution of parenthood (or worse, their
babies) when they go two years without finishing a sentence, sleeping through
the night, or having sex.
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