I awak­ened this morn­ing to the news of TIME magazine’s lat­est issue. As their Moth­ers Day gift to Amer­ica they chose to go after par­ents who choose any par­ent­ing style other than that of “chil­dren should be seen and not heard”. The purposely-inflaming cover photo of a mother nurs­ing her 3 year old (with him stand­ing on a chair) was set up by the pho­tog­ra­pher because he thought it would be “edgier” and claimed that chil­dren that age don’t sit still eas­ily. I sus­pect there was a lit­tle some­thing extra in it for him if he got tongues a-waggin’. And wag­ging they are. But for all the wrong reasons.

I’ve been tak­ing a med­i­ta­tion class but even med­i­ta­tion is not help­ing me to cool down on this one. TIME is claim­ing there is a bat­tle in moth­er­hood in Amer­ica. Really?!?! Where have they been for, oh, I don’t know…forever? My old­est is 24 years old. Back then (and time eter­nal before) if you worked, you felt guilty for not being at home. If you were at home, you felt guilty for not work­ing.  If you breast­fed, peo­ple pushed for­mula on you. If you formula-fed you were beaten up for not breast­feed­ing. Shall I go on? The world’s old­est pro­fes­sion is not pros­ti­tu­ion, it’s moth­er­hood and guilt is the gift that soci­ety hands you as soon as you find out your’re pregnant.

The shame­ful thing is that TIME had a golden oppor­tu­nity to open up a real dia­log on par­ent­ing. Instead, they allowed the “sex­ier” “hot­ter” top­ics of breast­feed­ing beyond what the AAP rec­om­mends as being extreme to become one of the mov­ing tagets. Extrem­ism is the nasty mon­ster under the bed. 

Feel the need to hold your baby rather than let him cry? Extreme! Want to eek every moment out of your time with your lit­tle one? Extreme! Feel­ing exhausted because you’re try­ing to jug­gle things? Extreme!

And to make mat­ters worse, they hold  Dr. William Sears up as the evil mas­ter­mind of attach­ment par­ent­ing. He took a beat­ing today that is beyond believ­able. Let me just say this: attach­ment is as old as human beings. TIME could have read the whole library wing on this topic but decided to blame the poor pedi­a­tri­cian for some­thing that was never his to begin with.

Par­ents, ignore the smoke and mir­rors that TIME and soci­ety are using to alter your sen­si­bil­i­ties. Here is the truth: Par­ent­ing is unbe­liev­ably hard. It’s also unbe­liev­ably won­der­ful. And it would be much eas­ier if edi­tors, writ­ers and the lady stand­ing in line behind you at the mar­ket didn’t judge you so hard. But, they will. So the solu­tion is to take a really deep breath and then smile. Because guess what: YOU“RE the par­ent. Which means this is your child to raise, to learn from, to teach, to cry over, to cher­ish, to cheer, to break your heart in a thou­sand and one lit­tle ways and then mend it again with one big, sloppy smile. If your per­se­cu­tors want to step in and do it for you, tell them to come on in at 3 am when every­one except the baby is exhausted and take over. But I can promise you that not a one of them will.

As for me, I’ll not be buy­ing an issue of TIME mag­a­zine again. If I want mind­less chat­ter I’ll read some­thing more worth­while, like PEOPLE magazine.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!!! You are doing a great job, whether any­one else acknowl­edges it or not. And I respect each and every deci­sion you make as the mom. Now go give that sweet baby a hug