Academic

A few months ago, I participated in a survey on working moms and work-life balance.  The authors of the survey, Becky Beaupre Gillespie and Hollee Schwartz Temple, are using the data for a book entitled "Good Enough is the New Perfect:  Why Modern Moms are Aiming Lower -- Yet Reaching New Heights."  To kickoff the project, the authors have a blog.  Both of the authors have journalism backgrounds, and Hollee Schwartz Temple is a law professor at West Virginia University.  The blog's subtitle "An Inside Look at a Balanced Life" seems very aspirational to me!  I would never claim a balanced life.  My life is very imbalanced -- my trick is to overcompensate the other direction and so on and so forth so I never quite topple over!

Of course, blogging about this today I'm reminded of yesterday's NYT article in the Style Section about Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, author of Sippy Cups are Not for Chardonnay and Naptime is the New Happy Hour.  These books, and her blog BabyOnBored, were embraced as a fun backlash to being the perfect mom.  Unfortunately, there may be a dark side to the "Bad Mommy" movement.  Ms. Wilder-Taylor, a former stand-up comedian, announced two months ago that she was going on the wagon -- that her answer to livening up a playdate was actually masking a much more serious drinking problem.  Assuming that her announcement is genuine (she does have a new memoir released this summer), I can imagine that her announcement was very difficult to make; among the many rationalizations a person can make for not acknowledging any addiction, I'm sure the fact that you make a lot of money and a lot of people happy being the chardonnay-sipping homeroom mom is a pretty good one.  But, she does have this new memoir coming out. . . .

I'm not a huge fan of the bad mommy club because it makes me feel nerdy and boring, like high school.  But, so far I'm a huge fan of the Good Enough is the New Perfect blog!