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    From The Mixed Up Files of Motherhood

    Posted Thursday, April 09, 2009 4:50 PM | By Meghan O'Rourke
    Ann: Thanks for sharing that "misread" headline. Indeed, it would be refreshing to see a headline about someone who "runs down mommy groups." As a non-mother who happens to be at that age when all of your friends suddenly become mothers, I find the mommy-group behavior utterly puzzling and mysterious. I confess I've wondered: When you become a mother, does your DNA mutate and briefly turn you into a 15-year-old again? Why else do otherwise relaxed, normal-seeming women become moralizers on behalf of the whole group? Isn't the whole pleasure of adulthood the fact that, finally, you're able to accept your own idiosyncrasies and faults? Just the other week I was having coffee with someone very close to me who was practically in tears at how mean the other "Brooklyn mommies" have been to her. I find it as puzzling as the dog yoga Jess just wrote about. But you (and, recently, Hanna, in her breastfeeding piece) have written astutely about this, suggesting that it's the fact that we don't have gender scripts now that may paradoxically--or ironically--be at the root of all this group identification and implicit peer pressure and rule-setting about what is acceptable for other parents to offer their children. (Only organic goodies, not too much sugar, etc.) And so I didn't know whether to feel relieved or horrified the other day when, out for a run, heading toward Prospect Park, I spotted a dad hanging out on a deserted block near the Gowanus Canal with his two sons, their skateboards, and....a palpable lack of helmets.
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