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Everybody knows a Perfect Mom—the one who has all the answers about parenting. The one who makes her own organic baby food and comes up with the kids’ games that are the perfect combination of fun and educational. The one who somehow seems to have it all together. The one who puts every other mom to shame. There are plenty of parenting books for Perfect Mom—and there’s a good chance that she already owns (and has read) every one of them.
For the rest of us—the moms who tend to cut a few corners from time to time (or maybe all the time) for the sake of our own sanity—there’s Sh*tty Mom, a sarcastic and just slightly shameful collection of parenting tips and tricks.
While reading Sh*tty Mom, you’ll learn how to get more sleep with some help from candy and cartoons. You’ll learn how to conduct conference calls from your home—also with help from candy and cartoons. You’ll learn how to pawn your kids (and their dirty diapers) off on friends and family members, how to neglect your kids at the park, and how to dump your sick kid off at daycare. You’ll also learn how to deal with clueless childless friends and find the perfect babysitter (i.e. the one who shows up on time—not the one who actually plays with your kids).
Okay, so maybe the advice in Sh*tty Mom isn’t necessarily the kind of advice that you’ll want to follow. It is, however, the kind of stuff that you’ve most likely fantasized about. Any mom (maybe even Perfect Mom) will understand the urge to cut corners, take the easy way out, delegate, or just plain ignore. In fact, there’s even a pretty good chance that you’ve done some of the things mentioned in the book—though you might not admit it out loud. But that’s what makes this book so laugh-until-you-cry funny: it’s stuff that you’ve often thought about, but you wouldn’t dare say it out loud.
Meanwhile, since the book praises the random, haphazard, and generally half-assed, it’s no surprise that there’s really no rhyme or reason to its organization. It isn’t organized by your child’s age or by category (at least not logical categories). Instead, it’s divided into sections like “Your Children Want to Ruin You” and “Yes, It’s OK to Hate the Zoo.” It’s simply a random collection of funny parenting-related thoughts, in no particular order. For that reason, you could be reading about newborns on one page and school-age kids the next, followed by more about infants—which sometimes feels a bit jarring.
The book also seems to focus much of its energy on a couple of specific types of Sh*tty Moms: older moms and single moms (or, better yet, older single moms). Though it won’t alienate younger moms—or moms in committed relationships—those types of readers might sometimes be caught off-guard by some of the subject matter.
It won’t exactly help you make those tough parenting decisions—and it doesn’t contain a single recipe for organic baby food—but this irreverently entertaining read is guaranteed to make you feel better about your own sh*tty parenting. So feel free to steal your friend’s copy while she’s not looking. Then take it to McDonald’s, so you can read it while your child entertains herself.
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