Some not-so maternal instincts

In television, many women, mothers in general, are depicted as up tight, nagging, bitching horrid piles of flesh that only get angrier with age and the addition of children.

Us of the womanly persuasion tend to get offended by these depictions. We yell at the TVs "MOMS AREN'T LIKE THAT!" or "I'D NEVER DO THAT!" and the trusted "I DON'T FUCKING SOUND LIKE THAT!".. but like with everything else on TV, entertainment, books, magazines, anything put anywhere for entertainment purposes- you must consider it like a caricature. They take the most unflattering property of a type of person's personality, mannerisms, looks- and inflate it. Times one-hundred.

If TV wrote us (us being anyone who's grown a child) the way we really are? Well, i'd imagine a lot more shows wouldn't make it past their pilots, and there would be a fuckload of actors out of jobs because they picked the worst scripts of all time (which would be just about all of them).

Still, like with rumors, it all comes from a tiny little grain of truth. People aren't stereotyped into certain roles, or generalized as naggy cunts for no reason at all. Maybe everyone isn't that way, and certainly we aren't all that way ALL the time... but admit it, behind the yelling and wanting to throw things at the tv (and only refraining because tvs are so fucking expensive)- you have to admit, even if only to yourself, it's kind of true.

We (again, moms), even with all of our assumed (again with the stereotyping) lovey-dovey, helicoptering, using spit to wipe off face dirt, womanly ways... can't be maternal all the time. We have other instincts too.

We all have a little bit of Red Forman in us.


Times where the kids do something fucked up, and not the "I threw a toy across the room" kind of fucked up, but fallen down and scraped a knee, ran face first into a wall, slipped and flew face first into a puddle kind of fucked up where instead of the stereotypical mother response of running over and kissing it all better- instead what runs through our mind is "dumbass."


I remember specifically being little and falling down and cutting something open, and to my little brain and lack of experience and amount of blood pouring out of it- I swore to the stars in the sky the world was ENDING. I was going to DIE. And per usual, I cried to my mommy. MAKE IT STOP! HEAL ME! DO WHAT MOMMIES DO!
And what did she say to me? "Don't bleed on my carpet!"


At the time I was HIGHLY offended (as offended as a small child can manage, that is). There were threats to run away, insisting I was adopted, thoughts of "How dare she mock me. Can't she see that i'm dying?!"


For years we tell these kinds of stories. To friends, to family. "Yeah there was the time I was going to bleed out and all mom cared about was the damn carpet."
We swear our mother hated us, or honestly valued a carpet or a kitchen floor or a vase over our lives. WORST MOM EVER!


And then comes the moment, the one she threatened us for years about, the one we swore would NEVER COME, when we have our own children and suddenly we understand. Suddenly all the things we said we'd NEVER do as a parent because they were so awful and so heinous? All those times we swore we were dying and that it was a lack of parental care and compassion at work?
Well, we weren't. We weren't dying and our parents didn't NOT care. They just knew a cut on the knee, even if large or deep, wasn't going to kill us and that the pain was only temporary- and due to this, why not AVOID ruining the carpet if at all possible??
 Blood is a serious bitch to get out.

Red was onto something, y'all.. it's called being REALISTIC.

Coddling is fine, don't get me wrong, but in small doses... because if we baby absolutely EVERYTHING these kids do, and let them think a scraped knee is equivalent to the end of the universe as they know it (hey, chicken little, STFU, that newer movie has no bearing on this conversation)- they'll grow up to be extreme hypochondriacs who think a sniffle is malaria... and if we're being realistic here, hypochondriacs are fucking annoying.