Sometime I fantasize about being someone else.
Fantasy is a part of the human experience.
I see you, you appear you have it all: fame, fortune, beauty a winning lottery ticket. I don’t feel quite that way. I would like to be you. I pretend…
I like the realm of fantasy – there is much to be said about having one’s own personal mirage of fabulousness.
Fantasies are meant to be private, fleeting and did I mention not for publication? Follow these rules and we are good.
It is not OK when the fantasy is based on such profound miscommunication and lack of understanding that it becomes painful to bear witness to, insulting and frankly horribly revealing about the person behind the swill.
But never mind, let’s look at what real truths came out of this Meternity-fueled moment in the history of working parents in the United States:
- Woman writes a pretty pink chick-lit book about a silly girl who fakes maternity leave to get some me time off – you know “reflective, easy me time.”
- Woman makes a smacked ass out of her self on ALL possible media platforms promoting her book via a “position” – speaking for those oppressed by parental leave.
And then my favorite part happens…
- Some of my most beloved voices (and some of these people I fantasize about having a relationship with because really we are simply connected on social media) had a great deal to say about this latest blow-up of cultural brokenness.
“I came away wondering if the article wasn’t somehow emblematic of the entire problem our nation has with mothers in particular, and parents in general: i.e. we aren’t curious about their lives, we do almost nothing to support them, and we consider them an unwelcome burden on all fronts. We are a nation that hates children, parents, and families — as a matter of policy, not just in bars and airplanes.”
– Laure June, The Cut
“Maternity leave was one of the most challenging, exhausting things I’ve ever done. It’s not “me” time.” – @RebeccaRuiz on Twitter
“I completely reject her concept that parental leave is “a sabbatical-like break that allows women and, to a lesser degree, men to shift their focus to the part of their lives that doesn’t revolve around their jobs. Don’t mistake this for ‘Eat. Pray. Love.’ There is no period of rejuvenating self-discovery. I’ve seen maternity leave. Three times.”
– Mike Schaffer, The Best Dad blog
“Official rules and guidelines for maternity leave without kids:
- You must gain at least 30 pounds before you leave work. Half of people are required to gain twice that.
- At the beginning of your leave, you must spend one night getting punched in the abdomen until you feel pain like you’ve never felt before.”
– Elizabeth Bromstein, Yackler Magazine
“Have you recently had your body split open by a screaming, red, nightmare-lump of writhing humanity? Wanting to order a case of chardonnay and settle in to binge-watch the new season of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” isn’t in the same category.If you’ve got a case of the sads, or sudden-onset reflectivitis, that’s just a personality problem — not a reason to take off work.”
– Kyle Smith, New York Post
“Using up all of my PTO time back when I had an office job for their zillion gross viruses and doctor’s visits and days where daycare closed early — my life was totally teeming with flexibility. I could do anything. I’d have to say the pinnacle of my flexible life as a working parent was the day I went to a 9 am meeting with fresh kid barf on my dress because I had no time to run home and change after leaving my sick son with his grandmother so I could get to work on time. You could literally smell the flexibility wafting from my person. Or baby barf. Sames.”
– Valerie Williams for ScaryMommy.com
“You might not realize those same parents were probably looking at you — as they packed up their bag of breast pump parts and unfinished paperwork — with the same level of jealousy. ‘She gets to leave whenever she wants! She gets to walk out of the office and go wherever she wants!’ That’s what we can’t help but feel as we clock out and head to our night shift.”
– Kate Schweitzer, Editor, Pop Sugar Moms
“Um. Hey, lady? That ‘part of their lives that doesn’t revolve around their jobs,’ is a child. It’s not a portrait-painting aspiration, it’s another person, and there is nothing ‘me’ about it. I may be childless, but I’ve seen enough episodes of 16 and Pregnant to know that women often have to give up many of their own interests when they have kids.”
– Katherine Timpf, National Review