Alpha Moms?? No thank you!

[Earlybird]

I just read this article from an American magazine, and thought I'd share it with the board. It's appalling parenting IMO, and I'm astounded that they think it's something to boast about!

\link{http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/features/12026}

I'm crap at links, so if it doesn't work, please do a cut/paste! In fact, if the link doesn't work, maybe someone more technically astute can insert a link for me!

binkie - I don't think most Americans would admire her. But, in the competitive, striving world of New York City - who knows? The city is filled with super achieving, super driven, super controlling, super aggressive people. Just remember the lyric to the city's unofficial theme song "New York, New York"......which are "if I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere".....

I think if you strip away the editorial she isn't that unlike many people on here

She realises something is missing from her life

That something is a baby

She has a career set back, takes some time out of her career to think about it

Decides to put the time to good use and has a baby

Goes to some Mother and toddler clubs (posh ones)

Not too keen to go back to work, so racks her brain thinking about something she can do from home

Realises there is a lot of people out there who have endless needs for parenting advice (like us lot) and a tv prog would be a good idea. But needs a sexy (and unfortunate name).

Sets up working from home project but has to work hard at it.

Needs some publicity for unfortunately names tv prog so gets some journalist friend to write equally unfortunate and unflattering story about the prog.

Not much different to many stories you might read on here really

Oh forgot the bit where she's sad when 2 yo doesn't get into pre-school - now you'd never find a thread like that on here would you

I'd beg to differ, soapbox.

The ultra-competitive, driven image of New York people have is a very, very small minority.

Much of New York isn't even white and many don't speak English as a native language.

Expat - not aware that I've said that it isn't????

It made me think of ryvita, not quite sure why. but then his name is the least of his worries with a mother like that.

It may well be a small minority, expatinscotland, but it's what's highlighted in the mainstream press. So New York has a high-powered image from the outside--and that's what it can feel like from the inside, too.

(Aside: Isabel is actually Latina and I gather, from knowing her albeit peripherally, that English probably wasn't the language spoken at home. . . so clearly that drive/ambition thing that earlybird (not soapbox) referred to isn't just a rich white thing.)

Anyway, I agree with some of soapbox's points. . .I think if one looks at her as a woman not an alpha-mom, one can see the catch-22s of trying to be a career person and a mom. . .but, God, how unappealingly she goes about everything!

Oh, yeah, sobernow, it's rife with irony. Similarly, the image of her on the cover is stretched out so she looks very tall & fierce as though she's being looked at from a toddler's vantage pointbut in actuality she's quite petite. The tone of the whole spread is pretty unrelenting.

In one or two instances, though, it struck me that the author doesn't have kids him/herself, though. . .can't remember what exactly made me think that . . .

yep, it is real claws-out stuff, v funny though.

her DH comes across as really quite sweet towards the end of the article, when you strip away the bizarre Manhattan-speak ("a lot of self-starter DNA" indeed!) - but maybe that's just the journalist's attempt at contrast.

she just sounds like an utter nightmare, glad I don't meet any Alpha Moms (!) round here...

Am still puking at that carpet picture on page 2...

Oh, PMSL about her "village" too...

Hmmm. I would beg to differ with some of the views on here.
FWIW hers is not a style of parenting that I share. I'd rather be hands-on, I have chosen to be a SAHM for a lengthy maternity leave (although now after 18 months I'm feeling a pull back to work), and I don't feel it has to be 'nothing but the best' for my children.
But I certainly do identify with the feelings referred to in the article, of anxiety, loss of control, making desperate efforts to overcome fear by seeking more and more information, and a sense of being divorced from a tradition of home-based child care that probably was more easily followed in earlier generations. My parents live hundreds of miles away now. I have worked in a professional role since college, and I got there by studying. I never saw any younger relatives being cared for (except my own sister) and I barely spent any time with young children and babies until I had my own.
Whilst I think she has a cheek to offer herself as a parenting guru, I also find her motivation not too difficult to understand.
Also what does it matter whether she is pretty or not? Those remarks in this thread about her appearance really surprise me. And her choice of a name for her son - it's not usually a MN thing to be so disparaging about somebody else's choices.

Yup! Can confirm it is exactly like that! Actually worse than the article makes out but very interesting from an outsiders point of view, lived there for three years and witnessed all this and more. I was the only Mum to take ds and dd to the park as that was done by the Nannies - dd friend was quite sad when she saw me there and said her Mum had never taken her to the park, it was pretty heartbreaking at times.

For all the hot-housing given to these kids, they did not come over as the brightest of the bunch, more time with their academic parents would have helped, rather than some poorly paid 'Nanny' (usually no training and poorly paid young woman from outside of Manhattan)

The best one I heard is that one set of twins lived in a Penthouse apartment - with their Nanny! Parents lived in the other Penthouse in the same building - only in America

Still, loved living there, and they were all that thin, really! Well, scrawny really, not a hope of me getting like there with all those Crispy Creme doughnuts

Just an aside but I've just read some of the personals, hilarious!

Message withdrawn

The only thing I would agree on with Isabel, is that DTUT's coffee shop, where she held ds party, is fab!

If any of you are in Manhattan its worth a visit, good to people 'Isabel' type Upper East siders great coffee and cakes too, its very 'Friends' TV style with big, old sofas etc....

a baby was doable?!?!?!

how amusing - while the village actually did the work of mothering her child she set out to master mother hood (oh puhlease!!!)

can anyone tell me what an inner mother voice is???

Oh I loved the last paragraph... what is this woman on....

anyone just laugh all the way through.. yup I read all 6 pages!!

Just briefly read the article. GOd the woman is going to have a nervous breakdown soon. And her son is spoilt!!

Are there really people out there like that?!?!?

Gosh what a long article on a not very interesting woman.

This is a portrait of a typical Manhattan mother

I don't know about anyone else but my inner mother voice is usually 'Get me a very big vodka before I murder this child'...

Ever read 'The Nanny Diaries'? That about sums it up.

I've visted NYC a few times, had a pal from Denver who decided to move there. Nice place to visit, wouldn't want to live there.