Working Mother Magazine

I receive Working Mother Magazine in the mail. I didn't subscribe to it, I don't know where they got my address. It is definitely not a magazine I would ever choose to buy, even though I do work, and do plan to be a mother.

But seriously, now they just have to stop sending me this hateful garbage. Here are my three favorites from the current issue:

An advice column with the headline "Slave-at-Home Mom". Uh oh. A woman wrote in because her neighbor stays at home, and often helps out with the working mother's kids. How can she repay her? The answer begins with "Ah, the ongoing exploitation of the slave-at-home mom." Stop saying that! It finally suggests that you can help stay at home mom have a date night with her husband. This implies that A) Stay at home mom is married, B) She is heterosexual, and C) It is not ok for parents to have arrangements where they help each other out with child-rearing.

An article in the "Ages 3 - 5" section called "When Parents Fib". Ok, great, don't teach your kids to lie, I'm all for that. But it also tells parents that they shouldn't always tell it like it is. For example, "If a child does messy artwork, for example, a parent shouldn't tell him he has no talent." Wow! No they shouldn't, but that's because 3 to 5 years olds MAKE MESSY ARTWORK. Don't they?

Finally, my favorite. This is in an article about educational family vacations. "Judge a Witch Trial" in Salem. "Give kids a feeling for the era's hysteria by joining them as 'jury members' in the first defendant's trial." Oh what fun! This magazine seems to be geared towards upper-middle-class parents, so maybe they have plenty of money to take little Janie to the therapy she may need when she wakes up in the night screaming about women being tortured and drowned and hanged. Family fun! This one's got a fun photo of a woman being dragged through the street. More fun! (I apologize for the extreme blurriness.)