raisinbran20 asked
Take your vitamins and cut out the coffee. Don't wait until the last minute to decorate the nursery, preferably in high-contrast, brain-building colors. But do take a moment to relax. While you're sitting there, why not pipe some Mozart into your womb? One friend provided a four-page list of supplies Mead-Ferro absolutely had to buy; another gave her a wet-wipe warmer — the latest in baby comfort gear. Mead-Ferro took the vitamins. She jokes that she 'quit smoking crack altogether.' She even bought most of the stuff on the list and politely thanked her friend for the warmer. But she balked at buying the Mozart tapes and tummy headphones. And while anxiously awaiting a fancy bassinet ordered from a snooty baby store, she had an epiphany: Her own mother, who raised three children on a Wyoming cattle ranch, never owned a bassinet, much less a wet wipe, warm or cold. She never read a parenting magazine or consulted a parenting expert, either. The kids turned out all right. Maybe, Mead-Ferro thought, she didn't need to do it all or buy it all. A slacker mom was born. 'When it comes to parenting, often less is more,' says Mead-Ferro, 43, author of Confessions of a Slacker Mom (Da Capo Lifelong Books, $12.95). The book, which arrives nationwide just in time for Mother's Day (after an earlier, more limited release by a smaller publisher) is a brief, breezy take on a theme that seems to be resonating with a lot of mothers right now. 'There is something like an incipient mother's movement out there,' says University of Michigan communications professor Susan Douglas, still touring to talk about her own recent book, The Mommy Myth (Free Press, $26), written with Meredith Michaels. 'Mothers are really saying that they have had it with these standards of perfection.' From the organic baby soaps and toddler software to theme birthday parties and SAT preparation camps, 'the set of demands just keeps expanding,' making mothers feel inadequate, no
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