Not that I’m in that club. And judging by the whopping 15 followers on Twitter, I’m far from ever entering that club. But any chance I ever had will be gone as soon as I will have published this post. And it won’t be because I’m using the Future Perfect tense.

I’m going to criticize The Scary Mommy book (gasp). Well, not so much criticize, as have a less than perfectly positive and encouraging response. I’m pretty sure I will have to shut down my blog after that. And possibly move to Canada. Wait a minute.

Ok, so on with it. We took a week long, well deserved vacation a couple of weeks ago, and I had a chance to read the Confessions of a Scary Mommy book. My first thought: $14 for an e-book? REALLY?

Now, the book is, of course, funny, and sad, and touching, and all of those things that people say about it. I’ve been following the blog since I was home with my first baby, a couple of years ago. It helped me through a pretty rough time – it’s very lonely and isolating to be home alone with a new baby. So if you know someone who has a newborn or is just about to pop, this is really a perfect gift.

But now, as I’m going back to work after my second yearlong mat leave, I’ve had enough of the competition declared by mommy bloggers – the competition of who’s the worst mommy. I don’t argue for a second that parenthood is just positive, or that being a parent is easy. My firstborn is not even three years old and already I’m pretty wiped. Just thinking about teen years is making me cringe. But I wonder a few things: a) is this negativity healthy for mothers? B) Can’t I like my kids without being kicked out of the cool kids’ club? C) Why do we have a cool kids’ club? When did we go back to high school?

I think that complaining about motherhood openly and publicly had done wonders to moms who were lonely and isolated and feeling guilty because they dared thinking, man, this is really hard work. In health research, optimism is almost synonym with health, recovery, and well-being. And while research done in the 1980s found a relationship between parenthood and lower well being, research that was done in the new millennium (and, therefore, more sophisticated) showed that being a parent entails all sorts of perks such as better social integration (see the cook kids’ club above), and less depression symptoms as compared to childless adults (I’m not kidding). So it can’t be all bad, can it?

What do you think? Yes, you, the one person who reads my blog :) I would love to hear your comments!