A lot of my friends who don’t work — and it was the same for me when I didn’t — indulge in a willing suspension of the world of ideas and immerse themselves in the rather dull world of kids’ trivia. You find yourself at a dinner party and, instead of talking about novels or politics, the discussion is about whether it’s important to make your own baby food. Even fascinating and brilliant women can revert to this incredibly mundane topic.

This has never been a problem for me, and frankly, I don’t even understand it. I’ve had a child every two or three years for the better part of the last decade, worked part time for the first few years and have been lucky enough to be a full-time stay-at-home mother for a little more than two years now, but I have never felt that my brain was atrophying. I have never stopped reading good books or following politics. I have never stopped thinking about books and history and politics, nor stopped talking about them with my husband and my friends. I’ve been working on a book for the entire time I’ve been a SAHM, and while it is certainly true that taking care of my children has prevented me from finishing it by now, it hasn’t prevented me from working on it, or thinking about it as I go about my domestic tasks. Do I think about what to make for dinner, too? Of course I do, but it doesn’t take all day, and I can cook and listen to talk radio or books on tape at the same time. Not all the time, of course, because my daughters like to help (and talk, talk, talk) some of the time, but other times they’re off playing in their room or outside, and my mind is free to do what it always did before I had children, even as my hands are busy with food or laundry or whatever.

Roiphe’s article was a bit hard for me to follow at some points, not because my brain has been damaged by obsessing over homemade babyfood, but because the article could have used a good editorial once-over. Moving on from the brain-atrophy problem, she writes:

In the 1930s, Winifred Holby, a journalist friend of the writer Vera Brittain, wrote about what she called the “rich unrest of family life”. I think that we’re supposed to embrace that rich unrest. It evokes a different attitude to the difficulty and chaos of child-rearing. We seem to be so oppressed by all these basic aspects of child-rearing, and I wonder if it is not self-imposed.

It also displays a lack of imagination and tolerance. Is it okay if someone raises their children differently, if a mother, instead of giving them art projects, puts them in front of videos at 8am so she can get dressed? Our judgments contain our own insecurities and a lack of imagination.

What is she talking about? And what does it have to do with (a) SAHM brains atrophying, or (b) letting your kids rule your life? I had never heard of Winifred Holby, but looked her up (finding that her name was actually Holtby, with a T) and learned that she never married or had children. I couldn’t find a reference to the “rich unrest of family life” and am still not sure whether Roiphe thinks that embracing it is a good thing or a bad thing for a mother to do. Similarly, I’m not sure if she’s defending or criticizing the moms who put their toddlers in front of the telly so they can get dressed in the morning. Why she thinks that videos or art projects are the only options is beyond me. Hasn’t she ever heard of children amusing themselves by playing? Truly, it is possible. Mine do it every day for at least a few minutes and often a few hours.

She wraps up the piece by observing:

I would be a terrible mother if I didn’t work — I’d go crazy. And I the fact like that my daughter sees me working. I want her to do whatever she wants in life.

If she wants to work, that’s her business. After all, she has only one child, and that child is already in school. But please, Ms. Roiphe, don’t assume that those of us who do want to be home with our children are mindless dolts who are “going crazy” or losing the ability to think about intellectually stimulating topics. For a great many mothers I know, it simply isn’t so.

A new NBC series, The Baby Borrowers, thows teen couples into the parenting pit and lets the world watch as they squirm. I didn’t watch the show, but the LA Times review of the premiere reported that contrary to what one might expect, the young men did rather better with the babies than the young women, who frequently dissolved in fits of tears and frustration. I doubt I’ll bother watching, since (a) I don’t like reality TV in general, and (b) I’m going to be reliving the madness myself in a little over a week, when our new addition joins the household, and any TV I do watch is going involve things to take my mind off the crying baby in my own house, not provide back-up in stereo.

Having just visited the show’s website to obtain the URL for my link, I saw that it contains a poll asking at what age couples are best suited to become parents. The results of the poll when I voted just now were: Teens 27%, Twenties 31%, Thirties 41%, Forties less than 1%, and later than that less than half a percent. The fact that 30s ranked highest didn’t surprise me, but I would have thought that 20s and 40s would both have garnered more votes, and teens far fewer. In case you’re curious, I voted for 20s as the best time, even though (or more likely because) I had my own children in my late 30s and early 40s. One of my earlier posts (and one of my favorites) will explain why.

Lisa Chamberlain, author of Slackonomics: Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction, which will be published in a few days, writes on her blog about the effect getting “knocked up” (her term, not mine) has had on her life. So far, not much. She doesn’t feel any pressing need to marry the boyfriend who knocked her up (like so very many others today, alas) and doesn’t think the baby is going to affect her career all that much. Okay, stop laughing, all you mothers out there. You see, Ms. Chamberlain is a member of Generation X, which is far superior to those stupid Baby Boomers (you know, the ones who for the most part did think it was important to get married before they got knocked up – or at least before they started showing) in that Gen X couples practice Shared Parenting, that is, Gen X guys aren’t hamstrung by outmoded ideas about gender roles, and they really do half of everything house and kid related, fifty-fifty, share and share alike. Personally, I can’t wait to read Ms. Chamberlain’s blog a year or so from now to see how her boyfriend is doing in the fifty-fifty department.