"Super-Mom-Teacher" More Teacher, Less Mom, And Not So Super by Doug Wrenn

"Super-Mom-Teacher" More Teacher, Less Mom, And Not So Super

By Doug Wrenn

August 21, 2007

"I am woman, hear me roar, I have two kids I ignore, but I have my career and a super inflated ego…"

OK, so maybe that wasn't exactly the same lyric Helen Reddy sang, but maybe it's the one she should have sung. To say that the radical feminists of the left are patting themselves on the back again is like saying maple trees yield sap. It's hardly news. Nevertheless, the front-page article by Marissa Yaremich in the August 14th edition of The New Haven Register caught my throat as well as my eye, " West Haven Supermom-Teacher To Tell How She Does It." Gag.

Yaremich was referring to Elizabeth Warren, 32, a teacher (usually) at West Haven High School, a mother (sometimes) of two children, Darren, age 6, and Maxwell, age 3. Warren, an ironic (and younger) Candice Bergen look-alike, is being featured in the current edition of Working Mother Magazine (www.workingmother.com) in an article entitled "This Is How She Does It." No, it's not a tell-all sex tale, despite how the title sounds, but it's also no high compliment to modern motherhood, for a lack of a better name, either. Having read both appalling articles, I am sickened.

Liberals, and especially liberal women, so often melodramatically invoke "the children" whenever they are trying to promote their political, self-serving cause celebre, that it's nauseating, but as with abortions, careers seem to motivate these histrionic hypocrites of hyperbole into suddenly shelving their little cherished trophy rug rats into the back seat of their rising star lives without any restraint. Ah, yes, priorities.

To sum, "Super Teacher " (I won't call her "Mom") apparently wants to have it all. She can't have it all, but obviously, she never received the memo. Eleven ounces of water just will not fit into a ten ounce glass without spillage, and there are only so many tasks that you can do well in a 24 hour day without spillage. Like with most of these self-absorbed "Momma-Donnas," Warren's key to her success is shorting her kids. To repeat, they are ages six and three, and both in the very significant and very formative years of their lives. I'm not even a teacher and yet even I know that. And contrary to her erroneously assigned accolades, Elizabeth Warren is about as much an esteemed role model of a mother to her female students as Michael Vick is a role model for novice PETA animal activists.

Warren is up at 5 or 6am every morning to make herself pretty, and as she describes, husband, David helps the kids brush their teeth when the little one isn't hugging Mommy's leg (probably wishing she would actually be with him for a change), grabs breakfast on the run and then admittedly makes a deposit into one of those convenient kiddy kennels known as "daycare," the chic breeding ground for personality dysfunction, failure to thrive, and delinquency for "the children." Then she's teaching, preparing for the New York Marathon, coaching track, helping her students after school with homework, and driving her athletes home when they need rides. Husband, David, who ironically works for our state's infamous Department of Children and Families (DCF), tries to fill in the gaps as best he can while "Teacher Dearest" then stays up late at night, correcting papers. Oh yeah, and at some previous point, the little ones get sprung at shift change, and then admittedly get dragged to school events with Warren so that she can be with her athletes. Ah, yes, "quality time." David helps with supper, whenever that occurs, one of the kids has baseball and soccer all but two nights per week (I wonder if the Warrens own the obligatory mini-van!), and at some point after supper and baths, the kids go to bed for the night, where they can be justifiably ignored for a few hours.

Ironically, I ran into an old acquaintance who is a cop the other night. We were discussing a recent criminal incident that made news in his town and he said of the teenage suspect that he comes from a family of local notoriety and affluence, and like many such kids, he probably went wrong because all his life he naturally craved attention that he never got from his parents, who were always too busy being important and known. My buddy then elaborated that unlike some of his colleagues on the force, who have tunnel vision for a wealthy retirement, he is less consumed with working overtime incessantly and contently spends more time at home with his kids during off hours, watching them grow, enjoying time with them and making sure that they don't turn down a wrong future path in life. Ah-yup. Having previously worked in law enforcement and corrections myself, I have also encountered that all too common situation. I have seen bad kids evolve from "important" parents. You don't have to wear a badge to have common sense, or for that matter, common decency. Like it or not, kids, especially in their very early years, need lots of appropriate attention, and to become socially balanced, they learn and acquire certain necessary and specific traits from a mother (preferably female) and a father (preferably male), and both of them, preferably married. Parenthood vs. babysitting is what baking is to cooking. The former requires both a recipe and exactitude. The latter simply requires a recipe, and in both scenarios, both endeavors produce two entirely different products.

Elizabeth Warren may qualify for teacher of the year, but she's far from mother of the year from what I've read, and perhaps she should have a case number as well as a husband from DCF, and maybe a pair of silver handcuffs for her to wear (in a perfect world) would be a little more fitting than a gold medal. Publicly lauding this woman's narcissistic and socially accepted child neglect is sheer ludicrous, and bordering on criminal. Parenthood, like life, is about choices, and Warren made choices, and she doesn't deserve a medal for the ones she made. She chose someone else's kids over her own, and presumably, for reasons of her own inflated ego, either totally or in part, and a warped and needy sense of achievement. Every day in this country, and in this state, although, perhaps less so in this state, parents struggle in the balance of being good parents and also keeping things running at home, and that boils down to the dirty word we all know: "money." But some Moms work part time, or on opposite shifts of their husbands, and extended family members, such as grandparents, not paid strangers in child warehouses, pitch in with childcare in the interim, and on a less extensive basis. Or perhaps Mom is completely at home and Dad works two jobs, and/or they just do with less. Or maybe in some cases, Moms have their kids, and then begin or return to their careers when the kids are older. No one says that trendy mini-van has to be a 2007, or a Lexus. And the daunting question that seems so attached yet so often ignored to this entire and entirely too repeated and detestable scenario begs the question, why are these so-called "Super moms," like Elizabeth Warren, so obsessed with flaunting their careers, and so ashamed to work the most honorable of all careers, motherhood? Motherhood is above a career; it is a vocation, a calling. The calling Elizabeth Warren supposedly received either had static on the line or was a wrong number. For all this pretentious obsession, often guilt driven, about "self-esteem" for kids, why don't parents just stop this politically correct nonsense of play dates, quality time, time outs, never saying no, and being the kid's 'friend" (if even around much at all) and just actually start being a parent? If kids really mattered to feminists, their insidious crusade would be called, "Kidism." For all their empty rhetoric about "the children," these debutantes of denial who call themselves "Super-Moms" are not even remotely the solution to the problems kids have today, but they are a big part of the problems. Sadly, the less conceited "Super Moms" may some day reflect upon their troubled offspring long after the fact and ponder, "Where did I go wrong?" More sadly, those more deeply entrenched in the roots of feminism will neither notice nor acknowledge the unspeakable harm they caused to their children, and will instead simply and contently continue to float through "denial" without a paddle.

The fact that a publication called "Working Mother" even exists speaks volumes about how low we have sunken as a culture, and how little we truly cherish life and family when tempted by the coveted idols of materialism. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. After all, it's all part of the same ugly package; we chastise those whom we should praise, and we praise those whom we should chastise. We've lost our way, as well as our (proper) values, our common sense, and any semblance of what used to be called "shame" not all that long ago It used to be that the written word, "Mom," turned upside down, spelled, "Wow." Now it seems that the "Wow" is gone, but "Mom" as we once knew the institution is stuck in the upside down position, much like many other since abandoned institutions of a decent and functioning society. Furthermore, the demeaning term, "working mother" insinuates that mothers don't work, kind of like what then First (so-called) Lady and current presidential wannabe, Hillary Clinton meant in her cutting remark about women who stay home "baking cookies." To all mothers, those slaps in your faces were not so kindly brought to you by members of your own sex, the feminists, you know, those women who allegedly look out for women. In the context that feminists mean it, "working mother" is an oxymoron, assuming that you are doing the second part of that term the right way.

Although Elizabeth Warren is married and I can spell potato, I still agree with former Vice President, Dan Quayle. His infamous remarks were, in fact, very prophetic, despite the entire feminist frenzied firestorm and late night TV ridicule they caused, and they are also relevant to this subject. "Murphy Brown," even by any other name, is nobody to brag about, and certainly nobody to emulate.