Parenting "Experts" and Information Overload

My lovely friend Estrella sent me a link to a podcast, "The Economist's Guide to Parenting." The following is a quote from that podcast:

"Now, if you thought it was bad in the 20th century, you might want to stay out of the 21st. In a lot of places, parenting has become a competitive sport. Experts are everywhere, each of them sounding more confident than the last, even if their advice contradicts one another — or contradicts themselves? So how are we supposed to know what’s really good for kids? How do we know what’s worth worrying about — and what’s not?"

You can read the whole transcript, or listen to the podcast here:
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/06/07/the-economist-guide-to-parenting-full-transcript/


I pulled the above quote, because that quote, in-and-of-itself, to me represents so much about parenting that I am borderline petrified of. This business of every "expert" telling you how to parent your child, people incessantly pointing out what you're doing wrong, other parents telling you how frickin' fabulous their child is... daily, and receiving links to 5 million mommy blogs/parenting websites and such... unsolicited. This of course on top of your own pre-existing tendencies to overthink, over-research and possibly overdo everything. (Or at least mine anyway).

I would like to believe that I wouldn't fall victim to parenting information overload - or this belief that simply being a parent makes you a "parenting expert" of any sort or kind.

If we kid, I will never profess to be a parenting expert, and I'm going to do my damndest to make decisions based on what my husband and I believe just works. The pragmatic approach.

The funny part perhaps is that if we do kid, I suppose there is a decent chance that I will become a mommy blogger. That title also scares the hell out of me, especially because I'll still be an opinionated little bitch who points fingers at people for parenting wrong and will likely have many, many more fingers pointed right back at me as I screw up my own kid on a fairly regular basis.

What can I say? I'm a total hypocrite. But, buried beneath the hypocritical bitch exterior is the neurotic somewhat insecure mess who will likely be poring over mommy blogs, Jewgling and everything else I should be avoiding, if we do in fact kid.

In the meantime, I love being the mommy of two adorable Boston Terriers that I just can't get enough of. Love, love, love it.