Monday, June 9th, 2008...8:48 pm
#39: Mud Hut Super Moms
The Best Parent Ever is better than you, because everything you do is wrong. And by “you,” they mean all the parents of North America, Europe, Australia, and the more developed parts of Asia and South America.
The only people who truly know ANYTHING at all about proper child-rearing are impoverished mothers living in mud huts in the Third World. Nearly every new parenting theory embraced by the Best Parent Ever starts out something like this: poor women in Africa or India can’t afford diapers/food/babysitters, but somehow their kids turn out phenomenally better than yours. Next come the over-priced books and classes on, say, Natural Infant Hygiene, Extended Breastfeeding, and Attachment Parenting. This is followed by the disapproving stares and ferocious forum posts directed at anyone who strays from the Best Parent party line.
Yes, Imperialism is alive and well in the Best Parent’s world. These days, it’s not enough to steal a poor nation’s natural resources and culture. We must also co-opt their child rearing techniques — and profit from it! One book or instructional course offered in any of these natural parenting subjects will cost the Best Parent Ever more than the Mud Hut Super Mom who inspired it earns in an entire year.
So take that, naked, starving, poopy-covered children of the Third World. No juice boxes or Pampers for you. You and your parents are at the vanguard of the latest parenting trends. Keep up the good work, and maybe in a few years, we’ll send Bill Gates over to drop off some vaccines. You may live a life of hunger and misery, but at least you have inspired that most important person of all, the Best Parent Ever.
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16 Comments
June 10th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
OMG! Too funny! I get all sorts of shits and giggles listening to Best Parents spout off about how “anthropologically correct” their parenting is. Thanks, but I think I’ll keep the Pampers and juice boxes.
June 10th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I don’t claim to be the Best Parent Ever (Extended Breastfeeding? Yuck!), but I definitely know that my kid is better than eveyone else’s. If that makes me the Best Parent Ever, I’ll own it. Where’s my trophy?
June 10th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
mud huts don’t produce great moms. they produce…mud.
everyone knows section 8 housing produces great moms!
June 11th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Oh, that’s good. I’m doing it.
June 11th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
i’ll keep my papmers, vax’s and formula.
oh and Mac Daniels….LMAO!!
June 11th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
ok BPE blog lady, you’re getting just cranky enough to get me really interested here…this is a provocative post with a valid and deadly serious point behind it.
Where I live – Toronto, Canada – we have extensive immigration and an overabundance of BPEs. Here’s how we do our bit: We are so great that we can afford to bring doctors, biologists, engineers and all other manner of educated folk from African countries, south and southeast Asian countries and make them clean our office buildings and drive our cabs. I don’t mean a few thousand or so, I mean 100,000s of educated third world immigrants.
How does this help the BPE display their superiority through Mud Hut Parenting? Well, once all the doctors and scientists are busy working their menial jobs here (sorry, we were only kidding about accepting your credentials) 3rd World Super Moms are forced to rely on ancient child rearing methods, cuz all the freakin’ doctors and nurses are gone.
So take that, 3rd world. We are so rich we can afford to make your doctors drive our cabs, then sell your “traditional knowledge” for even more money.
What’s wrong with this picture?????
June 11th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Ghost Dog………I think I love you :0)
Will you join the forum???
Come one people join the darn forum….we don’t bite……much.
June 19th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Now that is the truth if ever I’ve heard it! LOL I get so sick and tired of being told that I should be co-sleeping because that’s what they do in third-world countries, or babywearing because it’s what African moms do and it’s so wonderful. And that my kids will be emotionally stunted/damaged because I don’t do these things. Give me a break. I woke up on top of my baby once when I tried co-sleeping….how can I be a Best Parent if my baby dies cause I squashed him in bed?? So they have their own cribs. So shoot me. As for babywearing, well, if you want to turn your toddler into a lazy little fatty by carrying him around everywhere, go for it. My kids are slim and strong and are more than capable of getting themselves around on their own little legs, precisely because I *let* them instead of carrying them.
June 22nd, 2008 at 2:33 am
First of all, much of Africa is “developed.” Secondly, African parenting traditions, which are quite diverse, don’t come from inability to afford Western commodities but are rooted in traditions and are valued because of their assets. By the way, vaccination was developed in Africa — and brought to America by slave named Onesimus. Moms all over the world co-sleep without squashing their babies and cultures that practice baby wearing have extremely low rates of obesity. Get off the blog and pick up a book — bigots.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Ladybug… Looks like somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning… Let’s try to find our sense of humor today, k?
June 28th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
This website seems rather hateful. I’m all for funny, but it just seems like an excuse to hate on other moms who are interested in doing something outside the mainstream.
Remember, you ARE the mainstream with your Pampers and juice boxes and commercial TV. Why knock the tiny percentage of moms who choose differently?
Yeah supposed to be funny, whatever. Like I said, I find it more hateful than funny. I think it’s admirable when parents go the extra mile for their kids and make an effort to be the best parent ever without using so much wasteful crap to do it. Nothing wrong with that.
And what’s up with the anti-environment stance here? Knocking Priuses? Praising disposables? Hi, ever thought about what kind of world your kids are going to grow up in?
Maybe I’ll start a response website called “The Laziest, Most Selfish Parent Ever” and knock mainstream stuff. Not a bad idea, that.
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Lighten up, msLaura! If you don’t like it, don’t read it. You can’t tell me all those BPE’s out there aren’t being hateful to us normal parents. Just because I don’t cloth-diaper my kid or sleep with him in my bed or drive a $1000 stroller that actually got a worse rating from Consumer Reports that my Even-flo did or put him in an expensive Brittax car seat that got an equal rating from Consumer Reports as my Even-flo did or feed him organic food or teach him baby sign language does not mean that I don’t go the extra mile for him all day every day. It just means I have common sense. And speaking of wasteful crap, sure my Pampers are piling up in the landfills with those of all the other non- Best Parents, but have you ever thought of how much water you are wasting washing all the crap out of your kid’s cloth diapers?
July 8th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
What do you think happens to water after it gets used in a washing machine? Does it disappear? Turn into carbon dioxide? Or, perhaps it remains water. Perhaps it is treated and reused. Perhaps you are only fooling yourself. Kayla0110, you sound so incredibly bitter, it’d make me sad if I weren’t so busy laughing!
July 11th, 2008 at 4:40 am
CC– you overestimate how reusable and renewable water is. I can only guess you are not from the west where water availability and quality are a huge issue. And even in my crunchy and cosmopolitan area the water gets dumped, poorly treated into the nearby saltwater body. In other words, your method ain’t no great shakes either.
July 28th, 2008 at 2:57 am
Hey, everyone RELAX!
I make my on baby food, cloth diaper and carry my kid in a sling and I think this site is HI-LARIOUS!!
This isn’t about main stream vs. non mainstream it’s about the people who do this stuff and think the are BETTER. I could give a s*** if you use pampers or don’t co-sleep, I’m not judgmental so I don’t get defensive. Why do we have to hate. We have to laugh at ourselves and live an let live. God, can’t we make different choices in parenting and not let that imply that everyone else who doesn’t agree with our choices is a moron….LIGHTEN UP!!!! Go have a Pabst or a glass of Pinot Noir, whichever will calm you down.
April 1st, 2009 at 4:35 am
I agree with Spider. I usually don’t read the comments for more than one or two posts before someone starts calling this ‘hateful’ or ‘bitter’ and then launches into a paragraph on how what we’re laughing at is SO wrong. Huh, actually, that sounds kinda familiar… http://bestparentever.com/2008/04/07/21-giving-unwanted-advice/
Go Spider! And any other BPE who can read this and laugh. If you can laugh at yourself, you will never want for merriment.