De-lurking to comment on this one.

The dripping sarcasm on these stories boggles me. Why the distaste for people who are honest about child-rearing, you know? That's what I think of it as. Honesty. When our mothers were raising us, it wasn't okay to tell other people that sometimes you were too tired, sometimes you were bored by the fifteenth round of "ring around the rosy", sometimes you just wanted to get away from being the parent for a few days.

How many of them wanted to, but never did? How many of us would never have been that honest, if there wasn't a community around them (bloggers, etc) saying "I know *exactly* what you mean!"

I think this "hipster" parent idea (though I'd hardly consider myself in this category, I suspect the writers might, simply by virtue of the fact that a) I blog and b) I maintain a life outside of parenthood) is simply that our generation is trying to figure out how to be a parent and be happy. AT THE SAME TIME.

It's the same philosophy I see my fellow Gen-Xers apply to everything - if you find a way to be happy within yourself, you'll be better at whatever it is you're doing.

And that is what's so damned threatening about it. Parenting (or indeed, life in general) isn't supposed to make you happy. It's supposed to make you miserable so that our parent's generation can finally say "Remember when I said 'just wait until you have kids of your own?'" and then cackle with glee.

Ultimately, I think there is a permanent and irrevocable misunderstanding between our two generations.
