海角大神

It has been an outraged, combative, and controversy-filled few days in the literary realm of planet momdom.

First, author Ruby Roth drew fire for her new children鈥檚 book, 鈥淰egan is Love.鈥� The health implications! the critics gasped. The anti-meat-eater discrimination!
听
Now Elisabeth Bandinter has taken over the hot seat, with her book, "The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women," seemingly tailor-made for mommy blog outrage.听Breastfeeding bad! Attachment parenting worse! The crunchy 鈥渘atural鈥� moms are out to get you!

It鈥檚 quite tempting, as you can imagine, for us to jump right into the fray. This is a parenting site, after all. And sarcasm aside, the issues raised in both of these debates 鈥� from child nutrition to co-sleeping 鈥� are front and center for many parents.

But I鈥檒l share a little secret.

I haven鈥檛 read either book yet.

Nope, neither one of them. I鈥檇 like to do so, and both should be on their way to my house as I write, but at this point, all I have to go by are the reviews and blogs and commentary.听

And as I began pouring through the reactions to 鈥淰egan is Love鈥� and 鈥淭he Conflict,鈥� one of those parenting mantras I heard growing up kept repeating in my head: Don鈥檛 judge a book by its cover.

(Thanks, Dad!)

It sounds cliche, perhaps, but it鈥檚 a message that strikes me as really quite important these days, when news and reaction and debates and punditry all get mixed up into one, loud, acrimonious mush of words, zipping this way and that across various high speed electronic mediums.听

I mean, we tend to get our outrage on and file away talking points from Rush Limbaugh or Jon Stewart; I鈥檇 venture that few people out there often go through the trouble to actually look through, say, a congressional bill before chatting about it at the dinner table. (No cheating here - how many of you have read the health care legislation? Hands? Anyone?)

All of which, I'd venture, might be a problematic lesson for the little ones.

I鈥檝e had a few chats with teachers recently who have complained about the quality of their students鈥� essays; how many high schoolers (and even college students) will present an argument based only upon what they, personally, think, in all their 18 years of wisdom. No historical references, no literary citations, just their own, unvarnished opinions presented as the foundation for scholastic points of view.

Gee, I thought. Who would do that??

So before writing about either of these growingly popular debates just yet (and I鈥檓 telling you, it is really, really hard not to start snarking on breastfeeding critic Bandinter鈥檚 alleged financial connections to formula maker Nestl茅), I am going to actually read the books.

It might make me a little slower in dishing about the topic of the day. But it鈥檚 important to us here at Modern Parenthood that you know we鈥檙e still trying to do our homework.听

At least when the dog doesn鈥檛 eat it.听

Thanks, everyone.