Motherhood Smotherhood

Whats the first thing a woman does when she thinks she might be pregnant? She Googles. And it goes downhill from there. While the internet is full of calming and cheerily supportive articles, its also littered with hyper-judgmental message boards and heaps of contradictory and scolding information. Babies on Boards takes parents through the trenches of new parenting, warning readers of the pleasures and perils of mommy blogs, new parent groups, self-described lactivists, sleep fascists, incessant trend pieces on working versus non-working mothers, and the place where free time and self-esteem goes to die: Pinterest (back away from the hand-made flower headbands for baby!).JJ Keith interweaves discussions of what it takes a village really means (hint: a lot of unwanted advice from elderly strangers who may have grown up in actual villages) and a take-down of the rising make your own baby food movement (just mush a banana with a fork!) with laugh-out-loud observations about the many mistakes she made as a frantic new mother with too much access to high speed internet and a lot of questions. Keith cuts to the truthwhether its about perfect births, parenting gurus, the growing tide of vaccine rejecters, the joy of blanketing Facebook with baby pics, or germophobiato move conversations about parenting away from experts espousing blanket truths to amateurs relishing in what a big, messy pile of delight and trauma having a baby is. It turns out those little buggers are more durable and fun than we think they are!