Judith Warner, will you rock my world? (Yes, Crabmommy. I will.)

Okay the title has nothing to do with the piece. But I did, you know, recently get to see TV in a hotel room and by God that show Rock of Love was ever phenomenal. My South African and Commonwealth readers, it's a surreality show about this ageing rocker, Brett Michaels of Poison, trying to pick a new (play)mate. Hi.La.Ri.Ous.

But Judith Warner, of The New York Times. She always tells me things that make me think this woman is just loaded with common sense! And no I am not being sarcastic, for once. (Boy, it feels odd not to be sarcastic! It's weird for me. Like running around naked in the driveway or something.)

OK for the third time, let's get back to the point. Judith Warner, the parenting voice of reason over the NYT, is talking today about medicating kids and our generation's current culture of parenting in which we are all drowning in a giant vat of neurosis. Read it. Here's a particularly juicy bit, in which JW asks some clever guy why it is we are so freaked out all the time about our spawn:

“Tremendous fears about downward mobility,” he quickly answered. “We believe we’re living in a new world where the avenues of success are harder to get into and there’s no guarantee that things will work out. There’s tremendous worry that our kids won’t be able to recreate our class status. This creates an adversarial relationship between our kids and other kids.” And, he added, “displaced guilt.”

And how about this bit:

We know that our current lifestyle of 24/7 work, constant competition, chronic stress and compensatory consumerism is toxic. But we also know – or feel – that there’s not much we can do about it. We feel guilty about the world we’ve created for our kids, one of lots of work and not much free play. But we’re also wedded to that world, invested in it, utterly complicit with its values and demands.

Some dang juicy stuff in there and for my part it's striking a nerve, people. Make that several nerves. Because, you know, I have quite a lot of them. And just reading about and thinking about neurotic parenting and the world we've created for our kids makes me go into a neuronal amplification of maternal hysteria.

But much more important than all of that is the following question: I am wondering if JW would hang out with me if she could (i.e., if I let her) and if so, whether she would find me to be a giant wad of neurotic somatic cells or if she would find me bubbly and fun! Sort of beside the point, but then this is my blog and it's always slightly sort of beside the point, innit?

This week at Crabmommy's bloglet: predicting your mommy horoscopes (momoscopes), the Astromommy way. What do I see in the stars for you? For goodness' sake head over there and find out, you silly bird!