posted
I read the article, and I completely thought she was crazy. For a multitude of reasons, including writing the book in the first place. Writing about subjects is honorable. Writing about yourself to brag and get attention is unladylike, and since her kids are still basically kids, a betrayal of them. Memoirs should be written long after you have completed living the life you are talking about. Otherwise it is tacky, unless you are talking about political matters that everyone cares about already.
Basically, everything she said and did seemed much more about her than about the kid, which means she was using the kid for some sort of personal gratification. Tacky tacky tacky.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Ok - so this book came in at the library today and I started reading it. I'm about a quarter of the way through and.... it's as bad as I'd thought it would be.
She starts off saying this is a book about how she was humbled... but then goes on to basically explain how every borderline abusive thing she's done is really actually good for the kids. It doesn't matter if she made her daughter's childhood's miserable, they're successful! She's also, quite clearly, living out her own ambitions through her daughters.
She's not the worst mother in the world, but she's definitely not someone I will be taking parenting advice from.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Jun 2006
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posted
The book annoyed me greatly. I understand that it is a memoir. However, it is very over the top "look at me and how amazing I am". I couldn't get past the gloating tone. To me, that made her claims of "doing it for the kids" highly dubious. Like DDDaysh said, it seems to be all about her.
If I take her child rearing philosophy in isolation, she has some good starting points. They're taken too far, of course, but I appreciate some of the principles in general.
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
It's a memoir which spits out object lessons in her parenting method and a guide in lessons from her parenting choices, to the extent that her parenting form ends up with a name popularized by her.
So, it's kind of important to look at it both in terms of its memoir-ness as well as how it can and has been taken as a parenting guide.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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