L.A. may be the city of dreams. But, for us parents, Boston is the city of sleep. All of the greatest pediatric sleep doctors practice there. You can feel the pulse of their giant brain-veins as you drive down Longwood Ave. and Storrow Drive, past the medical Walk of Fame: Boston Children’s, Beth Israel, Mass. General, Dana-Farber.  Homes to the greatest baby doctors on earth. So great, you know them by one name, like Bono, or Angelina, or God. To us, they are superstars: Sears, Brazelton, and, of course, the great Ferber.  The man who made "cry it out" a household phrase. A man so famous that he has his own verb: Ferberize. As in, "We can’t go out tonight, we’re Ferberizing little Max."

Ferberizing is the Ironman of competitive parenting: You train your baby to sleep on his own by letting him scream his little lungs out all alone wondering where the hell you went.  It’s not for the weak or the lazy.

But if you have the stony heart to do it, it’s worth it. Because, as every overachieving parent knows, it’s all about the sleep: how soon your child does it through the night, how long, and how deeply. It’s the single biggest mark of success or failure in the first three months or parenthood. The faster you reach it, the sooner little Max can get on with tracking a raisin with his eyes and packing his bags for Harvard.

So, naturally, if you live in Boston and you want your child to have an edge, you try to get a piece of the sleep doctors. Anxious and overeducated, we’ll line up, like Oscar day gawkers, to catch a glimpse of the great ones — to hear them speak, or to rub elbows with them at your husband’s boss’s college roommate who went to med school with one of them’s cocktail party.

Some parents might even have the balls to seek an appointment. Fat chance. Someone has to actually die before a space opens up and, even then, there are parents who’ve been waiting years ahead of you. Get in line, groupie. You can’t sleep your way to the sleep doctors in this town.

You need to know all this so you can appreciate what it is I’m about to tell you. I’m not a lucky person. I don’t win preschool raffles, or baby-shower games, or Blues Clues Bingo. But one day— one frigid New England Monday— my luck changed. I got the golden ticket of competitive parenting.

My daughter hadn’t slept through the night in four and a half years. In other words, never.  For a while we were able to make excuses for her: "Oh, she needs to eat every few hours"; or, "We just moved, so she’s in a transition period"; or, "it’s Daylight Savings. Again." Every few months we’d buy another sleep book, read it, and try the latest method out on her for a week or so, but none of them ever took. Then we’d get too tired, or lose the book, and things would just keep on keeping on.

We never volunteered any of this information. But inevitably we would get asked The Question: "Is she sleeping through the night?" Now, this is a land mine of a question. It seems harmless, but what the person really wants to know is: "Are you a lazy slacker?" or, if they’re newish parents, "Are you worse at this than I am?" The few times we fell into the trap of telling people the truth, they’d start in about setting limits and consistency. Usually this would be followed by a lecture on their personal sleep guru’s philosophy and how, with the right commitment, it worked for them.

The point is, no one feels sorry for you when your kid is the "Bad Sleeper." They just look at you like you represent everything that’s wrong with the world: negligence, sloth, incompetence. Like I can’t be bothered with sleep training because I’m too busy surfing the Internet for cheap deals on recalled car seats. To make things worse, every time we turned around there’d be another study out about how sleep deprivation makes you stupid and fat. Great. Now we weren’t just lame. We were dumb, fat, and lame.

One day, determined to seize control, we locked our daughter in her room and let her scream from three-thirty to six-o’-clock in the morning. Just like the book said. When she finally stopped, our stony hearts leapt for joy. We cracked open the door, expecting to find her little body in a heap on the floor, surrendered to sleep. Instead, there she stood, staring at us with a twinkle in her eye — baby shit everywhere.  If I hadn’t been so completely freaked out, I might have admired her for her ingenuity. After all, she figured out what the biggest weapon in her toddler arsenal was, and she wasn’t afraid to use it. But as I pulled on my rubber gloves and started scrubbing the walls with every ounce of disinfectant I could find in the house, all I could hear was the snide voice of Failure whispering in my ear: It’s over. She’s broken you. You just don’t have what it takes.

We started lying to friends and relatives after that. We figured if we couldn’t wipe out Failure, we could hide it like a fifth of scotch in the flour bin.

But then our son was born, and I stopped being able to keep up whatever façade of control I’d managed to cobble together. The interrupted sleep combined with a newborn was finally just too much. I started doing things like leaving the house with my Brest Friend still on.  A Brest Friend, if you haven’t seen one, is a big foam donut that velcros around your waist so you can rest the baby on it, breast feed, and keep your hands free for things like eating and crying. It even has little pockets in it for the remote and your cell phone in case you want to watch people on TV eating and crying; or want to talk to a friend and cry, or talk to her about what you’re eating.

I don’t know if it was the hormones, or the sense of our utter failure finally hitting me that drove me to chance the unthinkable. But, one day, Brest Friend strapped to my waist, boobs flapping around like a crazed harpy, I fished out my phone and called the office of the Great Dr. Ferber himself.

There must have been something in my voice — some sound-wave frequency that vibrated in just the right way off the receptionist’s inner ear. Kind of like a dying whale sending out a distress call. Maybe someone had just that second died, and, before the receptionist had had time to pick up the phone to call the next family in line, my call had gone through. All I know is that she had an appointment for me. Six months away in July. But, still, an appointment. And not with one of his lackeys, or his protégés. With Him.

I carried that appointment around with me like a sweet secret. Every time I would have to endure the smug advice of another parent toting her sleep-glutted wunder-child, I would think: I have tried everything possible to fix this problem. If Dr. Ferber can’t fix it, then it’s unfixable.

In a weird way, I think this was the outcome I was hoping for. I imagined Ferber working intensely on our daughter, canceling all of his appointments and speaking engagements to direct all of his brilliance toward her. He would let her scream for days in a padded room that he would spray down with Lysol every few hours, but she would persevere. She would be his greatest challenge. A medical anomaly. Never in his thirty years of practice (he would say) had he seen such a child. She must be a genius. How lucky she was to have such patient and insightful parents who had the guts to make that call. But there’s nothing to be done. Nothing. (A pause: he removes his glasses, and rubs his giant brain-vein). I have exhausted all of my expertise, all of my tricks. If I can’t make this child sleep through the night, then no one possibly can.

And then he would send us home, vindicated. When people would hear about our Vampire child and ask in that patronizing tone, "Well, have you tried Ferberizing her?" we would finally have the iron-clad response: "Why, Yes. Yes, we have." Then I’d reach into my impeccably organized diaper bag and pull out the laminated article from the New England Journal of Medicine featuring my little genius. Judgment would turn to awe.

Don’t get me wrong. There was a part of me that was hoping it would work. But I liked this story a lot and kept adding onto it as the months went by. It kept me warm and safe through that frigid winter.

But then things, as they always do, started to change: Winter turned to Spring; I didn’t need my Brest Friend anymore; my baby son inexplicably, accidentally really, started sleeping through the night. Even my daughter started waking up just once instead of twice or three times. Sometimes.

In June, I got a call from Dr. Ferber’s receptionist to confirm my appointment. And you know what?  I didn’t think twice before telling her I didn’t need it anymore. When I hung up the phone, it took me a few moments to realize the hugeness of what had just happened: I had actually broken up with the man of my dreams.

My daughter’s eight now. She’s a great kid, but she still wakes up at least once a night usually and calls out for a snuggle or a blanket, or just because she can. We have, according to the books, utterly failed. But when I walked away from my Ferber fantasy, I also walked away from what those books represent: the idea that every child can and must be shaped into the same perfect being, and our need to get the gold star for doing it perfectly and by the book.

Now, instead of lying about how well my family sleeps, I tell people that I cancelled on Dr. Ferber. And I feel kind of proud about it. Because when I did it, I owned what every parent knows but few of us publicly admit: that this is a sloppy job, and no amount of Lysol can wipe out all the messy, petrifying imperfections it brings out.

Even if the real reason was that I was just too tired to go.

Excerpted from Afterbirth: Stories You Won't Read in a Parenting Magazine, edited by Dani Klein Modisett.

Turns out the experts are on his side. The numbers are daunting — but odds are you can make it work. In this report (pdf), the USDA estimates a middle class family will spend more than $204,000 to raise a child to adulthood (not including college tuition). Considering a middle-income family makes an average of $61,000 before taxes, it's not hard to imagine few have an extra $204,000 lying around. It's no wonder a Charles Schwab/Baby Center survey in 2007 found that forty percent of women delay pregnancy because of financial concerns.

But that hasn't stopped babies from coming. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, that same year mothers aired their financial dirty laundry was the year the United States had its highest number of births — ever. In 2007, there were 4,315,000 children born. That's 15,000 more births than the peak time of the baby boom in 1957.

Were any of those parents ready? Maybe, maybe not. The good news is, you can be — even if you aren't right at this very moment. We spoke to a slew of experts and came up with these seven key steps to easing your pre-baby financial anxiety.

1. TALK HONESTLY WITH YOUR PARTNER ABOUT MONEY

Couples who traditionally keep their finances separate or don't talk much about the division of costs have more trouble having an open and honest discussion about what's to come. Now's the time to throw pre-conceived notions out the window, along with privacy concerns. "A baby changes everything about your life — sleep schedules, priorities, your social life, your financial status, and the primary couple relationship," says California psychotherapist Tina Tessina, PhD., author of Money, Sex and Kids: Stop Fighting about the Three Things That Can Ruin Your Marriage. "These changes happen overnight, because the day a baby is born, everything is different from the day before. There is no way to accurately predict how these changes will feel, and the learning curve for new parents is very steep. Planning ahead for what you can anticipate, like finances, helps make the transition easier.

2. CHECK YOUR CREDIT SCORES

Whoever takes the lead in finance for the couple can take the lead in the family finance discussions too, starting by pulling up each partner's credit report to get a good accounting of their financial situation. The report — available free yearly via AnnualCreditReport.com thanks to the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act — will show you how fit you seem to the financial world. Fiancial advisors like Suze Orman can provide you with strategies for upping your FICO score even if you don't raise your income. (These include paying bills on time, raising the ratio of credit to debt, paying off high-APR credit cards, and fixing errors on your report.)

3. ESTIMATE YOUR POST-BABY INCOME

Meanwhile, Lucy Duni, vice president of consumer education for TrueCredit.com by TransUnion, calls for every couple to draw up a budget. "Everyone has the 'nice to haves' and the 'have to haves,'" she explains. "Start with the nice-to-haves and see if you can go without." If you are considering living on one income after the baby comes, try living on one income before pregnancy to see if it's feasible. Set aside that second income in a savings account. Financial experts advise every American have at least three to six months living expenses in a separate savings account at any given time in case of job loss or other emergency, but a Bankrate survey showed fewer than four in ten do. Now's the time to make that happen, Duni says, and ideally to add an extra cushion for family emergencies.

4. RESEARCH YOUR EMPLOYERS' FAMILY LEAVE POLICIES

Now's also the time to find out what employers offer during a maternity or paternity leave — even if both parents plan to return to work after the baby is born. The Family Medical Leave Act requires parents be granted up to twelve weeks leave without risk of losing their jobs, but there is no requirement that they receive a paycheck during those twelve weeks. Some businesses provide a disability benefit, but even that is well below the average salary.

5. CHECK OUT YOUR HEALTH CARE BENEFITS

Couples need to explore the pregnancy and pediatric costs associated with their health insurance plans. Will they cover prenatal care, delivery in a hospital with a private room? Will the baby be added to the plan at birth, or will that take some time? If your employer doesn't offer an affordable family plan, now is the time to look at your local children's health insurance program to determine what out-of-pocket medical expenses might be both immediately after the birth and as children grow and require well visits to the pediatrician (as often as monthly during the earliest stages of life).

6. CALCULATE CHILDCARE COSTS IN YOUR AREA

The final piece of the puzzle is a look at the expenses that make up that $204,000 figure from the USDA — diapers, shoes, jars of baby food, extra rolls of toilet paper because your toddler is fascinated with the flushing action of the toilet. The answer? There is no one set figure for every child. "That frustrated me to no end when I was pregnant," Erica Sandberg, author of Expecting Money: The Essential Financial Plan for New and Growing Families, says with a laugh. "Two words I loathed when I was pregnant were 'it depends.' I think what parents crave is to know exactly how much it's going to cost. They need to know diapers cost, say, $75 per month." So cruise the baby section of the local supermarket and quiz other parents. Just as you'd ask an experienced mother about breastfeeding or picking out the right stroller, ask how much they spend on diapers, on bottles, on clothing.

7. HAVE FAITH IN YOURSELF

"No matter where you are, you can make changes, become financially ready," Duni says. "You shouldn't feel intimidated to sit down and take that first step — these are YOUR finances. If you are in a more challenging credit situation, give yourself six months to put yourself in a better situation. There are no quick fixes, but everyone can do it." Duni and her husband had no guarantees when they had their child, nor did Erica Sandberg and her husband when they had theirs. They all agonized, but they all made the jump. "I think fear is healthy," Sandberg says. "No, no one is every one hundred percent ready, but you can get close to it, and close to it is good enough."

The heavy bleeding sent me to the hospital in hysterics nearly two months before my due date. That's where I learned my cervix had shortened and thinned almost completely, a warning sign my body was gearing up for labor way too early.

After a steroid shot to accelerate my daughter's lung development, the obstetrician gave me pills to prevent contractions and another more bewildering prescription — bed rest. "We don't know if this really helps prevent preterm delivery," he told me. "But let's try everything we can to keep her cooking in there as long as possible."

So without further questions or second thought, I went to bed, lying on my left side to keep pressure off my uterus and prevent labor. And all at once, I went from being an independent, go-getting newspaper reporter and compulsive runner to a bedridden patient completely out of control of her body and life.

Each day I got up only to shower and brush my teeth, use the bathroom as necessary, and in an occasional fit of guilt-producing recklessness, pour myself a bowl of cereal downstairs. My husband did his best to pick up the slack around the house, and friends and family visited when they could. But even a nightstand brimful of good novels and bad romantic comedies couldn't distract me from the fear and uncertainty.

Minutes, hours, entire days passed when all I did was cry and imagine the worst. I spent the restless winter nights in the black hole of my bedroom pleading with my swollen belly as I watched it rise and fall, trying to will my defiant womb into compliance. The medication made me jittery and flushed. My bones and muscles ached from the lack of activity. Time passed imperceptibly, but somehow my maternity leave was evaporating before I could even stroke my baby's downy head or inhale her sour breath.

I have never felt more alone.

Ironically, I wasn't. Each year, an estimated 700,000 — or one in five — pregnant women in the United States are placed on bed rest for just about every obstetrical complication imaginable. It is a standard way to treat preterm labor, threatened miscarriage, preeclampsia, multiple fetuses, low or high amniotic fluid levels, pregnancy-induced hypertension, premature rupture of membranes and incompetent cervix, among other conditions.

For what purpose? None, according to Judith Maloni, Associate Professor at Case Western Reserve University's Bolton School of Nursing, who has produced most of the major research about pregnancy bed rest and received the first National Institutes of Health grant on the topic.

For more than a decade, Maloni has been calling on doctors to stop prescribing bed rest routinely to pregnant women. "The body of evidence shows that bed rest has minimal or no benefit," she says. "That might be no big deal if bed rest didn't hurt you, but it does."

Maloni's early studies took a cue from NASA and Russian aerospace scientists, who began to put people on bed rest in the early 1940s to investigate the potential consequences of weightlessness during long-term space flight.

The problems they observed in their subjects were dramatic, like muscle weakness and atrophy, indigestion, bone loss, dizziness, blood clots, fatigue and fainting. Then there were the psychological side effects such as increased stress, anxiety, sense of isolation, sleep disturbance, boredom and depression.

"We set out to systematically discover whether the same side effects of inactivity are there for pregnant women on bed rest — and they are," says Maloni.

Maloni found these side effects last well into the postpartum recovery period, just when women most need strength of body and mind to deal with the trials of new motherhood.

Alison Gary spent two months on bed rest in her suburban Maryland home last year after her blood pressure climbed to worrisome levels while she was pregnant with her daughter Emerson. Five months later, the thirty-four-year-old continues to suffer from intense hip and knee pain, as well as debilitating exhaustion that she attributes to her lack of activity before childbirth. She sprained her foot during labor, likely because of her muscle loss. "I still feel like I am healing from it all, and like I am playing catch-up for a whole period in my life that was taken from me," Gary says.

Debbie Blucher became pregnant two years ago while living in Switzerland for her husband's job. The couple planned to return home to California to deliver their baby, but then doctors diagnosed Blucher, thirty-seven, with a shortened cervix and placed her on strict bed rest for ten weeks. She spent three of those weeks alone in a Geneva hospital. "I had no Internet access and no English TV," recalls Blucher. "There was nothing to distract me from my boredom and thinking the worst."

A year after the birth of daughter Madeleine, Blucher still suffers from back pain and is trying to regain her strength. "I was always very athletic," she says. "But [after being on bed rest] I would walk two blocks, and it would take me twenty or thirty minutes shuffling down the street, out of breath."

In addition to these emotional and physical side effects, the financial cost of bed rest can be extraordinary. Consider lost earnings, hospitalization, medical bills not covered by insurance, transportation, prepared meals, household help and child care. A 1994 study — the most recent data available — put the annual price tag of bed rest in the U.S. between $266 million and $1.3 billion.

During my bed rest, I took short-term disability at my paper, using up invaluable FMLA-time and forcing my husband and me to endure an untimely blow to our bank account. Luckily we had savings to pay the bills during those lean weeks. Some women are not so fortunate. And I can't imagine having to cope with bed rest while caring for older children or as a single mother.

This toll on women, their families and the health care system would be worth paying if there were strong evidence to suggest bed rest prevents adverse pregnancy outcomes.

In theory, bed rest improves blood flow to the uterus and reduces pressure on the cervix that might stimulate dilation and contractions.

"The thought is intuitively appealing that when women are more active, they will contract more," says Dr. Hyagriv N. Simhan, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "But that fails to recognize the root causes of premature delivery, which is often caused by bleeding or infection in the uterus. And why those things happen is poorly understood."

Randomized controlled trials — the gold standard in biomedical research — comparing pregnant women on hospital bed rest with those who remained active found there was no difference between the two groups. Bed rest did not prevent miscarriage, preterm birth or fetal/infant death, says Maloni. Furthermore, there is no research about whether bed rest works to improve infant birth weight or treat placenta previa, preterm rupture of membranes and other high-risk complications of pregnancy.

This uncertainty is reflected in the 2003 guidelines of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, state that "bed rest...(does) not appear to improve the rate of preterm birth and should not be routinely recommended."

Likewise, "The Future of Children" report by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation reviewed the research on bed rest in twin pregnancies and concluded "that in the absence of proof of the effectiveness of bed rest, its use should be curtailed sharply."

Yet Maloni's research shows about ninety percent of American obstetricians still prescribe bed rest in some form, continuing to believe in its value despite mounting evidence to the contrary. "Doctors aren't trying to do the wrong thing, but it takes a long time to change conventional wisdom," says Dr. Simhan.

Maloni believes change might only come if insurance companies stop paying for bed rest-related medical expenses — or if women empower themselves to ask their doctors the right questions about the efficacy of bed rest and its side effects. At the very least, she says, pregnant women placed on bed rest should get a second opinion from a perinatologist (an expert specializing in high-risk pregnancies) and ask their doctor for a comprehensive physical assessment and rehabilitation program after childbirth.

"I've never told a woman not to go on bed rest — that's an individual question that people have to answer with the help of their physicians," Maloni says. "Instead, I just keep calling on the professions of nursing and medicine to incorporate scientific evidence into their practice and change the model of care."

For as long as doctors keep prescribing bed rest, pregnant women like myself — terrified and vulnerable — will listen.

Author and English literature professor Sarah Bilston was placed on bed rest during her first pregnancy for low amniotic fluid, an experience that inspired her bestselling novel Bed Rest, and its sequel, Sleepless Nights, to be published this August. When doctors prescribed Bilston bed rest again during her second pregnancy, she briefly considered not complying, but couldn't go through with it.

"I knew all the studies from my research for the book," Bilston says. "But when your child's life is on the line, what woman is going to do anything other than what she is told to do by her doctor? If they had asked me to stand on my head for six months, I probably would have done that, too."

Blucher agrees — and now has a positive outlook about her time spent on bed rest. "When you are lying there day after day in a fight with your emotions, bed rest can be the hardest thing," she says. "But I just look at Maddy — she's an amazing, healthy kid — and it puts everything into perspective."

After spending four weeks on bed rest, my obstetrician was no longer worried about my baby's birth weight and allowed me to walk again and even return to work. A week later, Ilyssa was born full-term and healthy, weighing 5 pounds, 11 ounces.

I suppose I will never truly know if I helped avert a real threat to my baby's life. And of course I'd do it again if that's what the doctor orders the next time around. But should most women ever have to? Probably not. Let's hope one day medicine agrees.

The Pregnancy Bible: Your Complete Guide to Pregnancy and Early Parenthood follows every step of pregnancy from conception to labor to postpartum recovery (and even early newborn care). The book, edited by OB-GYNs Joanne Stone, MD and Keith Eddleman, MD, is full of helpful guides, lists and illustrations. This excerpt, "Ways Your Partner Can Help You Through Labor," helps labor partners prepare for their role in the delivery room.

Keep in mind that the needs of women in labor differ, so tune into what your partner wants. Here are some things you can do that may help her cope better with the process.

According to studies, women in labor have five basic needs: physical care and comfort; pain relief; the constant presence of a supportive person; unconditional acceptance and reassurance; and knowledge of what is happening. The support that a birth partner can offer has numerous positive effects. It has been shown to: decrease the need for medication and intervention; shorten labor; decrease the risk of cesarean birth; and improve outcomes for newborns.

Stay close by. Be aware that some women in labor like to be touched and others don’t. Physical touch can communicate caring and concern and prevent her feeling isolated.

Consider her position. Urge her to change position frequently, as this can help ease backache. Use pillows, rolled blankets, or towels to maximize relaxation. If she’s able to get up and walk, encourage and assist her. Some mothers use “birthing balls,” large air-filled ball on which they bounce to relieve the pain of a contraction.

Keep her clean and dry. Labor may cause a woman to move her bowels or urinate, and at some point her water will break. Help clean her quickly.

Relieve her dry mouth. Use of breathing techniques can dry out her mouth, making it feel uncomfortable, so help her drink liquids, or suck on ice chips, if permitted. Use lip balm to lubricate and moisten her lips. Also, help her brush her teeth.

Keep her cool. Apply a cool washcloth to her face, throat, or other body parts. Spray her face gently with water. Alternatively, make a fan from a washcloth, a piece of paper, or gown.

Apply a warm or cold compress. Contractions may cause back pain or cramps. Help her out by applying a warm washcloth to her back.

Massage her lower back. Ask her to lie on her side so you can give her a back rub, using lotion. This may be particularly helpful if she’s having back labor (when the pain of contractions is felt mainly in the back). However, be aware that she might prefer you to stop the massage during a contraction.

Encourage her to pass urine. A full bladder may slow down labor, so remind her to go to the bathroom often—she should try at least every hour.

Use relaxation techniques. Ideally, practice these before labor begins. One easy technique involves asking her to tighten then relax each muscle in turn, starting with her upper body and progressing slowly down to her toes.

Help with breathing techniques. Learn whatever breathing exercise she wishes to use in advance, and help her focus on it during contractions. It may help if you ask her to take a deep breath and sigh after each contraction to help “exhale tension.”

Promote rest. Keep her surroundings as peaceful as possible, and encourage her to rest to prevent exhaustion.

Assure her privacy. Respect her need — or lack of need — for clothing and draping during labor.

Offer emotional support. Whisper words of encouragement. Praise her for her tremendous effort. Tell her, "you’re doing great!" Compliment her. Use words of endearment, and, if appropriate, express your love for her. As labor progresses, tell her it’s nearly over.

HOW TO STAY FOCUSED ON HER NEEDS

Each woman is unique, responds individually, and has different needs in labor, so it’s important to ask her if a particular measure is helpful or desirable. Be prepared to change tactic or give her a bit of space, if that’s what she wants. Keep in mind these key points:

Consider your purpose. What are you trying to do with your support and comfort measures? Make sure that you focus on what she wants.

Be involved. Your constant presence and attention to how she is feeling and the procedures that are being carried out are necessary to enable you to provide meaningful support.

Be prepared. Pack necessary items several weeks before the due date, and plan your route to the hospital in advance.

Keep up your energy levels. To provide effective support you need to stay energized yourself. Be sure to get something to eat and drink during labor. It’s best to take food and beverages with you. Also, take a break, if possible. Relax in a chair in the labor room or take a short walk on the unit. But don’t leave the unit — you could miss the birth.

Excerpted from The Pregnancy Bible: Your Complete Guide to Pregnancy and Early Parenthood, edited by Joanne Stone, MD and Keith Eddleman, MD. (Firefly Books; 2nd Edition September 30, 2008.)

These days, the reading ability that wowed my parents' friends is no big whoop. All children are expected to begin reading in kindergarten, having been prepared in advance by prenatal read-alouds, the healthful ingesting of board books in infancy, and flashcard drills in preschool. At today's dinner parties (usually burritos wolfed down on the sidelines of a soccer game), I hear parents dropping the names of children's books as if they were designer labels. "Junie B. Jones?" one might say witheringly. "My daughter loved that in preschool, but now she's reading the sixth Harry Potter."

In the children's section of bookstores and libraries, I've watched parents prying picture books out of their school-aged children's hands with a look of pained embarrassment. "You're too old for this," they say loudly, just in case anyone nearby might think their child suffers from some sort of developmental delay. "You know you don't like reading these kind of books anymore."

As a children's book writer who has yet to outgrow the habit of reading picture books for pleasure, I find all of this a bit disturbing. Of course it's wonderful that children are reading, and wonderful when they read complicated books. But in the fuss about literacy and reading levels and school achievement, something fundamental gets lost: the pleasure of the book for its own sake. Books that are delightful for ten-year-olds are not necessarily delightful for six-year-olds, and too often both parents and teachers encourage children to read books that are too old for them, or discourage them from reading books we have deemed "too young," thus guaranteeing that reading will always feel like a chore.

"It's not an exam, where you pass your E.B. White level and you get to go to your Tolkien level," observes Anita Silvey, author of Everything I Need to Know I Learned From a Children's Book. "The same child that reads Charlotte's Web may also read Captain Underpants. They may like Charlotte's Web and Captain Underpants kind of equally."

Recently I came home with a copy of Wolves, a picture book by the incomparably wry and inventive Emily Gravett. I had checked it out of the library for my own amusement, but it caught the eye of my nine-year-old son, Milo, who was lying on the couch reading the 528-page fantasy novel Eragon. "Can we read it?" he asked. I sat down on the couch, and we leafed through the book, giggling at the story of a rabbit who checks out a library book about wolves and ends up eaten by one. When we finished, he noticed the age range on the fly leaf: 4-8.

"Ageist!" he sputtered indignantly.

"Some people think that kids your age don't like picture books," I said cautiously. I had hoped he wouldn't find this out.

Milo was outraged. "What? But picture books are awesome."

A good answer, given that my most recent picture book was dedicated to him. I probed a little deeper, just in case he was only telling me what I wanted to hear. "What exactly makes them awesome?" I asked. He gave me an exasperated look. "They have pictures," he said.

Duh. We tend to think that illustrations are just there to keep the attention of a kid who can't follow the story without them, forgetting that we like pictures just as much as children do.

"I say to parents, 'Have you ever heard of coffee table books?'" remarks Valerie Lewis, who owns Hicklebee's, a children's bookstore in San Jose, California. "When they have picture books on their coffee table, they think it's very interesting and arty. But when Billy finally learns to read, his parents reward him by taking away his pictures."

Milo proudly identifies himself as a bookworm, a description that seems particularly apt when I find him burrowed into the sofa, his long body cocooned in his favorite blanket and his face obscured by the covers of a book. Seeing him there reminds me of myself at the same age, and I'm eager to acquaint him with all the books I loved when I was nine — A Wrinkle in Time, The Book of Three, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. But I'm cautious too, knowing that reading a book at the wrong time can be worse than not reading it at all. In first grade, with Harry Potter mania raging through his school, I knuckled under and read Milo Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, despite feeling he was too young to really appreciate it. I was wrong: he loved it. But the series quickly gets darker and more complex. Mid-way through the third book, Milo — now in second grade and reading it on his own — tossed it aside. "It's boring," he told me.

For a seven-year-old, "boring" has a vast portfolio of possible meanings, but in the case of Milo and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I was pretty sure it meant "too soon." The jokes, the innuendos, the relationships and rivalries — it was all over his head. Looking at the discarded volume, its pages spread like the wings of a felled bird, I remembered reading The Princess Bride when I was eleven. I'd seen it at a supermarket, and thought I was buying a fantasy in the vein of The Prydain Chronicles and the Narnia books. Three-quarters of the way through, I pitched it across the room, nauseated and infuriated by the torture and death of Westley, the hero. (Westley is revived later on, but I never got that far). Golding's lampooning of fairytale conventions is hilarious for adults. But as a child, it just hurt my feelings.

Picture book writer Erica Perl (Ninety-three in My Family, Chicken Butt) is also the mother of a bookish nine-year-old, and she told me she too worries about serving books before their time. Her daughter loved Judy Blume's Fudge books, but when she finished them, Perl decided against revealing that there were other Blume books to choose from. "I think she can wait a year," she told me. "When I think of a book like Blubber, which deals with cruelty and social meanness — I'm not quite ready for her to see that."

In second grade, Perl's daughter was in a book club that had Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson as one of its suggested titles. Perl — and other parents who know the book — quickly steered the group to other choices. Not to spoil it for you, but two-thirds of the way through the book, the protagonist's best friend — a fifth-grade girl — dies in a freak accident.

"I think there's something to be said for not taking the power away from that," Perl remarked. "You kind of dilute it if you read it too soon. Either it has a huge impact and makes you afraid of an accident taking someone close to you, or — if a kid doesn't quite get it on an emotional level — then you've read it and it hasn't affected you at all. A book like that, if you read it at the right age, it has power, but you also gain the power to deal with it."

But if you're not already steeped in the world of children's books, how do you avoid being blindsided by a book like Terabithia — or by far less literary reads like the snarky, materialistic Clique books? The best resource I've found is Common Sense Media, which flags all the things that I weigh when I'm thinking about the right age for my son to read a book — not just sex and violence, but also consumerism, emotional intensity, and overall message. Reviewers suggest appropriate ages for books (nine in the case of Terabithia; twelve for the Clique books), and alternative options on the same topic. "Even great books, kids can start too early," explains Carrie R. Wheadon, senior book editor for the site.

I don't always love Milo's choice of books, but for me, the best antidote to bad books is good books. Milo is free to read pretty much anything he chooses on his own, but his dad and I also read him books that we choose. On road trips we listen to books on CD, and bedtime is still the time of day when we snuggle up with a shared book. Those read-alouds are a chance to introduce books Milo might not read otherwise, particularly classics whose old-fashioned language makes them more challenging on the page or books that take a while to get going. The books that we read together are a wellspring of family in-jokes and shared references and as the frenetic pressure of homework, sports, and activities devours an ever-increasing portion of the day, that cozy half hour with Treasure Island or Alice in Wonderland feels like one of the last protected enclaves of childhood.

Not long ago, a friend of mine told me — in the boastful tone parents inevitably fall into when talking about their kids' reading habits — that her twelve-year-old daughter doesn't read children's books anymore. "She's only interested in adult books," she said proudly. My heart sank, partly because of all the wonderful books her daughter is missing out on, and partly because I know that Milo will leave the world of children's literature eventually as well. I hope that when he does, it won't be to impress adults or improve his test scores, but will simply be because the books he loves as a child lead him, like stones across a river, to books he loves as an adult. Children's books will be there for him as long as he wants them, changing as he changes, and eventually becoming so precious that when the time comes to share them with his own child, he'll wait for the perfect moment to pass them on.

Before Isaac was born, Jennifer and I decided that it would be best to have him sleep next to our bed in a co-sleeper. I was still occasionally having nightmares that left me flailing about on the mattress and I didn't want to risk whacking Isaac in my sleep. But our decision ended up making little difference.

Although we put Isaac down for the night in the co-sleeper, Jennifer would take him out of it for his first nighttime feedings and most of the time — even on the nights Jennifer could have sworn she had put him back — we would wake up to find him lying between us.

When he wasn't crying, it was a pleasure to share a mattress with Isaac. He was warm and mushy and sometimes his heavy breathing made him sound like a purring cat.

His cat sounds notwithstanding, Isaac's presence in our bed wasn't usually a cause for celebration. On a bad night, he would be up almost every hour. I would fall back asleep within minutes, but Jennifer wasn't so lucky. Once he was on our mattress, Isaac ate nonstop and sometimes slept with his hand on Jennifer's breast, as if to ensure that I wouldn't take off with his loot. As he grew older, he began to pinch and claw as well.

"It's like going to sleep every night at an S&M club," Jennifer said.

I thought the plan sounded great until we sat down to discuss the logistics. If Jennifer was no longer going to be feeding Isaac, someone was going to have to comfort him when he woke up in the middle of the night. And since Jennifer had already carried the burden for months, it was now my turn. I accepted my new responsibility without protest, and, as I expected, the transition to milkless nights did not go over so well with our new roommate. The first sign of Isaac waking up was typically the soft thumping of his swaddled feet against his mattress, and the sound alone could strike terror in our hearts. "Oh God, please no," I would say at the sound of those first thumps.

"It can't be," Jennifer would say. "He's been asleep for less than an hour."

And then more thumps, now slightly louder — the footsteps of the approaching villain in the scary movie.

"It just can't be."

(Cue the haunting music.)

"No, no, no."

And then the desperate begging. But here the movie analogy breaks down because rather than begging for mercy from the approaching villain, I would be begging for mercy from my fellow victim.

"Please just wake up with him this time," I would say, fully aware that only hours earlier I had confidently assured her that I would be the one to get up and that it really wasn't a big deal.

"But you said — "

"I know. I know. But . . ."

"But what?"

"I'll give you twenty bucks."

"Sam, we share a bank account. You can't bribe—"

"One hundred dollars!"

I knew, of course, that it could be worse. It was worse, in fact, for our upstairs neighbor, Steve, who had to listen to Isaac scream throughout the night but got none of the benefits of parenthood. Almost every night we would hear Steve wake up after Isaac and then pace around his apartment. This made our stress significantly worse, particularly on the mornings that we saw him coming down the stairs looking as bad as us. After one particularly bad night, Jennifer emailed Steve an apologetic note, to which he replied kindly, and then asked if it would be possible for us to move Isaac to another room.

The next night we dragged Isaac's crib into the kitchen/dining area of our one-bedroom apartment. We were happy to experiment with the new arrangement for Steve's sake, but Isaac sleeping next to the kitchen created a new set of dilemmas. Specifically, we could no longer eat after seven p.m. We managed to avoid using the kitchen for the first few nights, but soon Jennifer and I were making night raids to the pantry on our tiptoes, both of us feeling as though Isaac were the parent, and we the mischievous children.

But the night raids weren't our biggest concern at that moment. Our more serious problem was getting Isaac to fall asleep in his crib. We'd always helped Isaac go to bed for the first time of the night by letting him hold on to one of our hands. It wasn't particularly difficult to reach into the co-sleeper, but giving him a hand in the crib meant standing hunched over the railing for as long as an hour. To escape from Isaac's side, Jennifer and I would try to inch our hands down his body, but even when Isaac's eyes were closed he remained on high alert for such shenanigans. Sometimes I would manage to slip my hand downward so that I was holding only the loose fabric on his pajama footsies and yet somehow he could sense when I let go. It was as though he had installed his own high-tech motion-detector security system in his crib.

Ferber argues that sleeping alone in cribs teaches children to see themselves as independent individuals, and that even if babies seem happy sleeping in bed with their parents, it's probably not a good idea to allow it to continue. In drawing this link between sleeping alone and independence, Ferber was perhaps unknowingly regurgitating a uniquely American myth.

In a 1997 attack on Ferber, the science journalist Robert Wright makes a good point that somehow rarely came up in twentieth-century America. "It isn't obvious to me how a baby would develop a robust sense of autonomy while being confined to a small cubicle with bars on the side and rendered powerless to influence its environment," Wright notes. "I'd be willing to look at the evidence behind this claim, but there isn't any." Nor, for that matter, is there any reason to assume, as Ferber does, that the fear of sleeping alone indicates an emotional problem. Wright can barely contain his dismay at Ferber's insistence that "there must be a reason" why babies are afraid of sleeping alone.

Yes, there must. Here's one candidate: Maybe your child's brain was designed by natural selection over millions of years during which mothers slept with their babies. Maybe back then if babies found themselves completely alone at night it often meant something horrific had happened — the mother had been eaten by a beast, say. Maybe the young brain is designed to respond to this situation by screaming frantically so that any relatives within earshot will discover the child. Maybe, in short, the reason that kids left alone sound terrified is that kids left alone naturally get terrified. Just a theory. But then Wright, who writes regularly about morality and evolution, would be the first to say that there is no reason to assume that what's natural is also what's good.

"Quick, turn up the TV," I said. "We can't listen to the screaming."

Jennifer turned the volume almost all the way up, but behind the roar of The Simpsons we could still hear our son wailing. "I can't do this," Jennifer said. "I'm going out on the balcony."

"Okay," I said. I spread out on the floor and tried to watch The Simpsons. Then I got up and opened the door to the balcony.

"I think it's been five minutes," I said.

Jennifer checked the time on her cellphone. "It's been less than two minutes," she said.

"Right," I said. I lay down again, listened to Isaac, and got back up.

"Is it five minutes yet?" I asked.

"It's not even three," Jennifer said.

"All right, well, maybe I should just go. I mean, by the time I get there . . ."

We both appreciated that it took only ten seconds to walk to his crib, but Jennifer could hear Isaac through the open door and she was breaking down along with me.

"Okay, just go," she said.

I returned to Isaac's crib. My plan was to reassure him that he was not alone, put his pacifier back in his mouth, and then walk away.

]]>Sam Apple http://www.babble.com/Excerpt-Free-Range-Kids-When-judgemental-moms-attack/

In the book Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry, Lenore Skenazy makes a case that, statistically, our children are safer than they've ever been — and by parenting out of fear, we are robbing our kids of the childhood they deserve. Chapter 6, "Ignore the Blamers," discusses how parents inadvertently feed each other's fears. For more from Lenore Skenazy, read her Babble essay Parenting Without Fear.

"Can you believe she did that?"

Melissa, my upstairs neighbor, is staring wide-eyed, the way you do when you want someone else to open their eyes equally wide and shake their head in disbelief, so the two of you can sit there bonding over your utter shock.

I am having trouble doing this.

"Well . . . it . . . it doesn't seem so bad," I venture, squinting apologetically.

"Lenore! I could have taken her baby and she would never have seen him again! She was crazy!"

Ah, the crazy wars again. Who's crazy: People who trust other people, or people who don't?

In this case, I have to say Melissa was officially crazy. Because the person she did not trust was . . . herself. Here's the story.

She — Melissa — was waiting in the checkout line at Costco, the giant warehouse store, with her groceries and her daughters, aged two and five. The woman in front of her suddenly remembered she had to get something at the back of the store and asked Melissa if she'd mind watching her baby, who was in the shopping cart. Melissa said fine and off the woman, a stranger, sprinted.

She came back two minutes later and Melissa had kidnapped and killed her baby.

No, no! Come on. Obviously, that's not what happened. She came back two minutes later, thanked Melissa and that was that.  One mom helping another. But even if that's how the other lady saw it, that's not what Melissa saw. She saw a wildly irresponsible woman entrusting her precious little boy to a total stranger who could have easily turned out to be a psycho killer buying bulk paper towels and Goldfish crackers — John Wayne Gacy in a dress.

All of which is a pretty harsh assessment of that mom's actions. First of all, the baby-mom did not choose just anyone. She chose another mom. One who probably would have had a pretty hard time yanking the boy out of his cart, abandoning her groceries (and place in line!), dragging him out of the store, dragging her own kids out of the store, remembering where she'd parked, unlocking the car, shoving everyone inside, strapping them into their car seats and then gunning across the border, all while ignoring her little girls shrieking, "Mommy! Why are you stealing that lady's baby?" And, "We want our Goldfish!"

Oh, and second of all, no one else would have noticed this little drama and perhaps said, "Uh . . . stop"?

This eagerness to distrust each other, and even find glaring fault with each other, means that it's hard for moms and dads to ever relax. If the only good parent is a parent who never leaves their kids' side — not even to run to the back of the store for a can of tuna fish — then it's very easy to spot the bad ones. They're the ones who let their kids walk to school, or stay home alone for an hour. They're the ones inside while their kids play in the yard. They're the ones making their teenagers get themselves to their activities, or even jobs. Things that previous generations did without a moment's hesitation — or tragic outcome — have become grist for the gossip mill.

"I let my eight- and ten-year-old sons bike the three blocks to a friend's house," a mom named Amy wrote to the Free-Range Kids blog. "But when they returned, their friend's mom insisted on accompanying them back home through our very safe neighborhood, 'just in case.'" The lady was sending Amy a message: Your mothering leaves something to be desired.

Sometimes the message is even more direct. A woman named Jess wrote that now that she lets her fifth grade son walk the five blocks to school — with a friend — her neighbor won't let her children go to Jess' house to play anymore. To this neighbor, says Jess, "I am a bad mother. I try not to let it get to me, I think I am anything but. I love my children and like all mothers, and only want the best for them." But Jess' definition of "best" includes sometimes untying the apron strings. Other mothers find that tantamount to child abuse.

Blame and fear are like Mean Girls. They pal around together and make everyone else feel dumb and self-conscious, or at least like they're going to end up eating alone in the lunchroom if they don't suck up.

GOING FREE-RANGE TIPS:

FREE-RANGE BABYSTEP:  When you're about to remind a mom or dad about some extremely unlikely danger their child might face — a danger they are probably just as aware of as you are— hush.

FREE-RANGE BRAVE STEP: Volunteer to watch the kids who are waiting with your own kid for soccer to start, or school to open — whatever. Explain to the other parents that you're offering them a little free time. If they say no thanks, ask them to watch your kid.

ONE GIANT LEAP FOR FREE-RANGE KIND: The next time you make a parenting decision that you're worried other moms or dads will find too lax, don't keep it a secret. Admit that you left your daughter home alone while you went grocery shopping. Admit you sent your young son out on an errand. Talk about these things so that other parents can open up, too. It could be they'll jump on you. (There's no high like self-righteousness.) But it's also possible that they do the same things you do, and feel very guilty about it. Blamers thrive on shame. Take away their power. Do not be ashamed of making parenting choices based on who your kid is, rather than what the neighbors will say.

Excerpted from the book Free-Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy. © 2009 By Lenore Skenazy. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

What do the DVDs Sesame Street: Old School and Showgirls have in common? Besides enduring popularity, that is?

Simple: They are both for adult viewing only.

Swear to God. If you go out and buy the deluxe DVD set of Sesame Street's early days — 1969 to 1974 — you will have a delightful night ahead of you, watching kids play follow the leader, and climb through a giant pipe in a vacant lot, and laugh as they go hide-and-go-seeking through laundry on the line. It is childhood at its most PBS pure. But be forewarned: you will be watching something labeled — seriously — "For adults only."

That's how much childhood has changed in just one generation.

I should know. I let my son do a time-honored rite of passage here in New York — that is, I let him ride the subway by himself, last year, at age nine — and got labeled "America's Worst Mom." Yeah, worst. Because I listened to my son, who'd been begging me and my husband to let him do this "grown up" thing for months until we finally thought, "Well — okay." We made sure he knew how to read a map, gave him money for the trip and quarters for the phone and then, one sunny Sunday, I left him.

In the handbag department at Bloomingdale's.

There's a subway station right underneath, which he found, of course. But I didn't stick around to watch, because I knew he would. In fact, if I'd thought he was in mortal peril, I never would have let him go at all. But really — I said, "Goodbye! Have fun!" because I trusted him, I trusted my city (with its crime rate now on par with Boise, Idaho). And I even trusted the training I'd given him in how to get around in the world: "You can talk to strangers — just don't go off with them." (A way better lesson than plain old "Stranger danger!")

My son got home safe and sound — and practically levitating with pride — about 45 minutes later. He knew he'd achieved a milestone. But leaving our kids to their own devices is not the way we are expected to do it anymore, at least not if we pick up a parenting magazine, or turn on the TV, or venture into the great maw of a baby superstore. The message we get from all those places is that TIMES HAVE CHANGED! Our kids are in greater danger than ever before.

From what? From everything! Risky rattles! Toxic toys! Or at least not-developmental-enough toys! Or plastic toys! Or cribs! Or the wrong food, the wrong bottles, the wrong stroller. Really — did you read that flap a few months back about how our kids are going to end up with less than 800 on their SAT verbals because in most strollers, they sit facing the street and not their mother? And that therefore, they are deprived of time that would have been better spent discussing, I guess, Hegel? (And not the Knocked Up kind of Heigl, either. Hegel Hegel.)

Every single second is presented as a chance for us parents to either protect and perfect our kids, or leave them alone at their peril. That's why the old Sesame Streets suddenly seem so "inappropriate" (the favorite word of the parenting establishment. Whatever happened to good ol' "wrong"? Guess that's for another rant.). Now activities like walking to school, playing in the park sans a security detail and even babysitting are considered ridiculously, terrifyingly dangerous. See-you-on-a-milk-carton dangerous. Calling-Nancy-Grace-dangerous. It's one of the fastest societal sea changes I can think of: what was wholesome just one generation ago is reckless today.

But as I discovered in a zillion interviews with historians, sociologists, psychologists, criminologists, teachers and even children, it turns out that kids today are as safe as we were. So maybe it's time to give them a childhood again — and give ourselves a break from all that worry. Let's talk about safety for a second, and then we'll discuss how kids might benefit from a little loosening of the reins. (And how we parents might benefit from having a second to breathe.)

Crime-wise, we are back to the levels of 1970. In the '70s and the '80s, crime started going up until it peaked around 1993. After that, it started going down again, steeply. So if you were playing outside in the '70s or '80s (are you ready for this?), your children today are actually SAFER than you were.

That's almost impossible for a lot of people to believe, but my statistics come from the U.S. Department of Justice. They are confirmed by the Crimes Against Children Research Center — a center at the University of New Hampshire dedicated to childhood safety. Below right are its numbers in all their non-alarmist glory. The operative word? Down.

So what has gone up? I'd say cable TV, crime shows, the violence in crime shows, the number of hours we spend inside watching those shows because we're too afraid to go outside (thanks to those crime shows), and the number of books, products and services peddled to us by telling us our kids are unsafe.

Before I go on, let me say that some people think crimes against children are down because now all the children are inside under lock and key. But ALL crime is down — inside and outside, against kids and against grown-ups, even crimes inside the home against kids (that is, child abuse) — so it is an across-the-board drop that cannot be explained by the fact we are keeping kids off the street, and even off their own front lawns.

And yet, that's exactly what we're doing. One mom wrote to my website in dismay. She'd been outside in her yard, reading a book, as her kids frolicked around her. Another mom walked by and screamed, "Put that book down! Your children could be snatched at any minute!"

That is the kind of fear we have to fight. Because, first of all, it's way off (if you really want to keep your kids safe, your best bet is to never drive them in a car. That's the #1 way kids die. As passengers in car accidents. Not by being snatched off the lawn). Moreover, our blown-out-of-proportion fear of abductions also forgets that there is something pretty crucial — and wonderful and empowering — about a childhood with some freedom to it.

About two weeks ago I got a call from a man who introduced himself as Irving something-or-other. "I'm 90 years old!" he said. Great. So why was he calling?

He'd just read about my son's subway ride and wanted to tell me about his own first ride. "I was ten at the time and my mom made me take my little sister — she was eight — and we rode in the front car so we could look out on the tracks and we were going to my grandmother's . . ."

That ride was in 1929!

In the intervening decades, Irving managed to get married — and stay married — for 66 years. He has children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, even two great-great-grandchildren. He fought in World War II! But clearly one of the DEFINING moments of his entire LIFE was that first subway ride.

And you remember that feeling, too, right? The ecstasy of NOT being a baby anymore? That is what we can give back to our kids. The chance to say, of something — anything! — "I did it myself!" "I rode my bike!" Or, "I made dinner for the family!" Or, "I went to the park with my friends and we made up a game called Seven-Square and we're going to play it again tomorrow!" That's the kind of thing you can't do if you are driven everywhere and assisted — lovingly — all the time, and told which team to be on and which position to play and what snack to eat and now get back in the car.

The world is safer than we've been brainwashed into believing. Our kids are more competent than a superstore's worth of kiddie walking, reading, eating and sleeping aids would have us think. Our parental instincts have gotten us to this point in human evolution without a library full of books warning us that one wrong step and our kids are goners. In other words: take a step back from this weird parenting moment we're in and you CAN give your children the freedom you had without going nuts with worry. Even the freedom 90-year-old Irving had.

Even the freedom Oscar and Bert and Ernie had, once upon a time.

Once upon a time, women were under tremendous cultural pressure to be something known as "Good Mothers." During this long ago, faraway time, these beatific Good Mothers not only did a fantastic job at every aspect of raising children, they also loved every minute of it, from changing dirty diapers to dealing with sullen teens. (Oh, wait. A truly Good Mother's teenage offspring wouldn't ever be sullen.) Good Mothers never, ever complained, and in fact, they took every opportunity to publicly extol the joys of blissful, euphoric, totally fulfilling motherhood. They sang this parenting paean both directly to one another, as well as in the pages of the then-ubiquitous women's magazines.

Fast forward to 2009. The public Cult of the Good Mother has been replaced by the Cult of the Bad Mother, and everything has been turned on its head. Today, instead of magazines full of stories about maternal faultlessness, we have an entire media cottage industry focused on the myriad possibilities of maternal fault. In magazines and on blogs and TV sitcoms, those of us currently raising children vie to tell the most outrageous story of our own mothering failings; we yell at our children! We drink during playgroups! We feed our kids junk food! We use the TV as a babysitter! We admit that we love our husbands more than our offspring! We are Bad Mothers, aren't we? Aren't we?

Actually, we really aren't; we're simply imperfect mothers, just as the Good Mothers before us were. The only real difference between yesterday's Good Mothers and today's Bad Mothers is that we are now able and willing to tell the truth about what it's like raise children, without leaving out the unpleasant parts. As women and as mothers, we've found our voices, and with the accessibility of online media, we have a ready platform and audience for dialogue. And now that it is now culturally acceptable to actually talk out loud about the harsher realities of motherhood — about how it's sometimes mind-numbingly dull, can lead to depression, and can ruin our sex lives — it seems that we sort of can't shut up about it.

I know I can't. Why? Because I've discovered — along with an entire generation of moms like me — that being able to talk and write openly about my own parental screw-ups and shortcomings somehow makes mothering easier on a day-to-day basis. As war veterans can tell you, there is tremendous mental health value in being able to discuss the worst parts of a specific kind of experience with others who have shared that experience. It's the same thing women discovered when they gathered in the feminist consciousness-raising groups of the late '60s and early '70s, where they found that openly expressing the unvarnished truth about previously taboo subjects like date rape and domestic violence and abortion was both healing and empowering.

Today, mothers get to be fallible human beings instead of artificial and saintly martyrs, and this is obviously a positive development. However, I have lately begun to wonder whether the constant, often ironic media use of the "Bad Parent" label for women who, say, fail to attend PTA meetings regularly, or who feed their children Happy Meals instead of sit-down dinners doesn't also cause unintentional harm.

I find myself asking whether we have we gone too far in de-stigmatizing parenting lapses. Because if everyone is a "Bad Parent," then where is the line between reasonable and unreasonable maternal imperfection? Blog commenters forgive the mother who wittily posts about losing her temper and swatting her child in the grocery store. But does this mean we also forgive the mother who has no blog, but who loses it and swats her child really hard in the grocery store, leaving a nasty red mark? Because, after all, they are both simply being "bad parents."

Last year, I blogged about how I forgot my baby after work one day, obliviously leaving her with the babysitter. Consumed with stress from my job that day, as well as the logistical headaches of remembering to pick up my three other children from their various afterschool activities, I completely failed to remember child #4 until my husband called to let me know that the sitter was trying to track me down to find out why I had never shown up. Luckily, the babysitter happens to be my mother-in-law, so my infant daughter was safe and sound. But the fact remains that I completely and totally forgot my own baby. Although I received a few comments on the blog post chastising me for my error, many who read my post sympathized with me, assuring me that it could happen to any busy mom. I confessed my "Bad Parent" sins and was absolved by my peers. The dialogue made me feel better about my mistake.

But should I feel better? Could a bigger helping of maternal guilt, spurred by negative judgment have served a higher purpose, preventing me from making the same mistake again? This is the question I found myself pondering after I read this story about how many parents each year forget their babies and toddlers in carseats, leaving their children to swelter or freeze to death in the parents' cars — vehicles that are often parked right outside these busy parents' offices. Most of these forgetful parents are criminally prosecuted, meaning they are clearly "bad parents" (surely being charged with murder takes you definitively into bad parent territory). After all, a terrible incident like this isn't the stuff of which confessional mommyblog posts about parenting shortcomings are made.

But what about me? I forgot my baby, just like these other parents. I was no different in my actions; only the outcome was different — something for which I can assure you I frequently offer a private and heartfelt thank you to God. So where does my dangerous-mistake-with-lucky-outcome put me on the bad parent continuum? In hindsight, I am comfortable saying that I screwed up to such a degree that I deserved negative judgment, not affirmation or support. That day at least, I truly deserved the bad parent label — and not in any ironic way.

It is worth considering whether our ever-increasing media appetite for maternal imperfection might be leading us down a slippery slope of misplaced tolerance, where passing any sort of judgment against any sort of parenting — no matter how clearly unsatisfactory — ceases to exist. While excessive, unreasonable judgment of mothers might be wrong, so is the lack of cultural discernment that comes with approval of all parenting behavior as equally acceptable.

Additionally, we should be asking ourselves whether the ability to air our dirty parenting laundry without fear of judgment is simply a classist privilege, rather than representing any sort of meaningful change in attitudes toward all women. The mostly-white, mostly-college-educated mothers (like me) who pen "momoirs" about things like letting their third grader navigate public transportation sans adult supervision get appearances on talk shows. However, a poor, minority or immigrant mother who made the same parenting choice would more likely get a visit from Child Protective Services.

I plan to keep blogging about my own maternal failings. And I will continue to engage in the valuable dialogue of support and sharing with other mothers, both on- and offline. It's a good thing. However, I hope we can soon find some balance between the extreme expressions of Good Motherhood and Bad Motherhood, because for most of us, most days, it's somewhere in the middle.