MOMMY BADDEST
Fed up with the pressure to be perfect, mothers are letting their kids run free — and they say it’s made them better parents
‘P IZZA or cake?” Vanessa Coppes asked her pajamaclad sons. The 38year-old entrepreneur was working on deadline, and breakfast prep for her 7-year-old and 4-year-old had fallen by the wayside. “People can either say I’m the best or worst mom in the world. I don’t care. What I know is, parenthood is a sloppy, messy dance, and every moment I’m making the choices that are best for all of us, including me.”
The #badmom is having a moment, and she’s never been more relatable. The movie “Bad Moms” is out Friday, and the A-list cast — including Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis — have used the publicity tour to talk about their own less-than-perfect mommy moments. For example, Bell confessed she isn’t versed in attachment parenting, and Kunis revealed she once accidentally forgot to strap her daughter, Wyatt, into the car seat while on a drive. Former Citigroup CFO Sallie Krawcheck recently penned an essay for Time’s Motto Web site admitting that the “joke around [her] house was that [she] was a mediocre mother at very best,” while Ilana Wiles, founder of the popular Web series “Mommy Shorts,” has a forthcoming memoir, “The Mommy Shorts Guide to Remarkably Average Par- enting,” coming out in September. And moms say that letting go and embracing their inner “bad mom” has made them better parents.
“When my first son was born, I tried to do every- thing ‘right’ and I was miserable,” says Coppes. “I loved my son more than anything, but I missed ‘me.’ I missed dressing up and wearing heels and going out with girlfriends. When my second son was born, I made the decision that I couldn’t lose myself in motherhood. I needed to enjoy work and enjoy my social life to fully enjoy being a mom.”
For Coppes, that means occasionally bringing her kids to business meetings and having them play on their iPads in the corner
“My kids have, collectively, gotten head lice seven times. And we’ve all survived.” — Cara Maksimow
while she discusses partnerships. “I’ve sometimes locked myself in the bathroom so I can be on an uninterrupted call. But what I’ve found is, when I put my own needs first, then I have time [to] be 100 percent mommy,” says the Marlboro Township, NJ, resident. “And if people think that makes me a ‘bad mom,’ then fine.”
Alina Adams, 48, has also embraced the “bad mom” label and insists her kids are better off for it. The author of “Getting Into NYC Kindergarten” once had her 10-year-old son walk through Central Park to their Upper West Side apartment in a raging snowstorm, and occasionally left her youngest child home for 20-minute spells when she was 7 years old. All her children have taken the public bus solo before their 10th birthdays.
“I grew up in the former Soviet Union, where it was normal for parents to send their 4-year-olds by themselves to the store. I wanted to give my own kids that freedom,” says the mom of three. But she notes that “laissez-faire” isn’t code for “I don’t care.”
“My heart was pounding the entire time my son was making his way home in the blizzard,” she says. “But deep down, I knew he could do it. He called me every 20 minutes; he stopped midway through to warm up in the field house. And when he got home, he was so proud of himself.”
Adams says her kids, now 9, 13 and 17, are more confident and secure than many of their peers — and she believes part of it is her rejection of the helicopterparenting method.
Still, Adams says she has faced intense backlash for her decisions.
“When my son began taking the city bus to school at age 9, I got phone calls and e-mails from his classmates’ parents saying it was inappropriate,” she says. “I asked why, and realized the reason it was ‘inappropriate’ was because their kids wanted to do it, too! In general, parenting is so personal, so when you go against the grain, people take it as an attack.”
Plus, social media has encouraged sanctimony, says Cara Maksimow, a therapist in private practice in Summit, NJ, and au- thor of “Lose That Mommy Guilt,” citing the international online vitriol that occurred earlier this year when a toddler fell into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo as proof. “It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. But guess what? It really could have happened to any parent! But because we’re conditioned to beat ourselves up over our own parenting missteps, we’re not extending empathy to others.”
And because so much parenting information is at our fingertips, Maksimow says moms constantly feel like they don’t measure up. “With all that knowl- edge comes a lot of insecurity. Am I doing this right? Should I be doing more?” says the mom of two. “And the ‘secret’ of parenting is that everyone feels this way! My kids have, collectively, gotten head lice seven times. And we’ve all survived. And as a mother and a therapist, that’s the message I’d love for parents to take away: Everyone messes up . . . and the more you realize that, the happier you and your kids will be.”
And moms also need to give themselves a break, especially when the majority of “bad mom” moments occur when they’re trying to be a good wife, friend or co-worker. “Women have so many competing responsibilities,” says Maksimow. “Couple that with the fact few moms have an extended network to pick up child-care and housework slack, and parents are dealing with an enormous amount of stress.”
Bianca Jamotte, 34, of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, created the Web series “Real Mommy Confessions” precisely to act as a forum for moms to celebrate their messy, real, “bad” lives. Jamotte commenced the series with a confession of her own: In a quest for a sexy selfie to text to her husband, the mom of two posed provocatively on the bed — and ended up tumbling off, waking her two sleeping tots from their naps.
“I got one confession from an incredibly famous mom blogger — a lot of people would recognize her name,” says Jamotte. “She shared that her toddler son had found her vibrator and had played with it like a sword. This mom has the perfect-looking life on the Internet, but it just goes to show that every mom has a little bit of bad in them.”