I’m late to the discussion so I don’t have much to add, but has everyone seen Melissa Summers of Suburban Bliss on the Today Show? I mean, really. Did they seriously bring people on national TV to talk about the “rising trend” of mothers drinking in the presence of their children? What fucking century are we living in? First of all, this “rising trend” they speak of has been going on in one form or another FOREVER. Remember cocktail hour at your Aunt Betty’s house? Remember coffee at the kitchen table? How do you think all that housework got done before swiffers and no-wax floors and permanent press clothing? Come on. Mothers (and well, humans…) have been socializing over substances since kids began to annoy them. Which I assume, is forever.

But that’s not what really pisses me off. And the sexist bent to the whole discussion (honestly, if my husband is out working on the car with some friends and his children and has a cooler of beer on the hood, are we going to talk about it on the Today Show?) disappoints me, yes. But that’s not even the crux of it for me.

What sucks about seeing things like this all over the news and blogosphere is that it means we’re NOT talking about:

The mother who, isolated in her apartment while her husband works 50 hours a week, drinks not a glass with friends but a whole bottle of wine not weekly but daily. Maybe she didn’t want to be a stay-at-home. Maybe she gained a great deal of confidence from her job and her life outside the home, but now that she isn’t able to find a job to cover the rising costs of day care as if she could find a day care with staff adequate to care for her children anyway, she is stuck alone in her house with an infant for socialization all day long- because well, they made the “choice” to have one parent stay home and so of course they also “chose” to give up their second car.

Maybe these mothers who have a glass of wine at playgroup do it to feel adult and social- maybe, like so many that I know, they do it because there’s no other time TO do it. If they can’t feel social when their kids are around, there is no feeling social. Because their husbands are working 100 hours a week to keep up the middle class lifestyle that “allows them the choice” to stay home, to flush their former careers down the drain, to subjugate their entire lives to the children the push with one hand on the swing while sipping wine from another hand. Perhaps if there were some, hmmm- system in place! Like, adequate schools! Or affordable, non-frightening mothers day out programs! Some mechanism for example, which might allow a mother to attend a lunch without her children. Some, I don’t know, OVERSIGHT that might require a state to do background checks on employees who are planning to change my 2-year old’s diaper!

What we’re not talking about is that this is so much bigger than the “mommy wars” or whatever you want to call it. We’re being snowed; we’re being misdirected; we’re watching segments about women drinking wine at the same time they are responsible for tying unlaced shoes, while laws are passed about our reproductive rights. We’re arguing over who is more loving, stroller users or baby wearers, while tax breaks are given to the wealthy and our partners are being shafted at work. We’re snorting over our lattes at the moms who bring in store-bought cookies to the party, while our health care goes in the toilet. We’re talking about these morning playgroups and these afternoon wine-swilling playdates as if it’s a choice for us to be enjoying the only social interaction of our week in someone’s backyard while simultaneously wiping noses and changing shitty pants, but what we’re not talking about is that the “choice” to do this job, for some of us, came about because we were forced out of our workplace by the demands of our OTHER job. Or because we came from a midrange pay scale, which wouldn’t cover the cost of day care were we to fight our way back into our field.

We’re not talking about how our choices aren’t really choices.