MOMMIES UNITE

We had a lovely BBQ last night. Soooo much fun and the babeola ended up being adorable despite channeling demons all day with a stubborn refusal to nap. Fortunately, we managed to tease an hour of sleep out of her so her head stopped rotating a la Linda Blair just in time for our first guests to arrive.

Anyway, I'm going to bungle the exact numbers because I forgot to write them down, but, according to the Today Show, who interviewed some blogger expert, there are double digit millions of moms online. On Facebook. Blogging. Tweeting. Moms are social media mavens.

E-Moms are a force to be reckoned with.

Piss us off and we will ruin your ad campaign-- remember the whole Motrin debacle? However, we have yet to pull together and demand fair wages, improved maternity AND paternity leave or anything else that materially benefits our lives and the futures of our children. I watched the Motrin ad hoopla and, while a lot of the mommy bloggers were whooping 'we are woman, here us roar,' I remained unimpressed. Because we hadn't actually achieved anything.

Sure mommies got the ad pulled, but so what? Did that really help women or families economically or socially? No. And this ineffective use of power is what causes me the most angst. For the first time in history, women can instantly connect and coalesce into powerful groups and what do we do? We decant that power, wasting it on superficial ad campaigns and then declare it a victory.

When are women going to get their shit together? Next time, can we not care about that ad and instead organize a boycott until corporate policies favor families and extend maternity/paternity leave benefits?

Riddle me this...What do you think would happen if mommy bloggers declared war on companies that don't adequately support breastfeeding moms? Or companies that make women work for 5 years before their maternity leaves are paid (which was my employer)? What if all double digit millions of us mommies, en masse, bought generic Advil until they met our demands? They would be shaking in their boots and, instead of hosting swag filled events for mommy bloggers, they would be making substantive changes to their corporate policies to keep us happy.

So... here's a chance to do something. A business lobby tried to recruit a pregnant woman to eat their chemical laden products and then agree to speak about how great it is to glow in the dark and give my baby diabetes! Obviously, women are up in arms over it and are blogging about it. It's worth reading, if not writing a few letters.