I have two children who are just under 2 years apart, the oldest being 2.5. When my son was first born i was pretty hardcore AP. I wore him ALL the time, cloth diapered, nursed on demand (happily so), etc... When I went back to work when he was 16 weeks I'd rush home during my lunch break to bf and care for him, rush back to work, then back home to bf him again. I think I was pretty hardcore. I judged moms who could but didn't bf, I judged those who used disposable diapers, I judged women for using a stroller. I was a bit judgy. Then, with my second I started to think really critically about AP. I started to wonder about all the expectations that are put on mothers now days. The more i thought about it, and the more i looked into it, the more i started to believe that AP is really a theory that values a highly traditional view of what a mother's role should be - a role that also is not reconcilable with working outside the home. And then i started to think it's okay to use a stroller, and to baby wear. I decided F- it, I have two children under three and i work two very demanding jobs, my husband also works a very demanding job, I'm NOT spending more of my precious weekend time doing laundry. We now use earth friendly disposables. I decided immediately that there was no way in hell i was running home during my lunch hour to bf, instead dd got bottles (of bm of course, but still). I'm small and my children are heavy and I heard another woman who was fed up with carrying say that she got a stroller to save her back and I looked at her with such envy, then started using my stroller a lot more. My back is important too. Then, when dd stopped sleeping during the night i did something i thought i'd never do and I started ferberizing her, using the actual Ferber schedule, which was so much more humane than i previously believed. Now I'm so much more free as a mother. Sometimes I get upset, and that's ok. Do I have to be super happy and have a plastic facade all the time too for the sake of my children? Sometimes life is hard. Sometimes I have to tell my son "no" in a firm way, and just pull pure rank, refuse to reason. And now, after all these months I'm pretty sure that both of my kids are going to turn out awesome. And, I'm pretty sure that we women are more oppressed than we like to think. My counselor said when she had babies the mothers would just sit outside the bedroom while they cried themselves to sleep with a glass of wine and a book. Maybe that's too extreme one way, but it seems as though we've gone too far the other way. Where now, instead of "children are to be seen not heard", it seems that it's "mothers are to be seen not heard". By which I mean that there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for our needs to come into consideration anywhere. For us to say, my need for sleep is important, I am important. My baby may be more important, but i'm important too. I feel so sorry for our generation of mothers. And I hope it's so much better for my daughter. I'm sure it will be. If we know anything its that ideas about parenting are generational. What will our children think of our approach when they have children?