Laid Back Baby-Mama or the Mother of All Control Freaks?

New mothers are often worried about their parenting styles, about how they’re doing and how their babies are doing. I think everyone finds their own way to be a mother. You just pay attention to what keeps you sane and the baby healthy and happy and do more of it.

Other people are more passionate about how motherhood should be.

There’s an interesting article about celebrity mothers (again) in the Irish Independent this morning. In particular, the article contrasts the “Slummy Mummy” style of Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, who is more of a pal with Madonna, who is apparently “all about control.”

Here’s a series of quotes about how Sarah Ferguson spends time with the princesses Beatrice and Eugenie:

• “At the weekends we sleep until midday. Then we have shepherd’s pie for lunch. Then Andrew calls and says, ‘What are you doing this afternoon?’ The answer is always the same. ‘We’re watching DVDs! All afternoon’,” Sarah told the American the Ladies’ Home Journal.
• “We watch from two o’clock until midnight. It’s probably something like 24 or The OC, the whole series of them And we’re really into Grey’s Anatomy and Nip/Tuck.
• “We don’t move from our chairs. On Sundays it’s the same. Get up at midday, have roast chicken for lunch. Then DVDs until midnight, unless they’re going back to school, in which case we’ll stop at six.”

Madonna, on the other hand, has a completely different attitude.

• “My kids don’t watch TV,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in an interview, which ranged widely from her adherence to rigid family meal times to the importance of household lists.

• “We have televisions but they’re not hooked up to anything but movies. TV is trash. I was raised without it. We don’t have magazines or newspapers in the house, either.”

I find this interesting, not in terms of how kids watch TV, but the contrasts between rigidity and relaxation. Yesterday, I read an article in The Scotsman, with the headline “Too Strict with Your Children? They’re Five Times More Likely to be Fat, says Study.”

“Children with overly strict mothers are much more likely to get fat, according to new research. The study found disciplinarian mothers ended up with six-year-olds who were nearly five times more likely to be overweight than children treated with flexibility and respect, but who were still given clear rules,” says the article by writer Rachel Williams. “Scientists said youngsters whose mothers were strict might be comfort eating due to stress.”

When I think of my children’s health, the most important thing to me is not their weight. I more concerned about their safety, preventing disease and hoping that they will be good people. That said, I find that my parenting style evolves as our family evolves, but I hold myself to one standard and paid caregivers to another. I doubt the teenage princesses watch TV with their governesses, or at school. Sure, my kids watch TV at home where I know what’s on and can balance it out with reading, but I wouldn’t allow my son to attend a pre-school where they watch TV.

Still, I am not strict or highly-scheduling parent. Even with babies and young children, the day has some order, but not a timed routine. I am more of a general guidelines kind of mother. Be polite. Don’t hurt people. If you make a mess, clean it up. Don’t eat more than one ice cream before dinner and please, don’t “make a pond” indoors. It keeps me sane and the kids happy. Even if our home is pond-free.