Gisele is Taking Heat for Being Right Again About Motherhood

Inside Track – Supermodel mom Gisele Bundchen, who caught flack when she pontificated about breast-feeding, pregnancy weight gain and mommy multitasking, is under the gun again after opining that mothers should put themselves first in order to be effective parents. “It’s very important to nourish yourself, take care of yourself. You know how they say on the plane you have to put the oxygen mask on first and then put it on your child? So I think it is the same, as a mum, to take care of myself… You can feel a bit guilty,” she continued. “But if I put my oxygen mask on first, if I’m feeling fulfilled and present and good about myself, then I’m going to be a much more patient, loving, understanding mother and wife. You have to fill your glass so that everyone can drink from it. That’s how I feel.” The response from the interwebs was typically brutal… the Sydney Morning? News declared: “Model Gisele Bundchen has put her foot in her mouth again.”

This is just so typical.  So what we’ve come to expect.  Gisele makes perfect sense, and the world is ready to crucify her for the unpardonable sin of being right once again.  I mean, what’s the counter-argument here?  A mom is not supposed to take care of herself?  She’s not supposed to put herself first?  She’s expected to put her kids ahead of herself?  Have you seen what all this doting on your kids 24/7 does to a woman?  Have you gotten a good look at your average Helicopter Mom?  They’re disasters.  Go anyplace where there are moms letting their kids set the agenda and get a gander at the mothers there.  Playgrounds.  Toy stores.  Kid amusment parks.  Chuck E. Cheeses.  Get a load at the haggard, disheveled hausfraus at these places with their mom jeans and their diaper bags pushing multi-kid stroller with that far away look of praying for death in their eyes and you tell me Gisele is wrong.

Besides, what kind of an example does it set for your children to let them grow up thinking someone else’s life (yours) revolves around them? Yeah, good luck taking that attitude into the real world kid and you’re in for a rude awakening.  And don’t anybody give me any of this “Well my mother always put us kids first” bullshit. If she did, she was doing you a disservice.  My sainted mother was a widow raising five of us, and you can be damned sure she made time for herself.  What was the point of all those vodka & OJ parties with my aunts and those packs of Virginia Slims if not to take care of her own needs?  Those were her oxygen masks.  She basically raised us like free-range chickens and we were all the better for it.  More importantly, so was she.  More importantly, what about the dads here?  No guy wants to come home to some frazzled trainwreck who all she can talk about is who puked up their formula and who won’t take a nap and who pooped their bed.  Fathers want to hear how the mother of their children made time to go to the gym and the spa and to make themselves more attractive to the man in their lives.  So you breathe that oxygen, ladies.  Be a more patient, loving, understanding mother and a hotter wife.  That’s how winners raise kids. @JerryThornton1