I Am Mommy, Hear Me Roar!

This is my entry for the Green Moms Carnival to be published over at Organic Mania on Monday, August 4th. Lynn from Organic Mania put the carnival together after adding a bunch of us green mothers to ALLTOP green a few months back. Thanks Lynn! I originally wrote this post in January but it seemed so appropriate for the Carnival topic - what mothers can do about global warming - that I brought it back to life. Please drop by Organic Mania on Monday to read what the green mom-o-sphere plans to do about global warming.

Cheesy title, huh? But what parent hasn't felt that sentiment? What wouldn't we do to protect our children?

During my recent Green Book Club meeting, the issue of over-parenting came up. I have recognized that tendency in myself but, according to another club member, the current generation of parents - my generation - has been termed "umbrella parents" or "helicopter parents" because we hover over our children so. We do not allow them to make the slightest mistake because we want to save them the pain. We oversee their friends, their every activity, their classroom time and their "down time". We protect them more than any other generation in history.

Who can blame us? Even though we don't often act on it, what parent has not thought or felt the following: My kid gets bullied at school, I decide to have class wide meeting to discuss. You, as a teacher, hurt my child's feelings? I will take you down. The coach won't play my son during soccer? We'll see about that! I will protect my children at all costs from all things . . . unless it requires me to drive less, to stop my weekly shopping trips to Target, to wear last year's fashions, or to skip the Thai take out and its Styrofoam and plastic tubs. That would simply be too much.

Sharon at Casaubon's Book made the case for parents to bear the brunt of battling climate change, Peak Oil, and depletion so that we can give our children a world they can inhabit. How can we, the umbrella parents, reconcile over-protecting our children on one hand and handing them a world, broken and heaving, on the other? Why is that so much harder than ensuring that our child has a good teacher at a good school and plays with nice kids? How can we not motivate ourselves to cut back on plastic after learning about the United States-sized garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific? How can we not cut back on driving when we realize that the Arctic will be ice free likely within the next decade? Is this the world we want to leave to our little ones? The stakes are so much higher than hurt feelings or a skinned knee.

As parents, we have so much power. Our numbers are huge, our motivation even bigger. We can elect the next president, we can force our politicians to do a better job, we can lead by example, we are a market force to make corporations shake. We just need to stand up and speak out.

Will we leave our children a crippled, diseased planet? Not if we can help it.

We are mommies, hear us roar!