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On May 14, I spent a lovely Mother’s Day with my family. My favorite part of the day was when my girls went down for naps and my husband cleaned the house after shooing me outside to read on the deck with a cup of tea and a plate of fruit. It was glorious.
What was I reading?
I was tearing through Bunmi Laditan’s “Confessions of a Domestic Failure.”
Never heard of Laditan?
You must not have young children.
Laditan is a social media darling whose Twitter handle @HonestToddler (written from the perspective of her toddler) was a hit almost from the instant she opened the account and eventually was turned into a book.
Right now, Bunmi Laditan is having a moment. She has over 300,000 Twitter followers and almost double that on Facebook. Recently, one of her posts about declaring her house a no homework zone (to prevent her elementary-school-aged daughter from falling apart from stress) went viral, catapulting her back into the spotlight of social media, right in time for this book to be released.
It’s not as if Laditan really needs the publicity. Scrolling through her Facebook and Twitter pages, it’s clear how much of a following she has from people who relish her honest depictions of the life of a mom: one who is open about her hatred of Pinterest and crafting, who would rather order take out than make a home cooked meal, and who has tons of insecurities about motherhood that speak to all of us with kids.
On to the novel.
“Confessions of a Domestic Failure” follows Ashley, a stay-at-home mom of 8-month-old Aubrey, who can’t pull her life together after having a baby. None of her clothes fit; her husband works long hours; babies are boring; laundry piles up; and she can’t cook.
Ashley is a mess.
She has no friends, so she’s incredibly lonely. She constantly gets herself into ridiculous scrapes like trying to do a craft and almost burning down the kitchen or pretending to breastfeed her formula-fed daughter to break into a group of new moms.
Ashley is essentially Bridget Jones or Becky Bloomwood (from Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic series). She’s very much the classic adorably relatable heroine of a chick lit novel who, despite a multitude of screw-ups, manages to get her happy ending. This is pure escapism — or it would be if Laditan didn’t hit on all of the realities of motherhood in a hilarious and very real way.
Laditan has a knack for saying what every mother is thinking or sharing what every mother feels deep down but isn’t ready to share. Not everything spoke to me. I’ve been a stay-at-home mom since 2014. My house is generally clean (although, in that looks good on the surface, don’t look in the office or in any closets sort of way). I do laundry (and put it away!) twice a week without fail. I cook dinner for my husband and daughters every night. I do not wear yoga pants every day. I have friends. I have magical sleepers who haven’t woken up at night since they were 5 months old.
But like Laditan said in the book, I feel like every day is two days: the pre-nap day and the post-nap day.
Every day around 4 p.m., I start to wonder when my husband is coming home and frequently text him, “TRAIN TIME??” I feel like I’m going to have to go back to work when my kids stop napping, because, dear lord, what would I do with them all day? I know Facebook is lying to me by presenting all these other moms with perfect lives, but I can’t help feeling inadequate based on posts I see. I am overwhelmed by moms who craft most nights; I take a really long time to clean the kitchen because I’m too tired to play with my kids.
Parenthood, especially for the primary caregiver, is exhausting. It’s a club that millions belong to but that isolates so many of us. No one — especially in the age of social media — wants to admit that we don’t really know what we’re doing or that we feel like we’re falling apart every day. We don’t want to show anyone that our lives aren’t perfect, that we live for nap time and that our significant others drive us crazy.
Bunmi Laditan has become such a sensation because she is truthful. She speaks out loud about being a hot mess and highlights the irony of parenthood. She refuses to be the “perfect mom” and focuses on just being a mom and getting by day to day in a world where the village no longer exists. She is the inner voice of every mom I know, only she’s brave enough to share her thoughts with the world.
Despite the predictability of the plot, “Confessions of a Domestic Failure” was a complete win in my book. It was a fun, quick and easy read. At the end, I so wished I could invite Laditan over for a play date or even just share an eyeroll with her when some other mom claimed to be #soblessed. Because really, I am #soblessed to know I’m not the only mom with these thoughts.
