The ‘Back-Burner’ National Crisis?

For the past couple weeks I’ve been doing my best to not blog about Nadya Suleman. Don’t act like you don’t know who she is. You’ve been just as ...disgusted? sympathetic? ...okay, intrigued by her story as I have. But I just didn’t want to go there. Whatever I have to say, you’ve already heard it from the countless others who have taken one side or the other in their judgment.

Then today I decided to see what would appear if I searched simply for the word “moms” in Google News. Guess what – there was Nadya Suleman, of course, being kept company by a college reporter's take on Bristol Palin’s TV interview, a story about a 13-year old boy who has fathered an infant in the U.K., and a report on Travis Henry, the NFL player who has nine children by nine women. (I say ‘the’ realizing that it’s quite possible he’s not the only NFL player in this predicament.)

“Moms.”

I wasn’t necessarily expecting to be hit with controversy from that otherwise safe search term. I would have settled for a tips piece about working moms. I would have welcomed a feel-good feature about moms helping each other through hard times. Even a marketing trends story about moms and social networks. But instead I was reminded that there are a lot of national crises going on today, and some of them happen to center around parenthood and happen to involve little ones. This is not an exclusive club to which we moms belong, even though our members are responsible for raising our future leaders.

For her part Bristol Palin provided this sage point of view: “I hope that people learn from my story and just like, I don't know, prevent teen pregnancy, I guess.”

Things that make you go ‘hmmm’…