Proper Parenting?

I am horribly addicted to magazines. It is an affliction that began way before I felt compelled to buy every issue of Bop in order to learn the latest news about NKOTB. (These kids of the internet age will never know what it was like to have to wait a whole month before another installment of bad celebrity gossip.) I can remember being much younger than that and excitedly curling up in a recliner at my grandmother's house with her old issues of Better Homes and Gardens. (I was a wild and crazy kid!) 

I am that person that will read magazines anywhere, yes, even the icky doctor's office copies. (I have four kids and two dogs. Being a germaphobe is out of the question.) This leads to lots of random knowledge about how to clean my house (I should do that some day), manage my finances, and the latest diet fad (Paleo, anyone?). It also occasionally leads to some insight.

I was flipping through a copy of Vogue I picked up in the break room at work, when I read this. "We, the mothers of North Seattle, were consumed with trying to do everything right. Breast-feeding was simply the first item in a long, abstruse to-do list: Cook organic baby food, buy expensive wooden toys, create an enriching home environment, sleep with your child in your bed, ensure that your house was toxin free, use cloth diapers, carry your child in a sling, dress your child inorganic fibers...And don't quit your job...Also, don't forget to recycle." The list sounds so familiar in the things I feel like I should do as well as the author's sentiment that it's not possible to do them all. I suppose one of the benefits of having four kids,though, is there is no time to agonize over what we should be doing. We just have to do what works for us and our kids. Quite a few of those items are on our list, but many don't make it, and that's okay.  Despite their best efforts at doom, the kids were still alive the last time I checked...