Mommy Wars are a huge part of parenting and are usually waged between working moms vs. non-working moms. But if you want to know who is really ruining kids, look to the philosophies of permissive parenting and moms who are more interested in being a friend than a parent. This trend is not only popular in Hollywood, but is trickling into suburbia, where mothers of teen girls are shopping at the same stores as their teens and hosting parties with alcohol for their underage progeny. If you can answer yes to any of the following questions, congratulations, you are a crappy parent.
3. Are you a stage-parent?
Dina Lohan’s first mistake was getting her little girl, Lindsay, into the entertainment industry. While commercials and off-broadway plays may seem harmless, it can lead to full-on Hollywood horror. Strangely, while Disney maintains the best place on earth for little ones, any child sucked into working for Disney usually doesn’t end up happy or healthy. Very few child stars escape unscathed. Aside from that, hawking your child like a money-making opportunity is just distasteful and I’m sure makes for uncomfortable conversation over holiday dinners while your child is trying to figure out how they ended up with a cocaine addiction to rival Richard Pryor’s. Stage-parenting is not the same thing as parenting.
A classic example is Lynne Spears, who allowed a Rolling Stone photographer to photograph her underage daughter alone in her room wearing only a bra and panties surrounded by her childhood dolls. Spears then wrote a book trying to explain that she was just naive and had no idea the entertainment industry would exploit her daughter in that way (even though it had previously exploited every other female it got its hands on). I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure if some creepy photographer tried to get my daughter alone in a bedroom he’d find himself out on the front lawn with a bloody nose. What kind of parent doesn’t protect her child from predators? A crappy one (ahem…Billy Ray Cyrus).
2. Do you party with your child?
Dina Lohan has been photographed time after time stumbling into and out of every club in North America with her drugged-out daughter. That this ever seemed like a good idea is hard to believe. Minors may go out to bars and clubs, but what kind of parent helps facilitate it? Perhaps the kind of parent like Soraya Chemaly, who wrote in the Huffington Post that teen sex is great and you’re just a square if you don’t allow it in your house.
Why would you create a situation where your children are forced to hide, sneak around, be dishonest, be uncomfortable, take unnecessary risks and make uninformed decisions about their physical and emotional health ?
Uninformed decisions about their physical and emotional health, like herpes and heartbreak? Chemaly thinks we should be cooler like the Europeans, who “would encourage them to bring over their partners, have a nice dinner, then toddle off to bed together.” Lohan simply took this age-old leftist feel-good advice and applied it to drinking and drugs! It’s the natural progression of this philosophy — after all, you want to make sure your kid uses safely, don’t you? Here, honey, let me get you a clean needle. FAIL.
Perhaps even worse is developing your own habit right along with your child. Lohan was recently arrested for drunk driving.
Matching mother/daughter mugshots
1. Have you ever considered selling your kid for money, drugs, or fame?
Dina Lohan pretty much sold her daughter for fame, fortune, and all the drugs the two of them can snort. Lohan’s ex-husband and sperm-donor accused Lohan of actually pimping out their daughter to rich men.
“She is getting paid to date rich men,” Michael said of his 26-year-old daughter. “Dina (Lindsay’s mother) is pimping her out – it’s disgusting!”
This guy is no shining example of fatherhood, but it’s not an entirely unbelievable accusation. Why not get paid for something you give away freely, especially when you’re going broke with all the rehab bills?
Others in the limelight have these same tendencies. Take, for example, Jade Jagger, Mick Jagger’s daughter. This mother of two girls took them to a red carpet event at the ages of 14 and 11 in matching plunging necklines. Her eleven-year-old daughter looked mortified. I can’t believe it’s legal to expose an eleven-year-old’s breasts like that and not be charged with child porn or trafficking. It’s as if she put them both up on an auction block for high bidders. If your mother did that to you, wouldn’t you turn to drugs or alcohol? I worry for those girls. If you want to feel really icky, Google it, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Putting your love of attention ahead of the safety and comfort of your child is a sickness. Get help.
If you’re a parent, learn to set limits and embrace being disliked. When rebellious, immature kids hate you, you’re doing it right. If they think you’re the coolest person ever, you’re probably a crappy parent.
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