The Hip Mama Survival Guide: Advice from the Trenches on Pregnancy, Childbirth, Cool Names, Clueless Doctors, Potty Training, and Toddler Avengers

Oh, Mama!

###WENDY SHALIT

Miss Shalit is a contributing editor at City Journal.

The Hip Mama Survival Guide: Advice from the Trenches on Pregnancy, Childbirth, Cool Names, Clueless Doctors, Potty Training, and Toddler Avengers, by Ariel Gore (Hyperion, 256 pp., $12.95)

UNLIKE the classic for pregnant women, What to Expect when You're Expecting, The Hip Mama Survival Guide begins by warning of the perils of body piercing: "If you have a pierced belly button you should take the ring out, but you can leave a nipple ring in as long as it feels comfortable." Still, it's important to go to a "reputable studio" for your "maternity piercing needs." And remember, "While you don't have to remove clit or labia rings until you go into labor and can, technically, put them back in as soon as the baby is born, I'd consider taking them out early and kissing those piercings goodbye. There's going to be plenty of action down there without having to worry about additional metal and holes."

This is not your typical pregnancy book. Its author is a former welfare mother; at 19, she gave birth to a baby girl. Today Ariel Gore is 26, and she is frequently introduced on TV talk shows as "conservative America's worst nightmare." She is also the founder and editor of Hip Mama, the quarterly parenting magazine "with attitude." Her Survival Guide elaborates on the kind of advice she gives in her magazine. This advice is sometimes less than stellar. "If you have a couple of beers one afternoon," she counsels her pregnant readers, "the best thing you can do is accept it and move on." But if you set all that aside, the rest of her humorous, eminently readable book offers an illuminating glimpse into the world of single motherhood.

The sort of counsel Miss Gore offers to unwed mothers is very telling. She discusses what to do if your child has been kidnapped by its father, when to sue for child support, how to look on the bright side of having your phone service cut off: "Having your phone disconnected usually cuts down on collection-agent harassment. Think: Little House on the Prairie." When strangers comment, "I just don't know how you do it," the best reply, Miss Gore teaches, is to smile sweetly and say, "With your tax dollars."

Next, spend those tax dollars well by inculcating the proper sensibility in your child: "Take your children to political events and protests," the author urges. "Teach your children about boycotts and observe them." And about that Baby Johnson's ad that reads, "Soon enough there'll be ballet lessons and boys at the front door," we are told, "Who's to say she won't be taking kickboxing lessons or there won't be baby dykes at the door?"

To make it more likely that dykes will appear, Miss Gore introduces us to her friend "Lee," her "nonsexist child-rearing idol." Lee plays "The Stereotype Game" with her children, and so can we. This game, which challenges accepted notions of what girls and boys look like, culminates in a search for bearded ladies. Once they find one, Lee's son learns to say, "The idea that women can never have beards must be a stereotype." What a good little boy.

But much of this political posturing seems to be a defense mechanism, covering up the fact that single motherhood is, in truth, anything but hip. To Miss Gore's credit, she doesn't edit her friends' comments to fit her preconceived notions, and the stories she tells undermine her ideology. Her friend "Holly," for example, was left "penniless and homeless after her marriage ended. She and her four pre-schoolers turned to friends and family for help but finally ended up in a shelter." Then there is "Lelia": "When I asked my friend Lelia about working full time and being a mom, I sort of expected her to come out with some eloquent quote about struggle and balance and priorities and all of that. Instead she told me, 'It sucks. Contrary to popular belief, unless it's your true choice, unless you like your job and you want to have the career you have, it just doesn't work."' When she asks Allison Abner, author of Finding Our Way, whether she "ever fe[lt] like there was a conflict between being a feminist and having this traditional family" the other woman replied, "The problem that I had always had with feminism, and I am a very strong feminist, is that among certain groups of people, women have been made to feel like they have to choose between marriage and feminism. Marriage doesn't compromise your feminism; it's whom you pick to marry that could." Most of the single moms in this book wish they were married.

Miss Gore closes her book by making fun of Newt Gingrich, but her own critique of the welfare system and its perverse incentives is not much different from his. When she began to work, she noticed that it really didn't pay to do so: "Interestingly, social services felt rather possessive when it came to my little work-study check. For each dollar I earned, I lost a dollar in food stamps. After child care, I was actually paying about $3.50 an hour for the privilege of working." Yet when she had stayed home, she had felt demeaned: "At-Home Mom," Miss Gore remarks, is just a "label to make you feel bad."