The New York Observer

I signed up for Park Slope Parents, the notorious community listserv for procreating BroBos, under absurdly apropos circumstances: via 4G roaming Internet on an iPad 2 in a car on my way back from a President’s Day weekend trip to New England. As I typed away on my convenient keyboard dock, my five-month-old son sat beside me in his car seat, idly drooling on a tarted-up chew toy crafted to resemble an anthropomorphic toadstool with a nipple protruding from its head like a jaunty, pastel fez. This toy retails for almost $20, and is considered a steal at my local baby boutique, where it was sold to me by a cute lesbian shopkeep who favors ironic trucker hats.

The moment you realize you’ve become a cliche—strolling down upper Madison Avenue in your fur and turban, say, or arranging the artisanal cheese and pluot plate at the reception for the dystopian YA novel you Kickstarter-published—is a New York rite of passage. And there on I-95, as I sent in the $35 annual fee, I knew I had crossed the paper-thin threshold that separates the merely pretentious from the parodic: I had become the consummate SAHM (stay-at-home mom). Read More