The other day my four-and-a-half-year-old daughter and I were walking down the street after leaving our favorite frozen yogurt place. We’d been celebrating her last day of preschool and were headed back to our car so that we could meet up with another kid from her preschool at a nearby park for a “playdate.” (Try as I might to resist this terminology, there is no better alternative for describing the kind of pre-arranged, adult-supervised activities that we have with our children, who are no longer allowed to roam the neighborhood, visiting the houses of the kids they want to play with, as I did as a child in the 1970s.)

On this busy downtown street, a young man with a clipboard approached us and, after hesitating for a moment, (we were already late–as usual– for our playdate), I stopped and listened to his request. Do you have a minute to help support gay marriage?, which of course, still not being over the sense of rage and shock I felt by the failing of California’s Proposition 8, I did. I must admit that I often don’t have that “minute” the person is asking for. I am even guilty of looking more hurried than I actually am just to avoid having my attention constantly redirected by all the needs of the world. In this case, I tried to offer my signature, but he wanted money, and I had none at that moment. So he directed me to the office where the campaign was headquartered, and my daughter and I continued on our way.

“What did he want mom?” my daughter asked earnestly.

“Oh, he’s trying to raise money for his cause,” I replied, somewhat aware of the fact that people on that busy street might be listening to this conversation.

“What’s his cause mom?” she pressed on. My daughter is the sort who loves to ask questions, and she’s never ever satisfied with your vague answers. Why should she be? I always ask myself. But there have been many moments when I am not quite prepared out in public for my answers about how, say, a woman and a man actually make a baby, or why those angry Iranian people on the cover of The New York Times have set all the cars on fire. I have to take a moment and think about how I’m going to cover a complex topic, because I realize that the first time I explain something or introduce a concept is a crucial moment.

At least I think it is.

“Well,” I started in as she eagerly awaited my explanation, “you know how the kids next door have two dads, and some of your friends have two moms? Well, some of them want to be married, just like dad and I are. And the law says that they can’t get married. Even though some of them have gotten married, because the law doesn’t really make sense…”

Then I stopped myself. There are some abstract concepts that I don’t have a problem explaining, but the “law” isn’t once of them. She understands what it means when I say we have to wear our seatbelts or drive the speed limit or the police will give us ticket. And when she and I once got pulled over for driving 35 in a 25 zone (!) it illustrated the concept a little better. But in the case of speeding or not wearing a seatbelt, we’re talking about the potential of not harming someone, right?

How do you make a case for the terrible things that might happen if two women get married? You simply don’t, because there aren’t any.

Because I have always tried to normalize any offbeat sexuality/parntership choices when I talk about things with her, we haven’t really talked about the fact that there are people in the world who think gay people are evil and demented and that they should be treated like criminals. So, we’ve just been breezing along talking about so and so’s two dads without any discussion about what that means (you know, just doing my part, as the bumper sticker says, to piss off the religious right, I suppose). I just didn’t want to plant judgments in her head, or give her any reason to start looking at people like they aren’t “normal.” Someday we’ll have the “contiuum of sexuality” conversation…perhaps when it makes more sense.

So how do I even begin to explain to her that “the law” says Janie’s parents, the ones who have selflessly given birth to and cared for her since she was conceived, aren’t allowed to get married?

How could I tell her about the article I’d read earlier that day, about the nonprofit hospital in central California that refused to allow a lesbian woman to see her partner in the emergency room (the Associated Press.), a woman who was rushed to the hospital after collapsing during a pro-gay-marriage march? I didn’t. But the news was still hanging there in my view.

Instead I did my best to state the fact that in California gay couples aren’t “legally allowed” to marry. I tried to say it matter of factly, though I’m sure she realized how I felt about it. And what followed was one of those moments that will occupy a particularly memorable place in my history as a mom, a moment that, as writer Ayelet Waldman writes, I “should be able to melt with emotion” over. So I am doing that here, now.

My preschooler said, “I think people should get to choose whoe they want to marry. It should be their choice, not somebody elses.” I couldn’t have said it better.

And I couldn’t have gushed more. By this time we were driving to the park, she was strapped into her booster seat, and I turned around and said, “I like the way you think.” What I wanted to say was, “I am so proud of how smart you are I can’t even stand it…”

If she can figure out something so simple, what is everybody else’s problem?

As one of good my friends says repeatedly, and this is one of the reasons I keep him as a good friend, “In the neat community we don’t appreciate the term ‘neat freak.’ We find it offensive.” Both my friend and I love being part of this community. So, as a person who prefers to have a little order in my life, you can imagine my glee when I received a link to this Slate.com article in my inbox yesterday: Messy house, Messy Mind.

Warning: For those of you who hate reading recent studies that make grand sweeping conclusions that might implicate your fine self and cause you to argue with their dubious results, the rest of this post might irritate you. You might even want to stop reading now. I personally find those kinds of articles great food for thought, and don’t have a problem trying things on for size and then taking them off and letting them land on the floor.

When I first saw this article about the connection between reading and an orderly home, I pictured myself printing it out and posting it on my refrigerator for all—that includes husband, relatives, and all those on the neat-challenged spectrum who enter my house—to read. Though the content was slightly inconclusive, the headline was a delicious finger pointer that a clean person like me couldn’t resist. Sort of an “I told you so!,” but expertly written by someone else so that I didn’t have to look like a bully with a neat agenda.

The article, at least I thought this as I started to read it, vaguely covers one of the subjects you will hear my husband and raising our voices over the most: keeping things neat and orderly in our house. Before I risk coming off as one of those anal types, I should say that I just need a little neat and clean in my life—ok, a lot—for my mental health. I have a high degree of internal chaos, and so I require a fair amount of external order to combat it. And, to make matters more complicated, I married, just as my own mother did, someone who is on the very other end of that spectrum I mentioned. In other words, he is not so interested in being part of the neat community. In fact, not at all.

It’s true that you might also be able to add this Slate article to that collection of wacky fear-inducing parenting articles I tend to be forever on the receiving list of (got it from another mom in my white, well-educated, progressive preschool sphere). But, of course, I had to read it. I had to find out there is, it appears, a connection between good reading skills and an orderly home, that is between high-reading moms and their orderly or not so orderly homes. I needed more NF people on my side.

According to this writer’s research, her’s is an article about the book Order in the House! Associations among Household Chaos, the Home Literacy Environment, Maternal Reading Ability, and Children’s Early Reading (so yes, I am two times removed here) by several writers from Columbia’s Teachers College, there is a new set of research about how we as parents set the tone for our kids functionality in the world (before you say duh, see the rest of the article). It’s not about how much we read to them, it’s how much we have our shite together. More to feel guilty about, indeed. Unless you are one of those perfect parents, which you might be.

Here’s the quick academic view of the book’s findings:

Results suggest that the degree of household order is significantly and positively associated with expressive vocabulary, reading tests, and phonological awareness skills of children whose mothers are above-average readers. By contrast, the number of books a child owns or brings home and how often a child amuses herself alone with books are significantly associated with the expressive vocabulary, reading tests, and phonological awareness skills of children whose mothers are average-ability readers. These results suggest the potential for new approaches to encouraging literacy development in the home beyond those that depend solely on parental literacy.

What does this mean? According to my findings, this means, and it took me a while to get this from the article (written about the book), that how much order there is in the house of the above-average readers, determines how well that child might read. The funny thing is, as much as I wanted this to be an incentive, you know, “we have to keep the house clean because it means our child will read better,” it’s not really.

What’s being said is that the more there is an orderly routine in the house,this means consistent rules, bedtimes, boundaries, etc., the better the children of those households fare, that is in the area of literacy. This is interesting, at least in part to me, because for awhile now I’ve had that other idea in my head. The idea that all I had to do was surround my child with books and they would love reading. I think I got it from Malcolm Gladwell or possibly even from another one of those fascinating renegade writers who like to prove that everything you think is right is actually wrong.

Here’s my favorite part about why orderliness is good for reading. It has to do with something called “executive functioning,” something that I, with or without my neatness, could probably stand to have a little more of.

“Household order taps a more fundamental characteristic of parents or households, such as maternal industriousness, planning ability, or conscientiousness, that gives rise to both orderliness and better reading skills in children. This is the idea of executive functioning, which captures planning and problem-solving abilities.”

So what it boils down to is, if you want to encourage sharper minds, you have to value order and routine in the house. Not so bad, right? I can still use this against my husband when he leaves all the cooking utensils lying uncleaned around the kitchen, right? Or when he throws his clothes into a mysterious pile on the floor—are they clean, are they dirty, are they meant to go to the Salvation Army?

Chances are since her parents are both avid readers and writers, I don’t have to worry about my daughter being a good reader. And, realistically, I don’t. She already has more books than we can shelve. In fact, when I draw a mental picture of her room, I realize that a lot of her books, overflow from the shleves and are in tall piles on the floor. That might not be so good, according to this research. Unless the piles are neat, I suppose.

But, I do love it when there is scientific evidence to support something that I complain about daily. So, I’m still going to go ahead and post on the article on my refrigerator. You never know, someone might read it. And I could come home to a cleaner house one day.

Though, I doubt it.

One final note: Last night, as I, for the first time ever in her four years of life, let my daughter fall asleep next to me watching American Idol, way after her usual bedtime, because I was tired from long trip and wanting just to sit in front of the TV and watch people sing and be judged, I started to feel a little trickle of guilt knowing that we were creating inconsistency for the sole sake of mom’s exhaustion, but I stopped myself. Perhaps those 15 minutes of American Idol ruined her, but we hadn’t been in the house for days, and it was so clean and neat and, well, my parents let me stay up past my bedtime watching TV once in awhile and I turned out OK. Sort of.

When it comes to parenting, everyone has an uninvited opinion they’d like to share with you. Your job is to let them say whatever they’re going to say and to not hit them after they say it. It has been my experience that even those who are not parents inevitably fall into the pontificating subset. From the moment you leave the hospital, the birthing room, or the living room in which you delivered, you have signed yourself on to more scrutiny, analysis, vitriol, and laborious self-restraint than you could ever have imagined.

I’ll never forget eating at a Bay Area restaurant—I was eight months pregnant—and a 20-something year-old woman sitting at a table a few feet away from mine was expressing herself rather loudly with her dinner date. “It’s so selfish to have your own baby when there are so many needier ones out there waiting to be adopted!” So, now, after I’d waited until I was nearly 40 to make the decision to procreate, I was selfish. And another time, at a dinner party, I mentioned to someone that one baby was probably going to be enough for us. I subsequently received a lecture about how self-centered and maladjusted “only children” were. Now, it seemed, I’d probably be raising a selfish child as well.

Sounds about right.

Since I had only planned to do this thing once, my wish was to go through birthing without drugs. But everyone kept telling me that I would change my mind once I got to the hospital and discovered that I had to have a c-section, which I was told, I should, as an “older woman,” also prepare for. Call me selfish, but I just wanted to have my own experience without constantly being told beforehand what it was going to be like, how horrible it might be, etc. It’s weird I guess, but I want to die someday knowing that I experienced the unadulterated sensation of childbirth. I imagined it could be a great reference point when things get tough. I’ll be able to look back on my drugless childbirth and say, “if I did that—I can do anything!” Turns out, waxing is STILL incredible painful.

I did end up doing it without drugs. It wasn’t easy, but I’m glad (and I was lucky enought) that I got to stick to my plan without a lot of complications. I would never suggest that it is the right choice for every woman, by any means. But it did lead me to my bigger realization that childbirth is so f-ing hard because parenting is so f-ing hard. I think the pain of childbirth, and the mental and physical strength it requires, prepares you physically and mentally for the challenges ahead. And you need all the preparation you can get.

You go into parenting with so many aphorisms handed out to you. Everyone has already figured it all out and they can’t wait to tell you what it’s going to be like for you. The best example of that was the Attachment Parenting sales representatives I encountered. After announcing that I was pregnant at work, I curiously got an e-mail from an executive co-worker mom with whom I had never before shared a conversation, or even a glance. She never had the slightest bit of desire to talk to me, until…“Congratulations!!,” she’d written. “Would you like to have lunch sometime this week? We can talk about mom stuff.”

Bewildered by her sudden interest in me, I accepted the offer. We spent an hour picking at our roast turkey sandwiches while she told me all about Dr. Sears and the Attachment School of parenting which, among other laudable contributions, credits itself with producing well-attached, more secure children. It seemed that she has sold me.

Why not?, I thought. I grew up insecure and turned into a neurotic, so why not at least try to produce a well-adjusted child? Wouldn’t that be something I could be proud of doing? My coworker/sales rep spent a good deal of the hour telling me how much happier I would be if I kept my baby on my body in a sling, co-slept with her, never put her down when she was crying, breastfed her until she was four, and gave her my undivided attention 20 hours a day.

She forgot to mention how sleep-deprived and anxious I would be trying give this baby more (so much more) than I was giving myself. She didn’t mention the strain that babies who never leave your sight put on your marriage. I guess you just figure that into the the divorce rate among parents with very young children.

But I took on this parenting “style” earnestly as she did, effectively inviting a school-bus load of more reasons to feel anxious, since really what I was learning was that I had some control over the outcome of my child. I fell prey to the thinking that if I could be that kind of a mother, I could mold the person that I had always wanted to be myself: secure, grounded, well-loved. As writer Judith Warner points out in her book Perfect Madness: Parenting in the Age of Anxiety, women of my generation, who have put some time into re-parenting their inner child, Attachment Parenting seemed like the perfect theory to raise your kid by.

But, after reading so many books about how to take care of my baby, whether to let her “cry it out” or not cry it out, whether to pick her up or not pick her up, watch Baby Einstein videos or not, I had lost my ability to trust my own instincts. So, as so many women do, I ceded to the experts, of which there is an exaustingly endless supply. After all, I’d never done any of this before. So, I decided to take what seemed to be the kinder, gentler approach with my baby. I wanted my baby and I to be synchronized, harmonious. (Ha!)

Needless to say, the parent I imagined I would be is not the one that I have become.

One of the most common maxims you hear as a new parent is, “It goes so fast!” By this, well-meaning people are trying to tell you that you should slow down and enjoy every precious moment of your baby’s existence. In my experience, the first two years of mommyhood went very slowly. Day after exhausting day with my “spirited” toddler (euphemism for very intense, very demanding, very high-energy child), I thought, this is not going fast at all. In fact, I couldn’t wait until the twos were over.

I learned quickly that people who have the calmer more timid child version had NO IDEA what I was experiencing. They were quick to offer solutions that were, well, absolutley ridiculous, actually.

I was looking forward to going out to a restaurant with her without having to chase her down the street as my husband and I took turns eating by ourselves. I was looking forward to starting the day without the meltdown that erupted from getting out of our pajamas, or a day when I wouldn’t be cleaning off the yogurt that had been smeared all over the TV, or pleading with my daughter not to jump on our dog’s arthritic leg or hit the crawling baby who lived next door over the head with a plastic castle.

I didn’t imagine myself reacting so strongly to her outbursts, the fear that would emerge in me prior to one—some of the worst fear I’ve ever encountered. I guess I didn’t imagine I would become such an unpleasant person. I don’t think I was naïve in choosing to become a parent—I knew my life would change. I knew I would grow into someone that I might not recognize. I just didn’t know how much strength it would take stay composed every day. I didn’t know how attached I was to my former non-mom self (that calmer person) and that I would need to set aside some grieving time to deal with that loss.

And, I certainly wasn’t prepared for one of the most difficult aspects of being a parent, which is enduring the wrath of judgment from other parents. Because not only is the advice being doled out constantly, if you’re not doing it the way that parent would do it, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be told, albeit subtly, that you are not doing it right. It no longer becomes about your instinct as a parent who shares some of the genetic traits with your child—temperment, personality, energy levels, ways of interacting with the world—it’s about what they that parent thinks is right or wrong, a conclusion they’ve arrived at based on their own offspring, who may bear no emotional resemblance whatsoever to your child.

It takes a village to raise a child, yes. But you kind of want that village to at least be on the same page, or at least reading the same book. The trouble with contemporary parenting, as I see it, is that everyone is reading a different book, or operating from a different set of instructions that has been handed down them as fact. The clash of parenting styles makes for some pretty uncomfortable conversations and situations. I watched a friendship break up over it, and it seems ludicrous to even have to admit that.

Since that painful experience, I naturally gravitate towards women who have a parenting style more akin to mine. If I sense a hoverer or a micromanager, I take a step backward.

For me, every day is a battle—however oxymoronic this is—with trying to let go. I have to let go of the urge to make everything ok for her, let go of person that I was and the person that I am now, skating between the clutches of parental “control” and the promise of an easier tomorrow, or at least one with less screaming, kicking, and biting. I have to let go of caring what anybody else thinks about me or my child or the way in which I am raising my child.

Probably the best piece of advice I’ve received so far did not come from a parenting expert. It was something I heard singer/poet Leonard Cohen say in an interview. “You have to let go of the master plan you have for yourself—then you’ll discover what the real plan is.” My former self knew I could turn to Leonard when in doubt, and I guess this much is still true.