ARE YOU READY FOR BABY? Take this quiz and rate your maternity spirit.

What are your thoughts on:

BREASTFEEDING

a) I am going to breastfeed my child until he/she is eight years old or embraces the vegan lifestyle and eschews dairy products – whichever comes first.

b) I am going to breastfeed my kid until I fall off the wagon and get royally pissed. I wouldn’t want to give him a second-hand buzz.

c) I run a restaurant. No way can I fit breastfeeding into my schedule.

SWADDLING

a) I would not swaddle him/her. However, I’m aware that medical opinion about this practice keeps changing, so I’ve signed up for automatic weekly updates on my iPhone.

b) Swaddle? Will that make my child waddle? :) Just joking.

c) I will definitely swaddle my child – anything that will keep the little brat down and out of my way.

BABY CARRIAGE

a) My husband and I have been talking about taking out a second mortgage and get a top of the line German engineered pram covered with Gucci designed fabric and equipped with power steering.

b) Whatever is on sale at Sears.

c) There’s one sitting in my aunt’s garage. She says she’ll be glad if I take that piece of junk off her hands. So it’s a win-win situation.

POTTY TRAINING

a) No way. I don’t want to traumatize my child. Let him/her discover the happiness of clean pants for him/herself. I’m sure by age ten he/she will have it sorted out.

b) I’ll train him when the shit gets too much to handle (not to mention, the price of diapers).

c) I’ll rub his nose in the doo-doo. It worked for my puppy.

JUNIOR KINDERGARTEN

a) We signed up our child at a prestigious private school when I was five days pregnant, but I fear it was too late. I wonder how big a donation would guarantee us a place? Do we need a third mortgage? Or would it be sufficient if I crawled on my knees to the headmistress’ office and licked her hand?

b) There’s an okay primary school two blocks away. At least I think it’s okay. They have two armed guards. So what can go wrong?

c) Not sure I’ll live to see the day. Just had my sister drop in with her two pre-schoolers. Barely survived the experience. Having second thoughts about getting pregnant.

Evaluation:

You checked (c) more than 3 times. You monster! If we knew who you are, we’d picket your restaurant and have your puppy removed by PETA. We recommend you read http://thehonesttoddler.com/.

You checked (b) more than 3 times. You mean you shop at Sears? And another thing: we hate people using emoticons, especially smiley faces.

You checked (a) more than 3 times. We’d like to be your purveyors. We sell organic baby food in fine crystal jars, Louboutin baby boots, silk wipes, sterling silver spoons, shorn ermine baby blankets, all with conspicuous designer labels that will make your friends die with envy.

Children Unite! An open letter to Anne-Marie Slaughter, E.L. James, and Tiger Mom.

We’ve had enough, all of us, from toddler to teenaged sons. And we mean you, Amy Chua, Anne-Marie Slaughter, E.L. James, and other embarrassing mothers and fathers.

But first we want to express our profound gratitude to the founder of the Take Back Your Childhood Movement, the person who has given us the courage to talk back. Let’s hear it for The Honest Toddler. It was he who made it clear at http://honesttoddler.wordpress.com/ that we will not tolerate any more organic food, especially of the lentil variety that looks like “rehydrated squirrel droppings.” We want sugar! We want Red 40 and Yellow 6! We want trans-fatty hamburgers from MacDonald’s!

And we’ll definitely not suffer any more family holidays with educational stops at museums. Read The Family Vacation Then and Now and ask yourself: what kind of happy family memories does that create? Who will pay the shrink’s bill when we grow up? We ask the same question of Jamie Lynne Grumet. Stop publishing pics of us sucking your breast. How are we going answer the schoolyard bullies when they hold up the front page of The Times?

We are not fooled by your professed altruism, Anne-Marie Slaughter. You say you are giving up your career for us and want to hover 24/7? Get back to your office. We are more than content with ten minutes of love every other day. We need that second salary. We are not content to give up the private school, the iPod touch 8 GB, the Nintendo DS Lite Cobalt, the party scene, our own Beamster, and the prospect of getting into Harvard, just because you want to indulge in foolish motherhood dreams. We want our unsupervised youth back.

That goes for you too, Amy Chua. Perfect your own piano score! We give you fair warning. We’ve been approached by a well-known human rights lawyer, who will represent us in our lawsuit against you. We want a cut of the royalties from Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. As Anne-Marie Slaughter said in her article in The Atlantic: You can’t have it all.

And you, E. L. James. We went fifty shades of red in our faces when we read your book. We want compensation for the embarrassment we’ve suffered in the halls, people quoting passages from your book, whispering “Don’t leave me” or gazing into our eyes with “fear and anguish” or asking us whether we wanted “a vanilla relationship with kinky fuckery”.

Enough is enough. All you children of oppressive parents unite! Join us in our fund raising campaign and demand money for writing your parents into your life. Our model is Toronto author Daniel Perlmutter (Globe & Mail, July 10), who will write you into his next novel for a price. $30 lets you invent a character, $750 allows you to determine the genre of his book, $1000 buys you an ending of your choice. Here is our pledge sheet for parents.

$100/mo and we’ll talk about toilet training.

We offer sliding rates for listening to your advice on job training: Plumber 500/mo. Lawyer 1000/mo. Heart specialist 2000/mo, more if it includes treating you.

$ 2000/mo and up if you want to determine our lifetime success.

Call us for rates on lasting marriages, guaranteed grandchildren, attendance at family reunions, etc.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Children is in the works.