Mean Mommy

So, I've been reading this survey taken by the US Census Bureau (whose slogan, by the way, is "Helping You Make Informed Decisions"...hm) that's all about how much time kids spend with their parents, broken down into various ages, genders, ethnicities, income brackets. And I started thinking, again, about how inhumane it is to not read to your child. Dealbreaker was never read to. I was always read to. I can't say who turned out better, nor who has a closer bond with the 'rents, but I just have this image in my head of this hyperactive kid with no one reading to him, and it makes me very sad.

And then I thought about what songs to sing to a pre-verbal baby.

And I thought:

You never give me your mooooooooney
You only give me your fuuuuuunny paper
And in the middle of negotiations
You break down

Well, many songs in the Beatles' catalog are within my limited vocal range. So I guess there would be a lot of them that I could sing. Of course, by the time I have kids, these songs will all be, like, a bazillion years old, and my kids will be all like, "Mom, you are SO square."

And then I worry about that, about not being Fun Mommy, even though kids are nowhere to be found in my immediate future. I'm already Mean Mommy at my house, the critical figure who can't help but say, "Hey, can you not leave dishes all over the house?" My own mommy is a wonderful and supportive mommy (even though she does have a habit of questioning almost all of my decisions and being shocked when I can manage to make a relationship work for more than five minutes) who read to me and sang to me. She was the one who was always around, always drove on field trips, always took care of us when we were sick.

But because my mom actually asked us to do things like clean up after ourselves and bathe once in a while, my dad was Fun Daddy. This pisses my mom off to no end. She feels like we don't remember her ever doing anything fun, and that all we remember is the time she forgot that we had a minimum day and abandoned us at school in the rain for hours. I mean, yeah, incidents like that and the one time she didn't drive on a school field trip (literally, ONE time) stand out more than all the times she picked us up on time and drove our friends around. Hm, and driving on field trips is a pretty Fun Mommy thing to do. My dad only drove on one field trip ever, when I was in kindergarten, to see the Nutcracker, and for some reason, that memory is very vivid.

Is this my fate? Will I never be Fun Mommy even if I am indeed fun?