Dear baby and parenting magazine editors

In my company pumping room, there is a fair sampling of magazines from such titles as Baby Talk, Parenting and Parents. They are not in any chronological order, but most of the seasons are pretty well represented. I’ve been pumping for about five months, so I estimate that I’ve read each copy in the pumping room at least 3, possibly 4, times each.

If these copies in particular are all that I had to come to a conclusion about American mothers who have just had a baby, I would determine that all American mothers care about is sleep training, postpartum sex and teaching your baby how to read. I’ve seriously read a version of each of these topics in each magazine. That’s pretty sad.

I’ve come to recognize a certain quality about each title, but that may be just because I’m a former newspaper publisher and notice such things. But I don’t think it bodes well that one baby/parenting magazine seems indistinguishable from the other.

Editors, can you please commission more interesting stories? How about how to select a daycare — should it be close to home, close to work or in the middle? Should it be a center, or a home daycare, or should you nix it all and hire a nanny? How about how to select a nanny? How about which baby items are absolute musts and which you can live without? (My son’s Bumbo comes to mind…) Ooh, how about baby proofing?

These seem like no-brainers, but in a random selection of baby and parenting magazines, I haven’t read any articles even touching any of the above topics. Granted, I have read a few interesting, useful articles — one about home remedies for common baby ailments comes to mind. But its come to a point that I can flip through a new copy of Baby Talk (which arrived last Saturday) in two pumping sessions. Not good, folks.