Tuesday, August 3, 2010

What's your parenting superpower?

I finally got around to watching Iron Man (crazy schedules + expensive babysitters = two working parents who don't get to the movies all that often). And I loved it.

I have a thing for superheroes in general -- my childhood idol was Mighty Mouse, in fact, and I've passed my love of The X-Men on to my kids. But Iron Man appealed to me even more than super hero movies usually do, not because some otherworldly avenger/defender swoops in to save the day, but because Tony Stark creates his own superpower.


We know that there's no such thing as Super Mom, even as we try to be her when we're struggling to juggle work and life. But you know what? I still think we're superheros. With superpowers. But like Tony Stark, we have to create ours ourselves -- no strange reactions to Earth's yellow sun, no bizarre experiment gone awry, no radioactive spiders. And we don't have a multi-billion dollar fortune to throw at it -- or even a fancy costume (apparently, yoga pants do not count).

A poll at Babycenter.com asked moms "If you could have one superpower, what would it be?" Twenty-eight percent chose mind-reading, and I admit, that would come in handy in more ways than one. Twenty-one percent would opt to stop time, and 16 percent wanted to be able to see into the future. All nine options in the poll were for powers that are unattainable, though, and I'm convinced that busy moms have ones that actually exist.

In spite of the fact that researchers say it's a myth, I still think that my superpower is multitasking. My husband's is his ability to study something once and be able to do it like he's been doing it forever, whether it's installing a vent in our kitchen or rebuilding a car engine or constructing a crazy-complicated garden. Why Mommy's son says her superpower is love, and I think that's pretty much the best anaysis of what makes a parent a Superhero that I've ever read.

What's your superpower?

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