Dear Kate Gosselin: Let Me Get Back To You On That Bad Mother Thing

So I wrote a post the other day, continuing my ruminations on Kate Gosselin and why she is  so judged and why that's a problem for me and for everyone, et cetera, but it was - as a few readers pointed out - incomplete and unclear. In raising the question of whether or not a recent incident - denying her daughter water, while enjoying a drink herself - warranted judgment, and admitting that I myself had raised my eyebrows and had one of those moments of oh, dear - which, as I've admitted, are moments that I do have, privately, and I think we all have, privately - but not pursuing those questions to a conclusion, or even taking the time to situate those questions within the context of the larger problems about bad mother narratives that I've been pursuing so ardently, I did the subject and my readers a disservice. The post as it stood could have been read as ambiguously judgmental; worse, it could have been read as a simple statement of judgment. And although I emphatically did not intend it to be that - there were larger questions, deeper issues, fueling my scattershot reflections - I understand that it could have been read that way, and so I have taken it down until I can pursue those questions to something approximating a conclusion.

Because although I believe that judgment is unavoidable, that to judge is to be human, and that there are some things that we should judge (another topic for another time), I don't believe in contributing to - I don't want to contribute to - public narratives of judgment, and if even one reader took my reflections as simple statements of public judgment, then that's a problem.

I'll repost the original, unedited, when I take up the topic again. But for now, if there's any room for misunderstanding, I'm taking it down.

In the meantime: BABIES IN BATHING SUITS, for everyone's amusement and edification...

Because nobody ever judges a baby. Babies are beyond judgment.

Um, right?