Let me provoke you…and beg for your votes

I am thrilled and honoured to have been nominated by Allie from No Time for Flash Cards for the Most Provocative Blog in the BlogLuxe Awards. When I found out she had nominated me, I asked her why she thought my blog was provocative and she said:

Provocative is defined as to stimulate and if anything Phd in Parenting has stimulated discussion in my house. Parenting is not a by the book endeavor and it’s imperative to keep learning and this blog helps me examine my choices as a parent by provoking me to ask why I do what I do.

With a quote like that, I can go around grinning from ear to ear without even being a finalist for the award. That is, after all, why I am here. To help parents examine their choices and to help society examine its assumptions about how we should parent.

This all has me thinking about some of the ways that I have been provocative on this blog.

• When I feel slighted, criticized, humiliated, I don’t sulk. I post. That was true when I lashed out at Hanna Rosin in the Economics of Breastfeeding and in The Case Against Breastfeeding: Is it Anti-Feminist. It was true when I told facebook what I thought about it’s policy on breastfeeding photos in Breaking it Down for Facebook. It motivated me to write Birth Plan: Yes or No?, to explain about Lactivism and the Homelessness Problem and to analyze the faulty logic of the Ontario Coroner on co-sleeping, not just once but twice.

• I’m a lactivist. An ardent lactivist. That means that I will fight to help women be successful at breastfeeding and will stare down people that stand in their way. Like in when to give up on breastfeeding or what gives you the right? Or posts like sabotage or a slap in the boobs by Dr. Sears. It means I won’t stand for people calling me or any other breastfeeding supporter a Boob Nazi and I’ll challenge it all the way through the 114 comments. I’ll challenge ridiculous concepts like breastfeeding being a safety hazard. As ardent a breastfeeding supporter as I am, I do understand there are times when it is not breast.

• I want to get people to consider less mainstream parenting practices and help them to be confident in doing so. That includes helping a friend to feel more confident about her parenting choices by flaunting her crunch, getting people to reconsider whether punishment is an effective discipline tool or if there is a better way, or challenging the notion that babies should sleep through the night and that if they don’t, you need to let them cry it out.

• Questioning some of the idiocies in society in posts like bias against boys or out of sight, out of mind, out of job, or feminism, fathers and valuing parenthood. Challenging people to question things like religion and sin or consumerism. Getting people to think about our empathy deficit and lack of support for true choices for women.

I’d love your vote. If you do think I deserve this award, please try to vote daily from now until the close of voting on July 6th. Thank you for your support!

P.S. Can I say that I had a few posts that are all bunnies and unicorns planned, but now I feel pressure to post provocative stuff instead. My friend at bits of myself suggested I “consider showing more boobs in nonsexual actions.” Maybe…(okay, how about here and here)