Alice Bradley has quite the resume. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the New School, her fiction has appeared in countless anthologies and she’s written for numerous publications like Redbook, The Onion and Good Housekeeping. Oh, and she also pens the award-winning blog Finslippy.com, which she started seven years ago.
These days, Bradley, who is mom to an 8-year-old son named Henry, is celebrating the launch of her new book “Let’s Panic About Babies,” which she wrote with fellow blogger Eden M. Kennedy of Fussy.org. The book is a snarky and honest antidote to the sea of serious parenting books that, in the authors’ opinions, overwhelm pregnant women with too much information, and instead presents the refreshing philosophy that it’s normal to make “a load of mistakes.” We recently chatted with Bradley about the book, where the name “Finslippy” comes from, and of course, the things in life that are totally worth panicking about.
How did you get your start in writing?
I come from a family of storytellers. Humor was always easy for me, but that was why I shied away from it—[thinking that] writing had to be hard, that you had to work your heart out, torture yourself and cry a lot. I worked as an editor, and then I got my master’s. Then after I had my son I started looking for a new direction in my life. And then one day my sister said, “You should start a blog!” Sometimes all it takes is that one person to say, “You can actually do this.”
Where does the name Finslippy come from?
“Finslippy” comes from a joke between my husband and me about a dream I had about renaming dolphins. [In my dream] the Language Association decided “dolphins” was a terrible name, so I came up with “Finslippy,” and they said it was perfect. So I made that my blog name, thinking, “Who’s going to read that besides my husband and my mom?”
What do you find most challenging about motherhood?
I think there’s an illusion that you have before you’re a parent that when you become a parent you’ll automatically know what you’re doing. For me, the hardest part was encountering situations and having absolutely no idea what to do. It’s realizing you’re going to make mistakes, and you have to be okay with that. And learning to apologize to your child—I feel good about doing that, because I’m modeling what I want my child to do.
Let’s talk about “Let’s Panic About Babies.” Did the idea for the book come from your own parenting panic?
Yes, it did. There are so many books about parenting and pregnancy. When I was pregnant, I read all the books and felt badly, because the pregnancy they were describing wasn’t my pregnancy. It seems to be universal that pregnant women feel alienated and troubled by all the information they’re being bombarded with; there’s a flood of information, and each book has a different angle. So Eden and I decided to come together and poke fun at everything. But we wanted to be clear we weren’t mocking moms; we want moms to be able to laugh at the whole situation.
In the book, you describe stereotypes of new mothers; which one did you relate to most?
I was definitely a combination of the “hysterical mom” and the “reluctant mom.” I would go from being too cool for everything to being convinced that my child was dying because he wasn’t eating his peas.
What’s next for you?
We’re hoping that the book does well so we can write more in this series. We have ideas about “Let’s Panic About Children,” “Let’s Panic About Teenagers.” There’s no end to things you can panic about!
For more information, visit lets-panic.com.
If Your Baby
Isn’t Smart
An Excerpt From “Let’s Panic About Babies“
Not all babies are
potential geniuses. Some babies just do not have the raw intelligence to
humiliate nanny after hysterically crying nanny. It’s not Baby’s fault that
he’ll never win a Pulitzer Prize (it’s
probably your fault), but that doesn’t mean
Baby can’t find other ways to earn attention, money, and/or love.
If your baby doesn’t have
smarts, maybe your baby has . . .
Cutes!
Some babies are just
gosh-darned cute, there’s no two ways about it, and guess what? Many grow up to
be even cuter. You can start grooming your cuteness-privileged baby to lord his
or her good looks over regular-looking babies right away, undermining their
confidence at every turn.
Sample dialogue
Friend with Smart Baby: “My
little Applebee already knows her alphabet! At only six months!”
You: “Too bad about her
eyes, though.”
FWSB: “What . . . what do
you mean, what’s wrong with her eyes?”
You: “They’re just so small
and close together. See how my baby’s eyes are just two big drops of golden sunlight,
and her lashes flap up and down like butterfly wings?”
FWSB: “Well, yes, but—”
You (winking knowingly at your baby): “We should go: my Organella has a lucrative modeling job this
afternoon and needs her beauty nap. Bye!”
Semicute girl babies can make
up for any slight lack of dazzle by marrying well and becoming alarmingly thin.
Semicute boy babies are actually the lucky ones, as boy babies that age too cutely are often assumed to
be gay. (If your amazingly cute boy baby actually is gay, however: JACKPOT.)
Cute boy babies who don’t marry wealthy older women can also try their luck at
developing some . . .
Muscles!
Many babies are blessed
with stronger than average little muscles right from the get-go.
Before you know it they’re
lifting up the refrigerator to make it easier for you to change out the rat
traps, or hoisting up your car for an oil change. Your lucky little
muscle-bound baby has a great future ahead of him—your baby is a him, isn’t it?
Because if you have a girl muscle-baby, well, hmm . . .
Eventually, all muscley
babies come to a fork in their road: muscle-babies also favored with
coordination and a smidgen of cutes may find success as professional athletes
with lucrative endorsement contracts. (While male muscle-babies have the choice
of dozens of world-class sports to choose from, athletic female muscle-babies
looking to see their face on a billboard are stuck with tennis or, in certain
communities, competitive pole-dancing). Unattractive muscle-babies will only
survive the brutal jungle of adolescence and adulthood by terrorizing the
smaller and weaker among them.
If your child is neither
beautiful nor powerful, see if he can develop . . .
A sense of humor!
Babies gifted with an
advanced sense of humor become even funnier if they can also suffer in some way
from a less than supportive family. Plus, the less you try not to screw up, the
more likely it is your kid will be the next Don Rickles! So get ready to raise
her with the following privations so she learns to use humor as a coping
mechanism:
• Be moody and
unpredictable and yell a lot (bonus points for full-blown alcoholism)
• Threaten to send her to
the work house unless she does a funny jig
• Make her compete with her
siblings to see who can make you laugh the hardest (the winner gets whitefish
for dinner)
• Force-watch Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Mama’s Family
• Be working-class Jewish,
Catholic, Hindu, or if possible, all three
What If My Baby
Isn’t Smart, Cute, Strong, or
Funny?
Maybe she’ll be really good
at:
• Inspiring people with her
courage to persevere
• Putting stamps on things
• Pointing out rainbows
• Hugs
• Writing fake parenting books
Excerpted from “Let’s Panic About Babies,” a satirical guide to parenting co-authored by Alice Bradley and Eden M. Kennedy, St. Martin’s Press; March 2011.
