There Are Mums Way Worse Than You: Irrefutable Proof That You Are Indeed a Fantastic Parent

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Bianca Schulze: And then Laurie Kilmartin, the author of—and sorry, if you happen to be listening to this episode, any listeners in the car, I am about to say a bad word, so cover your kid’s ears. The author of Sh*tty Mom says, “I love this book! It sounds like a song whenread out loud,and it’s so funny and sweet thatI almost want to have another baby. Almost.” Glenn Boozan: Honestly. Well, here’s the thing. I think of parenting—at least from a non-parent perspective—I always say that parenting feels like being on an airplane when the oxygen masks deploy. They encourage you to put your mask on yourself before you put it on your kid because you’re unable to put the mask on your kid if you’re out of breath. So, if your kid gets to, oh, God forbid, your kid watches a fun TV show, I think we should have more screen time. I am pro iPad; I’m pro-iPhone.

Parenting is hard, and there will be times when you mess up. A lot. This book is a great way to laugh at yourself and your mistakes. And I really found my voice at UCB in New York, the sketch and improv—I don’t know if it’s defuncted now, but I think it just got sold. But that’s where I realized what I really wanted to do. And I was doing a lot of sketch and improv there and then just applied for jobs and wrote and wrote and wrote. And that’s the end of the story.

Customer reviews

But so, I’m going to try my best here at a little joke pulled from your book. But I wanted to say that it is no wonder that your book is selling as fast as a quokka tosses its baby when it’s face to face with a dingo. It’s so fun. It’s refreshing to know that other moms have made the same mistakes as you, which can help you feel better about yourself. Bianca Schulze: I love it. I am not against TV. Obviously, I’m a huge reader and have books in every room for my kids and my kids love to read. But yes, we work that TV out too. And so, I wasn’t even planning on making it a book. I originally just wrote a rhyming poem as a Mother’s Day card for my sister. And then I was looking around to get somebody to illustrate it and just do a couple of drawings for it. And then my manager and his wife read it and they were like, oh, wait, we as parents, this resonates, this should be more—this should be a book. And so that’s the story of how the book was born. No matter how bad you think your life is, someone out there always has it worse. This book is an excellent reminder of that.

Glenn Boozan: Most surprised me. That’s a good one. I will say, and I don’t know, I’m not going to use bad language, but this is gross what I’m about to say. But it’s in the book. So, a koala mom—like when you picture koalas, they’re so cute and fuzzy and you’re like, oh my gosh. And they eat little eucalyptus leaves. But I guess like the baby koalas can’t eat eucalyptus yet when they’re very young. And so, the first solid meal that a koala mom feeds her babies is her own poop, unfortunately. And I wish there was a more delicate way to say that, but it’s just disgusting. Bianca Schulze: I am not a comedy writer and I’m not very good with timing. In fact, the only time I make my family laugh is in moments like watching the movie Inside Out, where the imaginary character Bing Bong disappears. And I start hyperventilating, sobbing, and crying. My family finds that funny. This book can help you in many ways; let’s look at just a few of them! It’s a great reminder that you’re not the only one struggling. Quokkas’ life expectancy is about 10 years, and female quokkas can produce 17 offspring over a lifetime, with two joeys born each year, according to the Australian Museum. The book is about a 20-minute read you can devour while your kid is refusing to nap in the crib or quietly wiping boogers on the wall.Bianca Schulze: Yeah, I mean, we’re all trying our best, and we all need to believe in ourselves. And yes, I think we can often be the hardest on ourselves. Now that you know more about the book “There Are Moms Way Worse Than You,” why not give it a read? It reminds you that you’re not alone in your struggles and are doing a good job. Before we get into the why or the what or the who inspired you to write this book, I want to talk a little about the fact that you are a comedy writer. Will you tell us how somebody becomes a comedy writer and what that looks like on a day-to-day basis?

Glenn Boozan: Yeah, so I did a lot of research on different animals, and I just sort of looked up different types of moms in the animal kingdom. And there are a lot of good moms in the animal kingdom, like lion moms are very good. I think dog moms tend to be pretty okay. But then there are a lot of really bad ones. And so, I wanted to find more examples than just like, oh, a hamster, mommy eats her baby—because I think a lot of people have heard that one. And I was like, oh, no, I really want to get into the nitty-gritty, like, what are some really bad animal moms? So yeah, I did a lot of research on that.Glenn Boozan: It’s so gnarly. And because it’s not one of those facts, I think that if you’re a koala scientist, like if that’s your specialty, I imagine that’s not what you lead with when you’re telling people about your job. Yeah. Like when you’re giving little kids a tour of the zoo and you’re like, look at the koalas. I have to imagine it’s embarrassing to have to be like and also, for their first solid meal, the koala babies eat their mother’s feces. Anyway, moving on to the monkeys, that’s not the first thing you lead with. So, all right. If our listeners were to take away one important point today, what would you want that to be? She’s the one you compare yourself to and, more often than not, come up short. You may even feel guilty for thinking that your struggles are somehow worth comparing to hers.