The Year of the Park Slope Mommy

The Maclaren stroller pushing mommies of Park Slope--long the victims of a snarky comment here about their human-powered baby SUVs or a derisive put-down there about their gang behavior at neighborhood playgrounds--have arrived in a big way over the last few weeks.

Of course, we had the Legend of Momma Bean, the Park Slope Mommy who threw a can of beans at a car that nearly swiped her and her stroller and cracked the back windshield of the offending car. The incident was chronicled in multiple blog postings and even made it into a story in the United Kingdom about "Mommy Rage."

What is really pushing Park Slope Momdom to the fore, however, are the Park Slope moms that are writing and blogging about their lives, either positively or negatively. We have Amy Sohn, the former New York Mag sex columnist turned mommy who is turning her talents as a writer to writing about how awful it is to be a Stay at Home Mom and how all the Park Slope Stay at Home Moms are vaguely insane, Zoloft eating zombies. One suspects more words in the self-hating mommy genre will be coming from Gawker, which has just started up a "Diary of a Park Slope Mommy." We're definitely not expecting joyous odes to Park Slope motherhood to be coming from this corner. Here's a few words from the blog entry introducing the new feature:

"Diary of a Park Slope Mommy" will chronicle the angst, despair, and corrosiveness to the soul that raising children and living in Park Slope engenders.

Positive coverage Park Slope mommy coverage (to the clear frustration of some who'd like to see the column turn into the Chronicles of a Raging Mother) is the territory of Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn's Louise Crawford, who writes the engaging, thoughtful and clever Smart Mom column for the Brooklyn Papers.

Yesterday, Sunset Parker noted that the "mommy controversy" ranges "from a Mommy who hurled a can of beans through the back windshield of a car that almost side-swiped her while she was pushing her toddler; to the widely-disseminated screed of one Mommy-hating Mommy." Sunset comes down squarely in the corner of Park Slope's moms, even sending the moms a shoutout.

We fully expect a NY Times Magazine cover story about the Park Slope Mommy Phenomenon, not to mention an awful lot more blogging and new stories about the Maclaren Army. And, maybe, a reality TV show. Brooklyn 11215 or Third Street, anyone?