This Lady's self-pitying article drives me mad

This is an article from Laura Doyle. She must be trying to be a writer because she did a different lame article for a Chicago parenting magazine. This "gem" is titled, "Dear Daughter, I'm Sorry We Lost Our Jobs."

So, if you read it you will see the basis of the piece is to explain how she’s keeping the family’s financial woes from her eldest daughter. So how does making this public and not publishing the piece under a pseudonym accomplishing that?! Not only is darling daughter going to know exactly what’s up, if she didn't already, now her peers will know too!

She goes on to talk about having to borrow gas money from Grandmother, then talks about not exchanging gifts with her husband so Daughter can have a new North Face jacket each year. I blew my top upon reading that. Who the hell is on assistance, borrowing money, barely getting by and buying an expensive jacket like that?

If the Sun-Times wants an economy sob story, I am sure in the entire city of Chicago they could find an articulate mother who has gone without so her children can eat…not sport a $100 jacket.



As you know, your father was laid off three years ago. As an electrician, he has been laid off before, although it has never been for this long or this hard, and we survived it.

We are still surviving it.

And, as you also know, I went back to work as a makeup artist when your dad lost his job, but I, too, fell victim to the Great Recession and lost my job.

Remember that day? I lost my job on your little sister’s birthday, and though you spend most of your time tormenting her, you pointed out that I was ruining the poor kid’s birthday with all that crying.

I should tell you that seven days before I lost my job, we also lost our health insurance. But that is not for you to know. As parents, it is your father’s and my job to protect you and provide for you and your younger brother and sister.

It is not for you to know that when Daddy’s unemployment ran out, he withdrew funds from his pension to keep a roof over our heads.

It is not for you to know that your grandfather gave me grocery money until I could convince the Illinois Department of Human Services we were poor enough to qualify for welfare.

It is not for you to know that it took me an entire year of literal begging to get it, and how that broke my spirit. And I hope you never know the shame of being 40 years old and asking your mother if you can borrow 20 bucks to put gas in your car.

It is not for you to know that I spent my birthday money on your graduation dress, and I don’t think you’ve noticed that for three years your father and I have not exchanged Christmas gifts so that you could have the same North Face jacket all your friends were wearing.

What you should know is that we are not the only people in this boat. Many people are unemployed or underemployed, and every one of us is doing what we can to get by.

Now I’ll tell you what hurts. You think our chauffeur services — to the mall and the movies and Panera Bread — are at your disposal because your friends’ parents have “real” jobs. And there was the day you informed me that your friend’s dad could drive you only one way to the mall because, though he is unemployed like us, at least he does stuff; he doesn’t just “sit around all day and take naps and watch TV” like Dad and me.

Really? Who do you think cleans the house, makes dinner, mows the lawn, does the laundry and takes care of your pets? Leprechauns? If that were true, I really wish they’d leave bags of money every time they came over to wash the blue hoodie you have to have by tomorrow. And all those times you cried that your luckier friends got to go on all those cool vacations and we suck because we never go anywhere or do anything? Did you know that I locked myself in the bathroom and cried, too, because I was ashamed and depressed that I can’t give you those things?

Fortunately, I was your age once, and I wasn’t always very nice to my parents either.

It’s hard trying to keep up with the Joneses when you don’t have enough money even to pay attention. I hope you never have to learn the bitter irony of life that the day you lose your job, your neighbors will buy a new car or put an addition on their house. That you will look at your own house, at all the repairs that need to be done to it, and know that you have all the time in the world to fix things but none of the money.

That day after endless day with nothing to do and nowhere to go can drive you utterly insane, so you do volunteer work to keep yourself from going crazy, though it’s hard to forget that you are working for free. That when you volunteer at your kids’ school because it makes you happy to see them in the halls, your heart breaks because they pretend not to see you.

But this is not for you to know right now.

The only worry in your young life right now should be that your crush might ask your best friend to the prom, and that will suck. Or your archenemy might show up wearing the same dress as you, only it will look better on her because her much cooler mother allowed her to go to the tanning salon and get acrylic nails and hair extensions. That will suck too.

But you will get over it. You will survive.

A year from now, you will have forgotten it completely.

What you also need to know is this: Every single thing your father and I do is for you and your brother and sister. Every rare cent we earn, every accomplishment — no matter how small — is for the sole purpose that you will one day leave this house as a young woman who is better and stronger for having lived through this.

Friends will come and go, jobs will come and go, boys will break your heart, people will disappoint you in ways you never thought possible. Unemployment sucks, the life that comes with unemployment sucks; I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

You need to know you are the reason I get out of bed in the morning. Most days, I don’t want to. Sometimes it’s damn near impossible to uncurl myself from the fetal position. But I do, because you will be home from school soon and I have to make something for dinner that you probably won’t eat.

Thank God for that.

You don’t completely understand that, I suppose, and you don’t need to right now. I hope you never do. But you need to know that I love you more than life itself. I need you to respect that. I need your respect, period.

I need you to know that someday it will be better.

Maybe not today, but someday.

Love, Mom

Laura Doyle and her family live in Oak Forest.

Oh my god that's one of those things where you wish you could have the time it took you to read it back lol. Sounds like she's preparing for her close up. I could almost hear the perfectly placed dramatic music.

When she does decide it is for her daughter "to know", this woman comes across as if she is gonna be one manipulative guilt trippin bitch.

Sorry, CeCe, it is long.

Yeah, It seems like she thinks she is going to be the new face of suburban poverty. Clearly she is seeking something by publishing the piece under her own name.

Her other piece in a Chicago parenting magazine talked about her calling in sick for no reason to a much needed source of part-time income. Then she inarticulately justified it by talking about some shitty parenting circumstances from years past.

I have a strong feeling they are getting by thanks to investments or something of the like. Maybe she is being more altruistic than I am giving her credit for. Perhaps she thinks this exposure will lead to them both becoming gainfully employed. If that's the case, she should have left out the North Face jacket part.

If her daughter is a selfish bitch who cannot understand why she can't have what her friends have it's her self-pitying mother's fault.

It IS for the kid to know. I always knew what my parents could and could not afford. They told me. It was no big deal. Many of my friends had more but that was just the way it was because my parents didn't act like they were forcing me to miss out on anything.

Also their philosophy was "You want it, you earn it." I worked for the things I wanted. Again, no big deal.

This mother is a sorry excuse for a parent. She needs some counseling and she needs it fast. She is going to turn her kid into the very person she is trying to keep her from becoming; a selfish entitlement minded brat.