Last Updated on February 12, 2022
Chris Myers, Senior Executive Editor of RadarOnline.com, appeared on the Today show Tuesday morning to talk about an interview his site featured with the Octomom and her own mom. During the interview, there was a heated exchange between the two women about Octomom’s decision to have eight children when she already had six she couldn’t afford.
The topic then drifted more towards money. Myers says his site did not pay for the interview, but says the offers from others keep pouring in, from book deals to reality shows.
Just what we need.
He then talked about how Octomom seems to be unabsorbed with all of the attention she’s getting:
“Outside of her home, there is an army of paparazzi. There are helicopters flying over her house every day. Inside this home, there’s this vacuum. She walks in and these six kids cling to her leg, and it’s “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” and there’s all this love. She totally is just focused on the kids, and she’s like, ‘You know what, I don’t care what people say.’
“She doesn’t have a computer, there’s no internet. The TV is on cartoons all day long, it’s kind of a, you know, a babysitter for the children. The house is kind of like a daycare for kids. It’s kind of like a controlled chaos. But she is not focused on all these reports. I mean, everywhere she goes, you saw your report, she goes shopping, she gets her nails done, her hair cut, people are like, ‘Hey, she’s spending money and yet, you know, she’s asking for help.’ Well she’s doing the things that any mother with six kids would do. You gotta take ’em out, you gotta go eat food, you gotta take ’em shopping. You just can’t leave them stuck inside a small home all day.”
Wha?
For obvious reasons, I have no direct experience in being a mom. But I know a lot of moms, and what I see tends to be a good bit different than what he describes as “the norm.”
My own mom, for instance, didn’t go get her nails done and she cut her own hair. She wouldn’t have considered a shopping trip if she didn’t have enough money to put food on the table for me.
Anything less is obscene. And until the rest of us realize that this is not behavior that “every mom does,” we should get used to seeing a lot more of it.
I think the focus is on the generalized day-to-day-ness, the reality of having to live with multiple children: life doesn’t just stop, ever. You have to feed the kids. When I read this and saw shopping, I thought “groceries” but you’re right: it doesn’t say grocery shopping.
I dunno. I’d skip the nails, and her hair is long enough to let go for awhile, I think…but it’s certainly not my place to judge. I’m glad she’s able to close the door on the media and go on with her life, at least a little bit.
By the way, I am pretty appalled at her situation and I fear for those kids. I’m really not defending her choices, but I think everyone is so amped up on being judgmental that it’s kinda gone over the top in a lot of ways. How’s about we just leave her alone?