Finally, A Parenting Book That Will Actually Make You Feel Good

The next time you feel bad for feeding your kid fast food on a busy night, try to remember that koala moms literally feed their babies poop. This is just one of the brilliant and hilarious takeaways from a new adult picture book that actually makes moms feel better about themselves instead of worse.

There Are Moms Way Worse Than You: Irrefutable Proof That You Are Indeed A Fantastic Parent is the brainchild of Glenn Boozan, who has researched all of the very worst parental habits of the natural world and uses it as proof that human mothers are all doing fine.

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The premise is simple: as long as we aren’t eating or abandoning our young on an ice floe, we’re killing it.

Who cares if I left the wet clothes in the washer last night, when eagle mamas let their children fight to the death?

Who’s to judge me when I’m late for a parent-teacher conference when Lanyu skinks eat the eggs they just laid?

Boozan is a comedy writer who just won a 2022 Writers Guild Award for her work on Conan — and who has also written for shows like Lights Out With David Spade and Sarah Silverman’s I Love You, America.

But her first book idea started out as a comment to her sister.

“It was height of the pandemic and my sister was taking care of a toddler while pregnant,” Boozan tells Scary Mommy. “She was feeling like a bad mother. She said, I wonder if I'm socializing Maddie enough? I'm not doing a good job. And I was flabbergasted that she would feel that way — because her daughter's favorite activity is reading and her favorite food is radishes. I think my sister is an incredible mother. The fact that she was feeling this self-doubt was stunning to me.”

Boozan comforted her sister in the way only a comedy writer knows how.

“I wish I had said some sort of beautiful quote about motherhood, but what I said was, you know, hamster moms eat their babies.”

From there, the idea turned into a Mother’s Day poem for her sister (um, best present ever!?). And when Boozan’s manager’s wife read it, she knew it should find a bigger audience. In its finished form, with very funny illustrations by Pricilla Witte, it’s already in the top 20 best-selling books on Amazon this week.

Oh! And it rhymes!

Whenever you feel guilty that you haven’t cleaned the house:

Sexton beetles raise their kids in a decomposing mouse.

This should be a requirement at every baby shower.

Boozan isn’t a mom herself, but she believes that her outsider point of view is the central reason that she was able to write such a heartfelt and praiseworthy books about parents.

“I watch moms like a spectator watching professional ice skating at the Olympics,” she quips. “And the judges, they are former ice skaters — they sort of know what to look for. And I'm in the crowd, just going WOW, look at that! Can you give them all a gold medal?! As a non-parent, I'm watching parents like a fan, just in awe. I’m not saying, That triple axle was only a double axle. It looked great to me.”