This Mother's Day, it seems, it's perfectly OK for moms to admit that motherhood is not all finger-painted pictures and sweet kisses and afternoons spent in daisy-strewn meadows with perfectly behaved children clad in white linen.

The dispatches from the trenches of motherhood are flooding in, and it turns out that while mothering is rewarding and often joyful, it also can be exhausting and tedious, work.

And more and more women, it appears, are willing to dish about the realities of their lives as moms.

In moms' clubs, in online forums, on mommy blogs, and in a spate of new books, women are sharing — and sometimes, over-sharing — about their adventures in modern-day mothering.

"It's the information age — we're willing to be more honest," explained Leigh Ober, a Lancaster Township mother of a 20-month-old girl. "We're willing to say, 'I need help' ... and to go to other moms and say, 'I don't know how to do this.' "

Raw confessions
Renée Heller, a Manheim Township mother of four, said that nobody wants to be the first person to admit that parenting can be hard, but "as soon as one person says it — that being a parent isn't just all fun and games — then everyone chimes in."

And oh, are parents chiming in.

As the online magazine, Salon, noted last week, American parents are throwing a "loud and lusty temper tantrum," rebelling against the "judgments and assumptions and expectations" that are hurled their way as they parent their children.

Salon cited recently published books such as "Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace," and "Afterbirth: Stories You Won't Read in a Parenting Magazine," as evidence of this parental rebellion.

In 2007, a Los Angeles mother, Romi Lassally, launched a Web site, TrueMomConfessions.com, where, as Lassally put it, women could post their "fears, frailties and fantasies," with impunity.

Her new book, "True Mom Confessions: Real Moms Get Real," compiles some of the messages posted on the site.

The posts on that Web site can be raw, such as one recent post, which read simply: "This is not the life I wanted."

Many are humorous confessions of less-than-perfect mothering. "I schedule my kid's dinner, bath and bed time around my (favorite) TV shows," read one recent post.

"My 15-month-old daughter has eaten a cheese quesadilla from the drive-thru every day this week," read another.

"Last night my son threw his pacifier. I was tired and frustrated and said, 'We don't throw things!' And I threw it at him," read still another.

Some women seem to just want to vent. "OK, I understand that we are strapped for cash," wrote one mother last week, in a message presumably directed at her husband. "But don't ask me to 'take one for the team' this Mother's Day. Really? Make up some free stuff: Wash the car, wash a dish, make a meal."

June Cleaver?
Susan Douglas, professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, was the co-author of a 2005 book, "The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women."

Douglas said she is pleased that women are "talking back" to the idea that mothers should strive, always, for perfection. "It's a really important and healthy trend," Douglas said, asserting that the changing political culture, and the recession, have created a space for this trend.

When "The Mommy Myth" came out, she said, "there was a flurry of these books" — dubbed "momoirs" — in which "moms were saying, 'This is hard, it's lonely, I'm not perfect.' "

Five years ago, Douglas noted, "We were supposed to do everything for our kids," and no music lesson, no expensive developmental toy, was to be overlooked.

Now, she said, in this difficult economy, parents are being urged to be honest with their children about not being able to give them everything they want.

And moms aren't being fed such a rich diet of articles about perfect celebrity moms, in part because the glossy magazines that featured these articles have fallen prey to the recession, she said.

M. Alison Kibler, an associate professor of American studies, and women and gender studies, at Franklin & Marshall College, said that imperfect moms are proliferating in popular culture these days, from the fictional characters on "Desperate Housewives," to the stars of the "Real Housewives" reality shows, to the harried, snarky mother on "Jon & Kate Plus 8."

"Where is the June Cleaver on TV right now?" Kibler asked.

This is not to say, however, that real-life moms are getting a completely free pass for their imperfections, Kibler said, noting, "There is a lot of intensity surrounding motherhood, in terms of cultural values and the social pressures put on women."

A great many moms will be taken out to brunch today, but "the celebration of motherhood doesn't usually equate to giving it more power and resources," Kibler said.

An honest approach
Kibler said that Americans don't want to think of mothers as a collective group, lest they need to provide that group with societal supports, such as subsidized child care and workplace flexibility.

"Most of our cultural emphasis is on the individual mother — she's bad, or she's good," Kibler said.

So a great deal of attention is paid to women such as the so-called "Octomom," the California single mother of 14, including octuplets, and Madlyn Primoff, the New York attorney who ordered her 10- and 12-year-old daughters out of her car because they were fighting.

"Maternal violations get much more publicity than paternal violations," Douglas noted.

The media coverage of these rule-breaking moms fuels the competition among more ordinary mothers, Douglas said, and mothers can find it difficult to fend off the pressure to be perfect.

Most mothers, Douglas said, "are probably still suspended in that place between feeling guilty that they're not doing enough, and saying, 'Enough already.' "

In Kibler's view, the more women are honest about the challenges of mothering, the more motherhood will be de-romanticized — and truly valued.

Mothering is "the work of reproducing the next generation of citizens. It's valuable, important work," Kibler said.

"By blogging and talking about how hard it is to get your kids into snow pants, that helps people to acknowledge that it is work," Kibler said.

Renée Heller said that if more reality is injected into the conversation about parenting, young parents might be better prepared to handle what comes their way. "Too many people are going into it blindly," said Heller, who is featured in a story about the LancMoms Web site on this page. "I think it's nice now that people are being more open about what it really feels like to be a mom."

Of course, she noted wryly, some things have to be experienced to be believed. Grocery shopping with young kids, for instance, is akin to grocery shopping with young goats.

And nothing could have prepared her for the moment when she briefly fell asleep nursing her newborn on the couch. She awoke to find her older kids upstairs, literally swimming — and making snow angels in — the dozens of bottles of nail polish they had dumped on the hardwood floors.

Leilonie Armold, a Brecknock Township mother of one, said she is grateful for the social networking sites, and moms' groups, which allow mothers to connect and share. It's healthy to "vent once in a while," she said.

And when random judgments are passed by strangers, it's good to have support, she said.

Armold recalled grocery-shopping one day with her little boy, who was "not particularly happy that day." A woman came up to her and said, "'Nanny 911' would really have a ball with you."

Said Armold: "It's just so easy for some people to judge people, right on the spot, especially about mothering."

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Suzanne Cassidy is a staff writer for the Sunday News. Her e-mail address is scassidy@lnpnews.com.