That wife: Agnostic

[Morton Fan]

My goddaughters have their mum's last name, at their father's request; his last name is difficult for most people in the US to spell and pronounce. TW has said that she can't pronounce her husband's last name exactly correctly.

But she still gave that last name to her son.

[Daisy]

According to her twitter she is going to be on good morning America Monday talking about the pressure women feel from social media. :shock:

[lawfulevil]

Is she insane? She can't get famous without ALL the skeletons falling out of her closet.

[ceg045]

Wouldn't she be more qualified to talk about pressure from douchebag husbands?

[lawfulevil]

She may have scrubbed her own blog, but there are plenty of places documenting her bullshit, many with screenshots, going back for years. Good Morning America clearly didn't vet her at all if they're having her on to talk about social media pressure.

An Open Letter to Good Morning America staff in the Future:

There is a huge difference between the pressures placed on women to maintain the appearance online of a perfect life, and the pressure to stop treating your child like an unwanted animal. Jenna wasn't "bullied", she was told repeatedly that her behavior was appalling. It's not the same thing. Jenna being stupid enough to document child neglect and abuse on her blog complete with ~*~*~*~pretty pictures~*~*~*~ is a problem with Jenna's maturity, self-awareness, and moral compass. It's not a problem with the people pointing out that what she's doing is literally abhorrent to any well-adjusted person.

Jenna chose to put her entire life online, from the weird to the over-sharing to the truly disturbing. Jenna chose to learn absolutely nothing about child development and try to represent her son's normal behavior as defiant and disruptive. Jenna chose to tell the whole world that she lined her entire apartment with pee pads. Jenna chose to tell the whole world about the vagina stretcher, the locked up cheese, the marriage powerpoint, the pack n play in a bathroom, leaving her totally unsupervised son in a room full of toxic chemicals (http://i.imgur.com/yTPz2.png), putting three disposable diapers on her son at night so she wouldn't have to wake up and change him (http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2pq5a37&s=6), the horrific notes from her husband about her body, to publish classist garbage about poor people's level of education, to fire her son's developmental therapist for having the nerve to play with the boy, and all of the other terrible things she chose to make public. And then she chose to tell the whole world that she did it all for money: having "haters" let her keep an expensive coat and buy a fancy design for her site! (http://getoffmyinternets.net/jenna-cole ... your-hate/) So the joke is on the sane people!

Shame on you for giving her yet another platform, GMA.

Love,

The Haterz

[cjsmom]

I have always hated her for the way she treated T1, but part of that hate was the knowledge that I was looking at myself if I ever had children. I hated her for showing me what I could be, because I don't like to think of myself that way. It is such a terrible, terrible thing that our culture as a whole (not just Mormonism) places such pressure on a woman to reproduce. It is expected, it is our value, it is what we owe family and society and it's just too damn bad if that's not what you want or are good at.

The only difference between the two of us is that I had the ability to say no.

I'm not excusing what she has done to T1, it's inexcusable, but I do understand.

My mother often told me she wished she never had kids. I'm not sure why she had me and my brother, as she chose to have us. I'm happy that I'm here and I survived well despite the lack of love, care, and attention once I stopped being cute. I wish our society didn't put so much pressure on having children.

[treemom]

They were not disposable diapers.

[Morton Fan]

They were not disposable diapers.

Nope, they were cloth which are even thicker and soggier when not changed for hours and hours.

[treemom]

I am not sure I would say cloth is soggier. I used a mix myself. And while I am not a fan of Jenna and her parenting decisions with t1, I also don't think the bathroom cabinet emptying or the diaper gate were all that terrible.

The bottle propping and general neglect of him were the wors.

[BravaAmica]

Is she insane? She can't get famous without ALL the skeletons falling out of her closet.

And I cannot wait for her skeletons to be revealed to EVERYONE. She's fucked up her oldest son beyond repair. Who the hell cares if she has changed her mind about being a Mormon?

[Freyacat]

According to her twitter she is going to be on good morning America Monday talking about the pressure women feel from social media. :shock:

Well, she's just making the rounds of all the morning shows! She was featured on the website for Today (not sure if she was on the show as well) talking about Pinterest. They talked about Pinterest Fail but didn't even mention her That Wife blog. I suspect the GMA bit will be more of the same.

http://www.today.com/moms/pinterest-str ... -1C9850275

Edited to add: while I don't agree with a lot of her parenting decisions, I actually do agree with Jenna about the social media stress. Just last week I was stressing over how my son's upcoming birthday party just doesn't seem good enough after looking at party pictures online. My husband doesn't get why I'm worried about it, but I just feel like I'm not doing enough. She's right on the money about moms driving themselves crazy thanks to Pinterest. And Pinterest Fail is admittedly hilarious.

[lilith]

Jenna has a post up apologising for being sanctimonious and judgmental in the past.

I've never been a fan, but that makes me look on her a lot more kindly. That was a brave post.

I hope she's rethought her parenting as part of her reinvention and doesn't make the mistakes with t2 that she did with T1.

I was a young parent too (23) and parenting whilst you are still defining yourself and growing up has its own set of challenges and involves admitting that you don't know everything and making some about faces in the philosophies you decided were the best way while your child was still in the womb.

[Milly-Molly-Mandy]

And I cannot wait for her skeletons to be revealed to EVERYONE. She's fucked up her oldest son beyond repair. Who the hell cares if she has changed her mind about being a Mormon?

Oh that's harsh. My Mum had an awful childhood-violent father, alcoholic mother etc. My Mum overcame all that & had a wonderful marriage of 32 years,successful career & the best mother ever of my siblings & i

And really while TW wasn't a brilliant parent (so far), kids are resilient & hopefully he'll be fine.

[treemom]

And I cannot wait for her skeletons to be revealed to EVERYONE. She's fucked up her oldest son beyond repair. Who the hell cares if she has changed her mind about being a Mormon?

Really, beyond repair. Nice.

[lilwriter85]

TW's appearance on GMA will backfire on her as others have mentioned. GMA viewers who don't know about her can google Jenna Cole or That Wife and find out some of the crap she and ThatAsshole have done over the past few years. On her twitter and IG, she said something about Pinterest being one of the topics in her GMA interview.

[lawfulevil]

I'm sorry, but apologizing doesn't change my opinion of her. That post wasn't "brave", it's easy to say you were wrong and you're oh so sorry for being judgmental when you want something from all the people you've offended (like fame and money). All that proves is that Jenna's pulled her head out of her ass far enough to figure out what people want to hear. It doesn't prove anything and a LIFETIME around lying abusive narcissists tells me that the louder someone says they're sorry and they've changed, the less true it is.

The woman had absolutely no excuse for how she treated her son. She had the time (SAHM) and the money (her rent and parking alone in Chicago cost more than I make in a month... after taxes) to take excellent care of him. She chose to neglect him instead for the exact same reason half of her pictures are selfies: because she's a narcissist. What Jenna wants is important, what anyone else wants is either irrelevant or an obstacle (the marriage powerpoint). People like that don't make miraculous recoveries. As for kids "being resilient", that applies to normal parenting screw-ups, not years of apathy and neglect. You couldn't raise a healthy happy dog the way Jenna treated her baby.

And then she went and HAD ANOTHER KID. It's not like she enjoys being a parent or has any interest in children. She's just told us it wasn't for religious reasons anymore. Then why? To try to have a Mini-Jenna? Well, she got what she wanted. God help T2, that one's gonna end up even more screwed up than T1.

[treemom]

Hmm...good to know all of us who grew up in situations even worse than T1 are screwed up beyond repair.

[lawfulevil]

Beyond repair? Maybe or maybe not, but "repair" isn't exactly cheap, and it's not perfect.

I'm not judging Jenna for funsies. I'm speaking from experience. Just like Jenna, my mother hated being a mother and couldn't be bothered, but just like Jenna, she liked the attention that pregnancy and having cute babies got her, so I'm the oldest of 4. I'm still pretty screwed up, even after years of therapy and constant medication adjustments. It's been monumentally expensive and time-consuming and even though my therapist is good, she can't "fix" having a mother who ignored me unless she was angry my entire childhood.

Could I be screwed up if my mother had been loving? Possibly, but it's less likely. The shit Jenna does has consequences. Expensive, painful consequences.

[treemom]

Meh. I am not my abuse. I am more than that. I refuse to be told that people are how they were victimized. T1 may or may not have issues because of it. But people have said he is beyond repair and you said children's resilience is only over normal parenting mistakes. I am not saying you were or were not impacted. My abuse impacted my life, but we are more than just that,

So again, good to know you view children of neglect as broken even as adults. I am not broken, I am not screwed up. I am a good human and I am proud of myself.

[lawfulevil]

If brainwashing and child abuse doesn't negatively affect who you become, isn't Freejinger a waste of time?

[treemom]

If brainwashing and child abuse doesn't negatively affect who you become, isn't Freejinger a waste of time?

Oh I am sorry, do you think all of here think we are doing something high minded?

[lilith]

If brainwashing and child abuse doesn't negatively affect who you become, isn't Freejinger a waste of time?

I think the point people are trying to make is that one doesn't have to allow oneself to be defined by childhood abuse. Very few people are "broken beyond repair" by childhood neglect and traumas. Many victims of child abuse become strong adults, and to characterise them as broken beyond repair by their parent's actions disempowers them and doesn't recognise them as individuals separate from their parent's victims.

[lawfulevil]

I'm not even the person who SAID that T1 is "broken beyond repair".

I'd just like to point out how incredibly bizarre it is that in a thread about a woman whose kid is best known on multiple websites as "Bathroom Baby", I'm the bad guy.

[treemom]

I'm not even the person who SAID that T1 is "broken beyond repair".

I'd just like to point out how incredibly bizarre it is that in a thread about a woman whose kid is best known on multiple websites as "Bathroom Baby", I'm the bad guy.

Someone becomes they bad guy when another person disagrees with the language they and others chose?

[treemom]

Also, I don't think all shitty parents are beyond repair. Time will tell if Jenna makes better choices with t1 now, but I don't think her generally shitty parenting has broken her kid so bad that the only possible option for him to ever, ever be whole is lots of therapy.

No one even has to be the bad guy for fuck's sake. But I personally am not a fan of deciding kids are broken beyond repair at 3