'Bad ass' or 'super chilled'. Which bad mum are you?

A quick glance around the park or school pick-up zone and you’ll notice a variety of different mums. There’s the mum with the perfect hair whose child is clad in designer gear and only eats organic snacks out of matching BPA-free containers. Then there’s the other 99% wrangling our way through the unrelenting demands of parenthood, doing whatever works and dreaming of the glass of wine we’ll smash once the kids go to bed. Which mum are you?

The TV commercial mum

You’re practically perfect in every way. You lost your baby weight in three hours, always have your roots done and breeze through the school gate looking like an Instagram filtered celebrity selfie. Your equally perfect kids slept through the night at two days old and their laminated daily roster includes a variety of educational activities which is probably why they speak four languages and were reading Murakami novels by the age of two (#gifted). You wouldn’t be caught dead buying packet mix and the refined-sugar-free lemon meringue cupcakes you made for the school fundraiser looked like they were created by the love child of Adriano Zumbo and Anna Polyviou. Your pantry is alphabetised, your tummy is stretch mark-free, you’re fully continent and your Facebook feed is full of inspirational memes about the unbridled joy of motherhood. We hate you.

The ‘whatever works’ mum

You haven’t slept longer than four hours since the hell of that second episiotomy so you’ve learned to troubleshoot your way through motherhood.  You’d like to have more kids but you’re not sure a straightjacket would match the spew stains on your yoga pants. You think most parenting experts are full of crap because nothing ever seems to work like it does on Super Nanny. If your kids wake during the night, you put them in your bed and hope like hell they don’t break your nose with a round house kick to the face at 2am. You tumble dry everything, even those expensive alpaca jumpers your mother-in-law bought the kids for Christmas. If you’re asked to “bring a plate”, it’s almost always a custard scroll from a chain bakery and you just spent your last $50 on a book of school fundraiser raffle tickets because you don’t have time to sell them. If your kid screams the house down because they want jam instead of Vegemite you generally cave because you’ve lost your will to live.

The super chilled mum

You use the parenting book your friend gave you as a doorstop, preferring to spend your down-time reading gossip mags while your kids are babysat by Nickelodeon, Disney Junior and ABC Kids. You haven’t had your roots done in three years and your legs are so hairy you could braid and bead them. Your house looks like a bomb site but you can’t fathom the logic of cleaning when it will only be messy again tomorrow. Your kids rock up for kinder photos looking like they were styled by a drunk op shop owner and when they get home and refuse to eat dinner you remind them that their Happy Meal set you back $4.95. You get around in saggy bum trackies and could live off the food scraps in your car for at least a month. You have the local pizza shop on speed dial and don’t get the fuss about serving ice-cream for breakfast (#calcium).  While other mums are stressing about developmental milestones, Wiggles tickets and a sugar-free diet, you are watching Dr. Pimple Popper extract blackheads from a geriatric.

The bad (ass) mum

You forgot your child’s birthday and exchanged the gifts from grandma for a bottle-o voucher. You understand the importance of a fully stocked bar fridge in the event of an impromptu house party and your kids know all the words to Eminem’s greatest hits. You can twerk like a teenager and on a big night out you make Marco Pierre White Jr look like Princess Sophia, whoever that is. If a sancti-mummy shames you for letting your three-year-old watch The Walking Dead, you act polite then key the bitch’s car.  You’d rather stick a steak knife in your eye than go to a kid’s concert and when you’re invited to parent teacher meetings you fake a death in the family and go to the pub instead. You think a Thermomix is the name of a new cocktail and you’d sooner donate a kidney than spend the day at a toy sale.

What do you love most about being a mum?