I know: There are plenty of grating “Mommy Blogs” out there that are platforms for certain parenting styles, or narcissistic missives from self-satisfied Martha Stewarts, or long justifications for opting out of the work force, opting back into the work force, home-schooling, getting divorced, living in the suburbs, living in the city, or going gluten-free. (Hooray, you made a choice! Immortalizing it in custom font on a cute background doesn’t make it any better or worse.) But most blogs are more innocent than that, and more complex.

I just read a review in Slate of the new movie Smashed, which is sort of a hipster version of the classic cautionary tale Days of Wine and Roses. It's about an outwardly successful couple whose lives are colored by alcohol—saturated by it, really, or maybe destroyed. The review talks about an upcoming book by Gabrielle Glaser, called Her Best-Kept Secret, about drinking and American women. Talking about alcohol intake is kind of like talking about how much money you make: It's just not done, and your status isn't apparent unless you flaunt it. Meanwhile, there's also a new study out from 4Children that found 20 percent of new parents upping their alcohol intake after having their first child. Should we worry about this?

And does it matter? Over at the New York Times’ Motherlode blog, a “Doormat Dad” wrote an essay about how he’s, well, a doormat. He’d rather not fight with his toddler. He’d rather let the spirited tyke get his own way—within reason, DD says—for a host of reasons both practical and psychological. But what about his wife?