The Kate Gosselin Tell-All Book Sounds Like A Mess Of Mommy-Shaming

Kate Gosselin new bookBefore I even get to the dirt of this story, and trust me, this sounds like dirt, like dirty dirty dirt gossip, I need to make a plea that major news outlets stop using terms like HOUSE OF HORRORS to describe places that aren’t the Ariel Castro home or contained cages to lock kids away in the basement. Let’s leave the house of horrors titles to places that are actually horrific. The Daily Mail has an inside look at a new book out today about Kate Gosselin entitled Kate Gosselin: How She Fooled The World The Rise And Fall Of A Reality TV Queen and judging from the snippets contained in the article, it reads like a whole mess of mommy shaming.

Now, I don’t know a lot about the Gosselin family, besides the fact they have a lot of kids, and the ex-husband wore some totally douchebag dudebroâ„¢ Ed Hardy T-shirts, and they had a famous reality show for many years. I haven’t kept up with the whole Kate and her eight thing because I’m too busy watching other stuff. That being said, just by reading the article I’m not sure any of the bombshells revealed are anything other than hearsay or mommy-shaming. The article contains:

She was regularly beaten by her father at home, allegedly ‘sexually abused by a family member’, aborted a high school pregnancy and left home in Philadelphia rebellious and sexually promiscuous.

So? So even if any of that is true it sounds awful and sad and probably something that is pretty horribly painful. I hate this type of finger-pointing because even though it talks about suspected abuse by a family member, it ends with her being sexually promiscuous which we all know is just code for calling someone a slut.

She settled on a doctor in Wyomissing, Pa, the town where she lived, who gave her injections of a drug called Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, HCG, an ovulation inducer that helped her ovulate and release her eggs.

 

OK, so she used a fertility doctor, again, big whoop.

She stopped going to church and worked to market her kids, instructing any sympathetic reader to donate. On that list of immediate needs was a fifteen passenger van. When they had money in the bank, and were being supported by a family member, Kate claimed the family was destitute.

 

She stopped going to church. OH NO! I’m sorry, but if I had eight kids I probably wouldn’t have a lot of energy to haul ass to church on a Sunday morning either. The accusations then get pretty stupid:

She loved gift card donations from anywhere freebies, freebies, freebies. She wanted lasik surgery for free. She wanted a gift card of $500 per week to buy clothing from Ann Taylor Loft, her store of choice for herself. Gift cards came in from strangers including cards for Target, Walmart totaling more than $750 per day of free gifts, claims the author.

Kate had Jon ask their dentist for free dental care. Put on the spot, the dentist said yes.

This is a bad thing why? Who DOESN’T love free stuff? If someone were sending me gift cards and donations I would be happy as a clam. Plus, free dental care? SIGN ME UP! Then the article states that life at home was a nightmare:

Kate had no patience with the children. She never played with them, didn’t help them with their schoolwork. She hid in the kitchen and let volunteers take care of them but she meted out the punishments becoming easily enraged if they got dirty playing or disobeyed her with a very minor infraction.’She punished them with what she called ‘the spanker’ until the child ‘happied up’ according to Kate.

 

She “never” played with them. She “never” helped with homework. Come on! You can’t say never because who the hell knows? And when you have EIGHT FREAKING KIDS in your house I’m sure you end up playing with them quite a lot. And this thing about spanking, I don’t spank, but plenty of people do, and even though I don’t agree with this form of discipline spanking isn’t some rare thing that never happens in plenty of homes all across America. And also, Kate likes wine, which, you know, sounds like my own house on a Wednesday:

‘Sources of mine who are very close to the family, and who have been inside the house with Kate, have told me that Kate is a big drinker,’ writes Hoffman.

‘I have been told things like:”Wine is her drink of choice to take the edge off.”

”She drinks the cheap stuff. She regularly drinks an entire bottle of wine herself at night before going to bed. She also drinks wine during the day.”

Scandalous! Oh dear! As I stated above, I don’t know a whole lot about the Gosselins and I don’t have a huge opinion on these people, but what I do know about is mommy-shaming when I see it. I do believe if she was really as abusive and horrible as this book states, then maybe she would have a few of her kids taken away by CPS by now, but if he big crimes are wanting free junk and getting overwhelmed by her huge number of kids and drinking wine, then I’m pretty sure the rest of us live in houses of horror too.

(Image: getty images)

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