MADLYN PRIMOFF — folk hero? I’ll admit to harboring some secret admiration for Madlyn, The Mother Who Means It.
Madlyn Primoff is the Westchester mommy who on Sunday reached the breaking point. She got fed up with the two squabbling monsters to whom she gave birth, who fought in the back seat of her car.
Shut up or I’ll kick you out of this car! she threatened her rambunctious, warring girls. They didn’t believe her. And then, she did it.
Mothers the world over will cheer. Finally, someone made good on a threat!
Madlyn up and left her 10-year-old to wander, crying, three miles from her Scarsdale home, as she zoomed off. The 12-year-old, meanwhile, caught up with the car, and was allowed inside.
An hour later, Madlyn called the police about the missing 10-year-old, and was arrested. It wasn’t until Tuesday that a judge allowed her to see her kids again.
While I confess sympathy for Mommy Dearest, I can’t quite wrap my mind around a mom whose priorities are so stark: Herself. Her career. Her peace and quiet. Me. Me. Me.
The kids are far down the list.
My kid is 10. Some days, she behaves as if she’s going on 21. Other days, more like 3.
Some days, I’m surprised she’s survived as long as she has.
But kick her out of the car? Leave her, confused and crying, wondering if she’d ever see me again? I’d rather walk myself and leave her at the wheel.
Kidding.
Madlyn Primoff wanted it all — a posh career, a house in the ‘burbs, healthy children. Peace and quiet.
But she lacked the one thing that every mother of pre-adolescents with working eardrums and firing brain cells craves the most. She’d lost the ability to shut the incessantly flapping mouths of her two devilish princesses.
She knew the risks. She is, after all, a Park Avenue lawyer. But at the moment she chose to kick her kids to the curb, she didn’t care. She wasn’t thinking about losing them. She was thinking about herself.
She needed a time out. Instead, she traumatized her own children, took away their sense of security, perhaps forever.
I wonder if well-off yuppies were never meant to bear children.