For her latest debating topic, my oldest daughter chose to make the case for why she should be allowed to read my book.  In her methodical manner she ripped apart my stated reasons for the ban: that it was too violent; contained gross amounts of profanity; and themes too mature for a child her age to understand.  She reminded me that it was Holocaust Remembrance Month and that she had been studying obscene acts of violence on a scale that would dwarf any single murder I might depict in the book.  As far as profanity, she assured me that practically every curse word in existence (even ones I might not know) was on exhibit in the girls' bathroom at her middle school.  As for the mature themes, she reminded me that from the time she was three I had been observing that she was wise beyond her years.

Despite the cogency of her logic, I am not lifting the book ban.  But her arguments did make me reexamine why  I am so desperate to shield her from its contents.  My reasons have less to do with sex,  violence or cursing than with hypocrisy -- my own. 

The narrator in the book is prone to bursting into tears in open court under the scolding of judges.  I seldom cry at home, but when I do, I make sure to do so behind the bathroom's closed door, with the tap running at full blast.  And I preach to my children that the opinions of others should not shake what they know to be true about themselves.  The book's narrator loses her temper, curses frequently, smokes the occasional cigarette, and has loved men other than my daughters' father.  She confronts drug dealers in their housing project apartments.

At home, on the rare occasions when I fight with my husband, that also takes place behind closed doors, after the kids are in bed.  I don't curse, never light up anything other than the kitchen stove to make chicken soup, still cut the sections out of my daughters' grapefruits lest they get squirted with juice, and urge them to take second helpings of green vegetables.

Perhaps my double life is more extreme than that of most women, but almost every mother I know has a side she doesn't let her children see.  We limit our kids to one Oreo, then polish off the remainder of the bag only to feign ignorance the next day when there are none left over for their  lunch boxes.  We tell them not to say mean things about other people, then gossip on the phone with our friends.  We wax poetic about the importance of fresh air and exercise, but all too often flop onto the couch with a novel instead of heading to the gym or taking a walk.

My oldest is now at the age when she wakes up every morning with legs that seem to have grown a quarter of an inch overnight.   Almost twelve,  all too soon she will decide that, when she grows up, she wants to be anything other than her mother.  But for now, I expect her to eat that second helping of broccoli, and to listen when I tell her that she cannot read the book until next year, or the year after that . . . maybe.