It’s not exactly shocking that people are more selfish and self-absorbed than perhaps any other time in American history. But still, the depths of the narcissism people are willing to put on public display can be surprising. Typically, this comes from idiot millennials who think the world revolves around them, but they’re just doing what they were taught to do by the generations before them, who can be just as shallow and narcissistic. Still, at one point in time, people knew better than to openly show off how clueless and bratty they were. The “me me me” mentality has never exactly been desirable, after all. But now we have the internet, so people think they can and should spout off about whatever ridiculous thought enters their tiny brain. Case in point? Meghann Foye, senior web editor for Redbook magazine. Foye is jealous of moms getting to take all of these awesome paid vacations every time they pop out a child — because maternity leave is just, like, an all-expenses paid vacation, right? — so she wrote a book, and then penned an op-ed in the New York Post, whining about how she deserves maternity leave too, even though she doesn’t have any kids. She deserves “meternity” leave!

Foye writes that she was working as a magazine editor when she was 31, unmarried and childless. According to Foye, her job was pretty awesome: she got to go to parties and meet celebrities all the time. But there was just one little problem: moms. She realized how great it was that moms got to have maternity leave and realized that she deserved maternity leave, too, even though she’d done absolutely nothing to deserve it. So she came up with the idea of “meternity” leave, and managed to offend pretty much everyone with more than two brain cells as she spewed her asinine drivel all over the internet.

And yet, after 10 years of working in a job where I was always on deadline, I couldn’t help but feel envious when parents on staff left the office at 6 p.m. to tend to their children, while it was assumed co-workers without kids would stay behind to pick up the slack.

… [T]he more I thought about it, the more I came to believe in the value of a “meternity” leave — which is, to me, a sabbatical-like break that allows women and, to a lesser degree, men to shift their focus to the part of their lives that doesn’t revolve around their jobs.

For women who follow a “traditional” path, this pause often naturally comes in your late 20s or early 30s, when a wedding, pregnancy and babies means that your personal life takes center stage. But for those who end up on the “other” path, that socially mandated time and space for self-reflection may never come.

… It seemed that parenthood was the only path that provided a modicum of flexibility. There’s something about saying “I need to go pick up my child” as a reason to leave the office on time that has far more gravitas than, say, “My best friend just got ghosted by her OkCupid date and needs a margarita” — but both sides are valid.

And as I watched my friends take their real maternity leaves, I saw that spending three months detached from their desks made them much more sure of themselves. One friend made the decision to leave her corporate career to create her own business; another decided to switch industries. From the outside, it seemed like those few weeks of them shifting their focus to something other than their jobs gave them a whole new lens through which to see their lives.

… [A] “meternity” done right should be challenging. It should be about digging into your whole life and emerging from it more confident in who you are.

Ah, yes, Foye has truly hit the nail on the head! Maternity leave isn’t about recovering from childbirth or figuring out how to keep another human being alive while subsisting on a few meager hours of sleep. It’s about navel-gazing and soul-searching! Them babies, they practically take care of themselves, amiright?

Who else could Foye maybe be jealous of? Hey, that coworker just got to take off, like, three weeks to get chemo! Lucky bitch! Or maybe, Man, her dad just died? Ugh! Now she’s going to be able to take all this time off and get all these awesome perks because she has to go to a funeral or whatever. Because when people get sick leave, or bereavement leave, or maternity leave, it’s not like they’re actually DOING anything. It’s just fun and games and time for self-reflection, right?

Well, Meggie Poo, here’s a reality check. Maternity leave exists so that new mothers can recover from the trauma their bodies just went through — yes, trauma. Women have their bodies ripped apart. Showering and using the bathroom is painful and difficult. They have to deal with being engorged, leaking breastmilk, and profuse bleeding that lasts for weeks. Women also have to contend with a completely helpless tiny person, that is entirely reliant upon this new mother — the one who is sore and in pain, bleeding and leaking — to keep him or her alive. And on top of all of that, there is the sheer and utter exhaustion. New mothers are woken up every few hours to take care of said tiny person. They’re certainly not going on dates, having hot sex, drinking margaritas, or spending time reflecting on who they are as people. No, most new mothers are literally just fighting to survive each day.

And Foye is whining about how she doesn’t get a few months off to “find herself”. It’s funny, because most people are able to make it to 31 years of age (now 38) while being aware of a thing called “vacation”. It’s this really neat invention that allows people to take time off of work and go do whatever they want. Amazing! Someone alert the New York Times, quick, because there are apparently morons stumbling around New York City completely unaware that such a magical thing exists.

On top of the idiocy of being jealous of the “perks” of maternity leave, Foye actually has the gall to compare having to pick up a sick child to meeting a friend for drinks because a date went badly. So in her smug, self-absorbed little world, these are the same thing? She genuinely thinks that she should be able to leave her job at any time just to go drink some margaritas, without suffering any consequences, because parents can leave when their child is stranded or sick somewhere.

Really, how selfish and shallow must you be to have that kind of mindset? And at 38, no less. An 18-year-old thinking this way could be somewhat understandable, but at 38? Shouldn’t she have maybe matured a little by now? And newsflash: nothing is preventing her from getting her very own cherished maternity leave. All she has to do is have a child of her own. But she just wants the “perks” without having to do any of the work. (Again, this is a 38-year-old woman.)

Here’s a tip, Foye. Next time you decide to unleash the inner workings of your pathetic little brain on the internet, stop for a second and really think about it first. Remember, the internet is forever… and do you really think your potential future employers would want to hire someone who openly talks about wanting to be able to ditch work whenever she feels like it because she “needs” to go drink a margarita? Or who thinks she deserves paid time off to sit around and pick lint out of her belly button? Probably not. So before writing the deep thoughts of your life for the whole world to see, try growing up first.