I swear, perhaps too often. My default frustration lines are typically "for fuck's sake" or "are you fucking serious?" And yet my first reaction to obvious bad behavior on the part of Garbage McWoof was to open my mouth and let one of my mother's favorite phrases come flying out. Apparently, it's a fairly common phenomenon. According to the Daily Mail, "eight out of ten of today's mothers admit they use the very same cliches to discipline their children that they had to endure from their own parents." Granted, I have a dog, not a child, but the phenomenon still applied. When it came to laying down the law, I went with one of Mom's old standbys, followed by another one of Mom's old standbys: "You're skatin' on thin ice, Mister!"

Kathryn Crawford of TheBabyWebsite.com tells the Daily Mail that mothers often revert to cliched sayings because we've seen them work before: "The funny thing is that many mums will insist they are nothing like their own mothers," she says, "But the reality is that we can't help but teach our children as our parents taught us, and that means using old sayings and routines which worked for our parents." Naturally, there are learned behaviors, and instantaneous reactions that one picks up during one's own childhood. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it. (After writing that sentence, my mother's voice popped into my head again to say, "Isn't. The word is Isn't. Don't say ain't. You weren't raised in a barn.")

According to Crawford's site, the Top 20 sayings passed on from parents to children include "Wait and see," "Because I said so," "I've told you a thousand times," and "That's for me to know and you to find out." "Cripes Almighty," isn't on the list, though it certainly makes my Top 20 Momisms. Feel free to add your own parental hand-me-downs in the comments.

Are We Turning Into Our Parents? [The Baby Website]
Because I Said So: Eight Out Of Ten Mothers Admit To Repeating The Old Adages Their Parents Used On Them [DailyMail]

Calm down, I'm not advocating incest. I'm merely suggesting that some of the same identity-obscuring, affect-flattening nostrums found in modern dating guides can be useful when interacting with Grandma, Uncle Ted, and that one cousin who always wants to talk about guns. Sure, you could watch the 1950 short "A Date With Your Family" (above) to learn about how it's your duty to dress attractively for your male relatives (ew?). But for more up-to-date advice, check out the following tips:

1. Don't talk about yourself too much.

Personal information — like your political views, religious beliefs, or the fact that your name is not actually "Becky" — shouldn't be revealed until the second or third date with your family. Or better yet, not at all. You know the old rule about letting a man talk two-thirds of the time, while you talk one-third? This works well for your family, too, except that the two-thirds portion should be filled by the television.

2. Don't try to cook anything new or complicated.

You know how the way to a man's heart is through a simple yet delicious man-brisket? Families have similarly conservative tastes. This Thanksgiving, my mom made a pie with whole-wheat crust. Three aunts and six cousins broke up with her right away. Don't let this be you.

3. Just agree with everything anyone says.

Many great relationships have ended because of superfluous opinions on the part of the woman — and these opinions can be just as damaging to a family gathering. Instead of saying what you actually think, simply smile and nod, or at most say, "Interesting!" Will it really kill you to pretend you don't believe in the moon landing? No, it won't.

4. Choose inoffensive entertainment.

People have different tastes, and as a woman, your job is to satisfy all of them. Just like a romantic date, an evening with your family isn't about what you want to do — it's about what's least likely to piss off someone else. Family-friendly films include Miss Congeniality, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous, and any biopic that does not involve drugs. Family-friendly music includes nothing.

5. Don't talk about healthcare reform.

This one should just be obvious.

These tips may seem difficult to follow, but over years of subsuming your true thoughts and feelings, they will become second nature. And once you've mastered them, you too can land a family who loves you for who you pretend to be.

The Times's Laurie Tarkan describes a new study showing that low-income families benefited when fathers took parenting classes. She writes that "fathers not only spent more time with their children than the controls did but were also more active in the daily tasks of child-rearing. They became more emotionally involved with their children, and the children were much less aggressive, hyperactive, depressed or socially withdrawn than children of fathers in the control group." However, the effect was greatest when moms attended classes alongside dads, implying (unsurprisingly) that parents who communicate and support each other are best for kids. But dads may have trouble getting the support they need.

Tarkan writes that, "as much as mothers want their partners to be involved with their children, experts say they often unintentionally discourage men from doing so. Because mothering is their realm, some women micromanage fathers and expect them to do things their way." The assertion is a little annoying, reminiscent as it is of a similar narrative about chores: women just don't let men do the laundry, the thinking goes, because it has to be done their way. Similarly stereotypical are the words of Dr. Kyle Pruett, co-author of the book Partnership Parenting. He says, "dads tend to discipline differently, use humor more and use play differently. Fathers want to show kids what's going on outside their mother's arms, to get their kids ready for the outside world." Pruett adds that dads "tend to encourage risk-taking and problem-solving" — but these are pretty sweeping generalizations. I know my dad didn't "encourage risk-taking," unless you call not driving on the freeway until you're eighteen years old a risk. And slotting parents into sitcom-ready roles (Mom the protector, Dad the one who lets you get dirty) only multiplies the obstacles they have to face in working together.

But there are some ways that larger social expectations harm both moms and dads. Tarkan quotes psych professor Philip A. Cowan, who says,

The walls in family resource centers are pink, there are women's magazines in the waiting room, the mother's name is on the files, and the home visitor asks for the mother if the father answers the door. It's like fathers are not there.

By treating moms like the primary parent, research centers and other social services just make it more difficult for dads to get involved — and maybe even perpetuate the notion that only Mom knows the right way to do things. Rather than accusing individual mothers of considering motherhood their "realm," we should be tackling the widespread cultural perception that women naturally know about child-rearing and men are just bumbling babysitters who show up every now and then to teach baseball skills. Cowan says parents need to stop criticizing each other so much — "Instead, they should be saying, ‘How can each of us be the kind of parent that we are?'"— but parenting experts have some large-scale recommendations that may be even more effective. Tarkan writes,

[P]ictures of families on the walls of clinics and public agencies should have fathers in them. All correspondence should be addressed to both mother and father. Staff members should be welcoming to men. Steps like these promote early and lasting involvement by fathers.

These may seem like small changes, but they would start sending the message that parenting is a cooperative process, not Mom's job and Dad's hobby. It's a message that moms, dads, and kids all desperately need.

Fathers Gain Respect From Experts (And Mothers) [NYT]
Paying More Attention To Fathers [NYT Well Blog]

Kaufman, who has a three-year-old son, notes that he understands the frustration people feel when they're subjected to out-of-control kids or lousy parenting methods: "I can't stand bad parents or bad children, either," he writes, "There are parents who are over-permissive to the point of absurdity. There are kids who are just hyper or obnoxious." But Kaufman argues that society, as a whole, confuses "bad children" and "bad parents" with kids who are just tired, or cranky, and parents who are doing their best to keep their kids under control, as "anyone who's been in charge of a toddler for more than three minutes knows that even the most perfect parent in the entire world can't prevent or stop every tantrum."

I'll admit that in my early twenties, I was one of those people who would start pouting as soon as I walked onto a plane and saw a toddler squirming about in his seat. "Oh great," I'd hiss to my boyfriend, "he'll be crying in ten minutes." I had no concern for the parents or the child, who were probably just as stressed about the flight and what would happen in the air; I saw them as an inconvenience to my own traveling, as if they should hop aboard the Magic School Bus or some such to reach their destination instead of flying on the plane with the rest of us. I was a complete crab when it came to crabby children, and I instantly blamed their parents for not being able to "control" their kid's tears. In short, I was a total jerk.

As Kaufman notes, there's a big difference between getting annoyed at a parent who allows little Suzie or Timmy to kick the seat repeatedly as if it's some type of adorable behavior and getting annoyed at a parent who is desperately trying to get Timmy to stop throwing his tantrums. It wasn't until my niece was born 7 years ago that I began to understand this; watching my sister and my brother-in-law handle her tantrum phase was rough, as I knew they were great parents and my niece was a great kid, but tantrums happen, and, as Kaufman notes, "Toddlers have to have tantrums. It's how they learn boundaries."

Now, whenever I hear a kid crying on a plane, my thoughts immediately move to sympathy for both the child and the parent; maybe the kid is teething, maybe she's just exhausted, maybe she's scared, poor thing. Every child, in some way, has become my niece or my nephew, and their parents my sister or brother-in-law. I am not a parent myself, but by trying to put myself in the other person's shoes (or even in the kid's shoes) has made me a much more understanding person. Of course, this doesn't mean that I still don't get extremely annoyed when I have to sit in front of someone who thinks it's just charming that little Billy likes to throw Matchbox cars at strangers, but taking the position that all crying or slightly obnoxious behavior in public on the part of children and/or their parents automatically makes them "bad" people isn't fair to anyone.

I don't think we live in a child-hating society, but I do agree with Kaufman's argument that the public does often make enemies of parents and small children who are just trying to live their lives. "I don't like screaming in my ear, either," he writes, "I also don't like people who wrestle the armrest away from me, people who lean their seat ALL the way back, and people who claim their suitcase is a purse and cram the overhead compartment with too many bags. But that's life. That's what traveling by air means. Heck, that's what it means to live in this world." Yes, kids can be annoying, but so can everyone else. It took me years to realize that the eyeroll from the 20 year old who thinks she knows everything can be just as painful and irritating as the screams of a 3-year-old who just needs to take a nap.

Why Does Our Society Hate Children [PsychologyToday]

Mehmet, 38, spends the majority of the piece discussing her own beauty; how her mother, a beautician, pushed her to focus on her appearance, how she began using makeup at 12, and how these efforts eventually led to a career as a part-time model. It's evident from the get-go that Mehmet's self-worth is directly tied to her appearance, which casts a sad shadow over the rest of the piece, which reads, quite honestly, as someone having a slightly tortured conversation with herself.

Mehmet admits that she's jealous of her 17-year-old daughter, who is now "blossoming into womanhood." Yasmin is young and pretty and, according to her mother, a dead ringer for Mehmet herself in her younger days, which complicates her jealousy and resentment even further: "And although she was oblivious of all this, I couldn't help resenting her for it," Mehmet writes of her daughter's coming-of-age, "I began to make comparisons all the time, and a terror of getting old and losing my looks enveloped me."

The first time I read this piece, I was so irritated (it is the Daily Mail, after all) that my first instinct was to write a headline like "Mom Realizes She Is Not 18 Anymore, Calls Dina Lohan For Advice On How To Fix Situation," but after reading it a few more times, I realized the piece is just sad, really, in that Mehmet really doesn't seem to be able to let go of the idea that she is worth more than her looks, and that true beauty and happiness are not, despite what the magazines and the media might tell you, about trying to look 18 when you're 38.

I do feel a certain sympathy for her, as obnoxious as the article reads at times, in that I think it's normal for people to feel pangs of envy or jealousy when they realize certain points in their lives are behind them. The entire article is a sad commentary on the increasingly obnoxious values we place on youth and beauty, and the most disturbing aspect is that Mehmet doesn't seem to understand that she's just setting up her daughter to feel the same pangs of worthlessness and jealousy by constantly placing such a value on her child's looks.

Instead of trying to keep up with her daughter, or comparing herself with her daughter, Mehmet should find her own path and attempt to show her kid that life doesn't end at 18 (unless you're a member of Menudo, and then you are so out of there) and that true beauty has no age limit and that living in the past is a surefire way to miss the really great things happening in the present and waiting in the future. Yasmin claims that "we all get old, and to my mind there's so much more to life than looks. In 20 or 30 years, if I have a daughter, I'm sure I'll be confident enough to be glad that she's more gorgeous than me. I'll have had my time, and I'll definitely be ready to grow old gracefully. If only Mum could see it that way." If only both of them could see that there's so much more to "their time" than being the most gorgeous one in the house.

I Used To Be The One Who Turned Men's Heads, But Now It's My Teenage Daughter [DailyMail]

Janzen's publicizing her book Mennonite in a Little Black Dress with interviews in both Time and Marie Claire, and in both places she emphasizes the conservatism of her Fresno upbringing. In Marie Claire (interview not online), she says,

My mom wouldn't let me wear jeans. She sewed me polyester pants with the crease down the front and an elastic band. Oh, my lord, were they modest. She would lengthen them with different-colored panels, like burgundy. We had a TV but couldn't turn it on unless Mom and Dad were in the room; if anyone on a show or a commercial ever kissed — even in a marital context — my dad would change the channel and say, "Smut!"

In college, Janzen "began to read about other religions and read philosophy and literature," and she ended up leaving the faith. But after her husband left her for another man and she got in a car accident, she went back to live with her parents and discovered that she respected their way of life. She writes that her mother forced her to be active instead of "hol[ing] up out of self-pity," and that "trailing one's seventy-year-old parents around town is an excellent and under-discussed cure for heartbreak." She also says,

I had remembered the Mennonites of my youth as congenial folks, so it wasn't a surprise that I loved them as an adult. What was a surprise was that I loved what they stood for - I loved the faith itself, and the way they consistently demonstrated what they believed. For instance, when my mom learned that an elderly woman from her church was recuperating from a surgery, it wasn't a question of if she would visit. It was a question of whether to bring homemade zwiebach or a tray of platz. It was the genuine human warmth of this community that set me thinking about faith in new ways.

I lived with my parents for about a month and a half this summer, after some shitty life events of my own, and although my parents are professors and not Mennonites, my experience was in some ways pretty similar. The media has been buzzing for at least five years now with stories of helicopter parents who coddle their children through an "extended adolescence" that lasts long past college, and maybe it just shows that I'm getting old, but this wasn't my experience. Going to college for me involved a pretty big break with my parents, an instant transition from living with them to talking to them once a week (on Sundays), unless I was in some kind of major crisis. It was a time when I did things even when my dad asked me not to (he had, very graciously I later realized, decided he could no longer tell me what to do), and a time when I decided I could never spend more than two weeks at home because we were too different and there was too much fighting.

And then I grew up for real — or at least, a little more. I realized not only that home is where they have to take you in — a motivating factor for Janzen also — but that my parents aren't actually all that different from me. They do the things I couldn't do in front of them as a teenager — like say "fuck" and drink beer — and they disapprove much less of my personal life than I'd always assumed. In fact, I probably had to assume that they disapproved in order to feel like I was forming my own identity, but the one I've formed turns out to look like theirs in a lot of ways, and I'm not freaked out about it — too much.

I recognize that I'm very lucky to have parents who've given me both freedom and support, and that some people's relationships with their progenitors can be painful and disastrous. I also know that I come from a generation and a class that's said to have a lot in common with its parents, and that some people think this indicates insufficient progress. But my mom is the one who showed me how to donate to micro-lending organizations when I got my first job, who makes sure I recycle, and who calls me on my shit when I start blaming men for all the problems in the world (although my brother has gotten pretty good at this too).

There are still things my parents and I don't agree on, and there's a reason I moved out again — no matter how well we got along, living with them still made me feel like an overgrown kid, especially after I realized I no longer had any keys. And Janzen doesn't seem to have actually rejoined the Mennonite faith. It goes without saying that people need to separate from their parents to a certain extent in order to lead independent lives. But the idea that my generation represents some kind of unprecedented crazy closeness may be based on little more than the break many baby boomers made with their parents in the 60s and 70s. If Janzen's experience teaches us anything, it's that defining what's normal when it comes to family relationships is pretty fruitless, and that going back home can be an eye-opener, not just an ordeal.

Rhoda Janzen: From Modern To Mennonite [Time]

Shriver's report is fascinating, in that it shows 75% of Americans taking a positive view of an increasing female presence in the workplace, and a desire by both men and women to work together to come up with a way to balance work, childcare, and paying the family bills. Interestingly enough, "Sixty-five percent of men and women surveyed felt that the decrease in children growing up with a stay-at-home parent has been somewhat or very negative for American society," though the solution, amongst those surveyed, doesn't appear to be "Well, make the women stay home," as much as a desire for employers to consider more flexibility in hours, better benefits, and more realistic view on what it means to be an American family in today's society. As Heather Boushey, of the Center for American Progress tells Allison Linn of MSNBC, "We live in a world that is designed for one kind of family that no longer really exists."

Poll Finds Wide Support For Women At Work [MSNBC]

The novel follows four moms: Rebecca, who's self-absorbed and nasty; Melora, who's self-absorbed and a Hollywood actress; Lizzie, who's lost and sad; and Karen, who's straight-up crazy. Doree Shafrir wrote that the book heralded a "new narrative of the New York woman," and Sohn herself commented, "There's so much anxiety around finding a mate that no one really thinks about the actual marriage when they're trying to find someone." But if her book is about "the actual marriage," I'm joining a nunnery.

Few of the couples in the book seem to have married because they actually liked each other. Rebecca married Theo because "she had slept with every smart artistic cutie south of Fourteenth St and was beginning to wonder how she was going to meet anyone new," while Karen wed Matty so she could move to Park Slope. Lizzie does seem to feel love and lust for her husband Jay, but she took up with him only after finding out her long-term girlfriend didn't want children. Marriage in Prospect Park West seems largely a vehicle for procreation — but procreation isn't all that much fun either. Rebecca's jealous of her kid, Lizzie doesn't know what to do with hers, Melora's son is raised by nannies, and Karen just wants more.

It's no accident that having children in Prospect Park West, like buying real estate, often seems more about status than about love. Sohn is clearly aiming to create a biting comedy of manners, a beach-read version of Edith Wharton. And the novel does succeed in sending up a competitive culture of upper-middle-class mothering. The characters' ambivalence about their kids and their stay-at-home lives feels authentic, as does the atmosphere of anxiety and overprotection that pervades Park Slope. I didn't believe any mom would make her kid play in kneepads, like Karen does — until I saw it in Prospect Park.

But "new narrative?" Is it really new to say that middle-class parents overprotect their children? That parents in general don't have enough sex? That yuppies are self-absorbed and obsessed with real estate? Sohn seems confident that her characters reflect the real Park Slope — she told Shafrir "It's a very undersexed neighborhood" — but this observation too feels like a stereotype. To give us a new narrative of Park Slope you'd have to show us parents fucking wildly while their toddlers drink real Coke and watch television. Which might actually be more satisfying than Prospect Park West.

The novel is an absorbing read, thanks mainly to the totally batshit Karen, who basically blackmails Melora into being her famous friend. And it's true that Sohn seems to be tapping into a vein of ennui and insecurity that may darken the lives of even the most privileged moms. But I still got the feeling that Prospect Park West was a book written to make its readers feel superior to its characters. Their marriages are so bad, their values so screwed up, their gestures at liberalism so laughable in light of their venality, that I felt like I'd been invited to a party just to make fun of the guests.

Early in the novel, Rebecca and Lizzie are sitting in Park Slope's Tea Lounge making fun of the other mothers:

"God, they're old," said Rebecca, pointing to the mothers arranged in a circle around a coffee table [...]
"They spent their lives making an effort," Lizzie said, "and now they have the kid so they don't have to."
"It's not like this in Tribeca," Rebecca said. "I once took Abbie to the Washington Market playground, and I saw a hot woman pushing her kid on the swings. She turned out to be Christy Turlington. I felt so bad for the normal mothers in Tribeca. They must have such low self-esteem."
"In Park slope we're Christy Turlington," Lizzie said.

Prospect Park West feels like one long "we're Christy Turlington," a fun but empty fuck-you to a bunch of people we don't really know.

Women's Lit: Chick Lit Gets An Update [Publisher's Weekly]
Prospect Park West [Amazon]

Kohn says "conditional parenting," in which parents "turn up the affection when they're good, withhold affection when they're not" is in vogue these days, endorsed by Dr. Phil and Jo Frost of "Supernanny." The idea of "withholding affection" sounds harsh, but Kohn's definition of the practice is actually pretty broad. He writes,

Conditional parenting isn't limited to old-school authoritarians. Some people who wouldn't dream of spanking choose instead to discipline their young children by forcibly isolating them, a tactic we prefer to call "time out." Conversely, "positive reinforcement" teaches children that they are loved, and lovable, only when they do whatever we decide is a "good job."

Most of us probably had a few time-outs in our day, and many got rewards when we scored well on tests. So does that mean we're messed up for life? Well, maybe. Kohn cites a study that asked college students "whether the love they had received from their parents had seemed to depend on whether they had succeeded in school, practiced hard for sports, been considerate toward others or suppressed emotions like anger and fear." The students who "received conditional approval" were actually more likely to live up to parental expectations — but often at the price of disliking their parents, and living their lives according to a "strong internal pressure" than to "a real sense of choice."

But do a few time-outs and a few gold stars turn kids into resentful automata who trudge along under constant "internal pressure" created by their parents? Unfortunately, it's kind of hard to tell. Kohn uses terms like love, acceptance, affection, and approval almost interchangeably, but of course they're very different. As one commenter on the Times Well blog said,

The only real currency I have as a parent is my approval. She wants to make me happy and proud, so she behaves. When she misbehaves, she knows we're disappointed.

But that's not the same as loving her conditionally. I love her no matter what, even if I disapprove of behavior.

It seems likely that making parental love contingent on success in school — or even on being "considerate toward others" — might be damaging to kids. But there's a big difference between withholding love and expressing disapproval, and it's a little hard to imagine raising a child without sometimes doing the latter. Kohn advocates "autonomy support" — "explaining reasons for requests, maximizing opportunities for the child to participate in making decisions, being encouraging without manipulating, and actively imagining how things look from the child's point of view." Perhaps "making a clear distinction between loving someone and approving of all her behavior" should be added to this list. While helping kids develop their own moral compasses is an admirable goal, children will need to learn eventually that their behavior affects the way others see them — but not whether they are deserving of love.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Kohn's piece, though, is that it adds to a growing body of criticism against parental praise. According to Kohn, praise doesn't create soft, self-satisfied narcissists as so many armchair sociologists allege. Instead, if given in a conditional way, it can destroy kids' ability to make their own decisions. And recent studies have shown that children praised for their intelligence care more about doing well than about actually learning. Parents are just as unlikely to quit praising their kids as they are to stop occasionally "disapproving" of them. But in both cases, they should make it clear that no matter how proud or angry they may be in the moment, their love does not depend on being good or doing well.

When A Parent's ‘I Love You' Means ‘Do As I Say' [NYT]
Parenting With Strings Attached [NYT]

In today's NY Times, Dr. Perri Klass tells the story of a family she treated. The oldest of the three children was very high-achieving. Klass writes,

She is the oldest, her mother would say, so she gets lots of attention, and she works very hard. When her younger sister turned out to be an equally good student, the proud mother explained that naturally she wanted to be just like her older sister.

Then a long-looked-for baby boy was born. When he was a toddler, I began to worry that his speech seemed a little slow in coming. His mother was perfectly calm about it. He is the only boy, she said, so he gets lots of attention, and he doesn't have to work very hard.

Klass uses this example to illustrate that "birth order can be used to explain every trait and its precise opposite." But that doesn't keep parents from making assumptions about their kids based on which one popped out of the womb first. Klass talked to Dr. Peter A. Gorski, who says, "Too many parents are haunted by experiences both good and bad that they identify with their birth order." They may then "classify their own children according to birth order [...] which in turn can lead to a sense of identification or even rejection and to 'self-fulfilling prophecies.'"

Last week we learned that parental perceptions may amplify gender differences — now it seems they may exaggerate, or even create, the influence of birth order as well. Of course, it's no surprise that how parents see their kids changes how those kids grow up, or that parents draw on their own good and bad memories. But what's the solution here? Should parents refrain from drawing on their own experiences at all, to avoid unduly influencing their kids?

Making the issue a lot more complicated is that kids, even babies, aren't just passive bags of influence. They're human beings, and they influence their parents right back. Not only that, but what they take from their upbringing may be totally different from what their parents think they are giving. My mom, for instance, is always shocked by the things I remember her saying (whether or not she really told me that "when you die, everything just goes black forever" is a big bone of contention). Klass quotes an old saying that "no two children grow up in the same family, because each sibling's experience is so different" — by that standard, parents don't really live in the same family as their children either.

So how can parents avoid making their assumptions about their kids into "self-fulfilling prophecies?" Obviously, it's a good idea not to underestimate children, or to treat them according to gender or birth-order stereotypes. But anyone who believes that parents' "prophecies" wholly dictate how kids turn out is giving parents a lot of credit. If that were true, the world would have a lot more Einsteins and a lot fewer assholes.

Birth Order: Fun To Debate, But How Important? [NYT]
Does Birth Order Matter? [NYT]

Earlier: Do Parents Create Gender Differences?

The Tunisian woman, a 34-year-old known only as AF, claimed to be nine months pregnant with six boys and six girls (if true, would this make her a Duodecamom?). Tunisia's Health Ministry, however, says she has "psychological problems and is unlikely even to be pregnant." A spokesman added "The woman has refused point blank to undergo a medical examination. Now we can't even contact her. She's gone into hiding." British doctor Peter Bowen-Simpkins had previously questioned her claim, asking somewhat amusingly, "How could you get 12 babies into the womb at the same time?" Well, they start out reeeeeall small ... but in this case, especially with AF and her husband now missing, the prolific pregnancy appears to be a hoax.

A doctor at AF's local hospital in Gafsa, Tunisia said,

It may be that she's trying to make money from television. These kind of people can make thousands from appearing on programmes. Perhaps that's what motivated her.

And indeed, AF has been compared to Nadya Suleman, who does hope to make money by "appearing on programmes." Along with her nemesis and possible inspiration Kate Gosselin, she offers a cautionary tale to those who wish to put their families in the spotlight — at least according to Mary McNamara at the LA Times. McNamara blames the intrusion of fame and TV cameras for the dissolution of the Gosselins' marriage, and says of the upcoming special Octomom: The Incredible Unseen Footage, "Fox should include the following warning label: 'BEING THE SUBJECT OF A TELEVISION SHOW IS DANGEROUS TO YOUR FAMILY'S HEALTH.'"

McNamara's claims about the Gosselins are a little specious — she asks of Kate, who says her marriage was bound to end, TV show or no,

Really? Your husband would have left you for a Star reporter and/or the daughter of the plastic surgeon who gave you a tummy tuck (free, because it was filmed), even if you had just remained some obscure church-going Pennsylvania family with a bunch of kids?

"Obscure church-going" Jon might not have taken up with a Star reporter, but raising sextuplets and twins would likely put a strain on any marriage. The Gosselins' notoriety is more disturbing for its effect on their kids, who have to watch their mom give interviews about her divorce while their dad consorts with various mall-faced twentysomethings. And Suleman's children, who, as McNamara points out, are basically forced to be on TV for their mom can pay the bills, are unlikely to benefit psychologically from the experience.

Then there's the effect on us, the viewers. McNamara writes,

There is nothing to be learned from the Suleman story, no connection to be made with average parents. She is, mercifully, an anomaly, tempted, perhaps, by the attention society increasingly pays to large number of multiples, but certainly responsible for her own actions, an easy person to judge from afar, to pity or vilify as the mood strikes us.

It's not clear whether Nadya Suleman craves the unconditional love of children or the or conditional love of a TV audience (probably both). But it is clear that the former enables the latter. Whether or not there's anything "to be learned" from huge families, viewers are fascinated with them, so much so that even faking a multiple pregnancy may start to seem like a media-savvy move. Part of this fascination is just prurient — what does her belly look like? Will she get a tummy tuck? How did she get all those babies in there? And part of it has to do with the very fact that Suleman and the Gosselins aren't average parents — they're extreme parents. Their stories take one of the most basic aspects of human life and make it strange and new again.

Of course, having six or even eight babies at once isn't new anymore — maybe that's why AF felt she had to up the fertility ante. McNamara says we're in the midst of "a crisis of either public health or education" characterized by families seeking TV fame. But Suleman's particular brand of fame may have an upper limit. If it's true that you can't pack twelve fetuses into one uterus, then the next generation of opportunistic families are going to have to find a new way to bring cameras into their lives. Brace yourselves for My Lonely Only Child, or James And Kim: The Couple With No Kids At All.

Arabic Teacher Who Claimed She Was Pregnant With 12 Babies Is Exposed As A Fraud [Daily Mail]
When Private Lives Go Public [LA Times]

Earlier: Multiple Choice

This morning, The Onion posted yet another fake news article that rings a bit too true: the story of a mother who decides to step her poor kid's school wardrobe up a notch by thinking "outside the box." Her 10-year-old son, she thinks, needs to stand out this year and wow his peers with his sassy new wardrobe: "If Michael had his way, he'd probably run out the door every day in a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers," the mother argues, "He doesn't understand that he'd make a much stronger impression on his classmates and teachers if he tried an outfit with more flair, like a nice mock turtleneck with a peach vest."

While I laughed at the article, I also cringed a bit, as it reminded me of the days when my mother and I would hit up the mall in a marathon attempt to get all of my back-to-school shopping done in one day. My little sister would come as well, though she didn't fight much with my mother's fashion choices: she just wanted to go to Pretzel Time and look at the kittens in the pet store window. I was the more difficult shopper, rejecting all of my mother's suggestions as "dumb" or "stupid," and rolling my eyes as she lifted up a lace-collared dress or a flowered top. "Lose the attitude, sister," my mother would frown. "You're lucky to even have nice new back to school clothes." She was right, of course.

The act of back to school shopping is perhaps one of the events in a young woman's life when she begins to pull away from her parents: "I will not wear that, I prefer to wear this," is a statement that both suggests defiance and a desire to express oneself without a parental filter. When you're very young, you let your parents put you in whatever they please; as you grow, you fight it (and often lose) until you get to the age where you really are on your own, mostly because you are making the purchases with your own money, and your parents accept your style as an extension of who you are.

This is not to say that my mother still didn't lay down the law: she rejected many of the hot styles of the day when I was in high school (thank you, Mom) as I was "15, not 45" but compromised by daring to set foot inside of a Contempo Casuals in order to help me pick out trendy but age-appropriate pieces. We fought over what was cool and what most certainly was not, fought over my mother's ideas of style ("You're a blonde, you should wear green. Don't wear black, it's too morbid") and fought over what was or was not appropriate for school.

It was a time for both of us to question each other's views on style, yes, but more than that, it was a bit of a generational challenge, and a way for me to assert myself as an adult, all under my mother's supervision. I suspect she let me win many of these battles on purpose, knowing that someday, I'd question the very rules I was making, and that it's not about the clothes as much as how I feel while wearing them. Still, when I had to go to a wedding recently, I was stuck between a blue dress and a black one. "Wear the blue one," I told myself, "black is just so morbid." Sometimes, even when you fight it, your mother's fashion advice wins out in the end. But I'm still not wearing that dumb lace collar, Mom. You can just forget about it.

Mom Has Some Wild New Ideas For Dressing Son This Year [The Onion]

"We were surprised that mothers seem to learn a lot about the parenting role from their own mothers, but fathers don't follow their mothers as much," says Jonathan Vespa, a co-author of the study, which focused on data collected from 1,133 young parents since 1973. Two surveys made up the overall study: the first followed younger parents in the 70s and 80s, and the second, which has followed the children of the original survey's mothers, tracking their behavioral patterns as they moved from the role of child to the role of parent in their own right.

Vespa says he's surprised that the young males surveyed don't seem to follow their mother's example, despite growing up in households where mothers did the majority of the child raising: "These fathers were growing up in 70s and 80s and received much of their parenting from their mothers," he says, "Although more women were entering the workforce then, they still did the lion's share of parenting and childcare."

I don't have any children, but I do notice that my sister tends to use similar techniques with her children that my mother used with us, growing up; namely that her voice becomes eerily identical to my mom's when someone needs a time out, and that she tends to use humor as a means to get her kids to admit that they've messed up a bit and need to fix things up. I also slip into "Mom Voice" whenever I'm with my niece alone—it's hilarious and terrifying at times, as you suddenly realize that perhaps you're putting on a facade of maternal strength and projecting that protective, no-nonsense exterior as a means to quell your own fears of being in charge of someone else's kid for a day.

So what say you, commenters? Do you feel that you tend to be more like your mother when it comes to parenting or watching other people's children? Do you notice that the men in your life act differently, or do you see some similarities between their style of watching/raising kids and that of their own mothers? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

Mothers, But Not Fathers, Follow Their Own Mom's Parenting Practices [EurekAlert]

Josiah Neufeld (yes, that's his married name) took his wife's because...well, I'll let him explain.

I did it because I love Mona - because I wanted her to know that I didn't expect her to become anyone other than herself. It mattered to me that we shared a name, so I reasoned I should be the one to offer mine up. And a combination name like Neufeld-Thiessen would only solve the dilemma temporarily. Eventually a child of ours would bring this unwieldy last name to his or her own marriage - most likely to another hyphenee...I did it because any form of power comes with duties. I'm obliged to take responsibility for my power, to learn its effects - even unintentional ones - to see what it does to others when I'm not watching, to use it in the best way possible. Sometimes to relinquish it.

Obviously, of all the highly personal choices people make when marrying, the changing or retention or invention of their name is one of the most so. It's public, it's declaratory and, whether it's perceived as a reverent nod to tradition, a declaration of revolution, or a compromise, it's always making some kind of statement. Neufeld's family isn't completely cool with it; to some of them it seems weird, to others confusing, and probably to a few, hurtful. I remember my dad telling me years ago that he'd be shocked and hurt if I ever changed my name, which surprised me; I wouldn't have thought he'd care much about a word probably tacked on only a century or so ago by some high-handed Polish official. My mother, like many women of her generation, retained her maiden name and would have considered anything else a betrayal of principles. But I know many younger women don't take that view; to them, taking their husband's name is more about creating a single family identity than surrendering her own. Most people I know have hyphenated; my high-school reunion's attendance list was noticeably double-barreled. (Those who already had hyphenates - a sizable number in my progressive school - had retained their names.) I know a few cases in which all members of the family - husband, wife, kids - have taken on a hyphenate. I don't personally know of anyone who's committed to the invention of a brand-new combo name, but one hears tell of such wondrous things.

What's funny is - although I had no intention, had I thought of it, of giving up my native-born alliteration - I sort of resented my dad's saying that. It seemed to me it should be my choice, which was as much the point as retaining a maiden name (which, as many will declare, it's still a man's name in the end.) I get the impulse to unite under a single name - in a sense, maybe it's nice for kids, too; it's a kind of commitment. But I wouldn't expect my husband to take mine, as that would feel - to me - as arbitrary as the reverse (although I get the argument to the contrary.) As I say, it's personal; in the author's case, he was making a statement - but a gentle one. He loved her, he wanted to wield his patriarchal potency responsibly, and, at the end of the day, it seems like his wife was simply more attached to her name than he. It should be said, in case you wonder, that yes, Mr. Neufeld seems to be pretty sensitive all-around. ("I wear my new name as proudly as I wear the tiny woman with braided hair I carved from a piece of antler and hung around my neck as a wedding ring. Mona wears a miniature man. Both come from the same bone. I can't remember which I carved first, but I think the woman is the more beautiful of the two.") So I don't see this practice necessarily becoming de rigeur. But I do think we'll get to a point where such a choice doesn't require explanation; after all, as cultures increasingly intermingle, the relative importance and transience and significance of names will only become even more complex. The question is whether some families will ever cease to take it personally - and whether they should.

I Took My Wife's Last Name [Globe And Mail]

Several studies show small differences among siblings based on birth order. First-borns tend to have slightly higher IQ than second-borns, who score slightly higher than third-borns. First-borns are also slightly taller at the age of 10 than their siblings, meaning they may be better nourished. And parents may have higher expectations for their oldest children: one survey found that 35% of moms thought their oldest would do the best in school,while only 15% thought the youngest would.

Findings like these have led some scientists (including, creepily, eugenicist Francis Galton) to conclude that first-borns are predisposed to run the world. Galton and others have found a high percentage of first-borns in influential political and scientific positions. However, some say younger siblings are the real stars. In his book Born to Rebel, Frank Sulloway uses Darwin and Copernicus as examples of later-borns whose birth order allowed them to take risks and be creative, rather than pleasing parents and other authority figures. The idea that first-borns are high-achieving but law-abiding, while their younger siblings are less conventionally successful but more adventurous, has at this point reached the status of conventional wisdom.

But is it true? Psychology professor Ginger Moore says no. She tells the Times,

There is no doubt that parents treat children differently, and some of that difference may be related to birth order. [...] However, the way that parents interact with their children, the expectations they have of them and the opportunities they give them, most likely have less to do with birth order and more to do with many other factors, such as the child's personality, gender, the number of children in the family, the spacing between siblings and parental age.

The average IQ differences among siblings may be too small to mean much (and IQ test are suspect anyway), and according to Moore, the reason birth order is such a popular explanation for variation among families may be that it's easy to measure. It's also easy to amass anecdotal evidence about. Neil Bush and the famously coked-out Roger Clinton are popular examples of underachieving younger sibs, although to call George W. Bush "more successful" than his brothers is to use an interesting definition of success. But it's just as easy to find examples of later-borns who outshone their siblings. And perhaps most common of all is the family where differences between children transcend birth order.

I'm five years older than my brother, and I remember discovering that most of my friends in college were older or only children. Growing up, I cared a lot about my parents' approval and always did my homework — my brother had to be nagged. I was nerdy while my brother was well-adjusted and popular — supposedly common traits of later-borns. As we get older, however, the picture gets more complicated. I'm probably more of a risk-taker than my brother; he cares more about traditions. He's become more academic than he ever was as a kid; I gave up computer science to pursue creative writing. And some of the closest friends I've made in the last few years have been later-borns. There's pretty much only one way my brother and I currently fulfill birth order stereotypes. We're both at our parents' house right now, and while I'm working, he's sleeping.

Are Eldest Children Really A Cut Above? [TimesOnline]

My parents had everything ready for my arrival: blue clothes, blue blankets, a male name, and, I'm sure, as far as my father was concerned, dreams of basketball games and little league games and fishing trips or whatever it is that fathers typically do with their sons. But their second daughter was born instead, and two years later, their third, leaving my father as a sort of bizarro Mike Brady, with three very lovely girls.

I write about my dad a lot, mostly because my dad is hilarious, and is pretty much a real-life version of Clark Griswold (if Clark Griswold had a Star Wars obsession). We have bonded over music and we communicate primarily through jokes from movies, and my dad is one of the few people in the world who can consistently make me laugh.

My dad often got razzed about having three girls: what a nightmare, what drama, what stress! But my father seemed to shrug it off because, as he claims, he didn't really see the big deal. My sisters and I did everything my male cousins did: we were all on a million teams, played a billion sports (and captained a few varsity ones, thankyouverymuch), spent our summer days outdoors in the woods, etc. But we also liked dolls, we also liked playing house, we also liked building forts and throwing tea parties with very glamorous stuffed animals. My dad never looked at it as "oh, I have daughters, woe is me." "Or, oh, I have tomboys, so that makes it okay." My dad, I think, just looked at us as his kids, and he got a kick out of our adventures, regardless of what gender norms they embraced. Looking back, I see how important this was: my father never made us feel embarrassed to be girls, and he never made us feel like we shouldn't be "acting like boys." My dad just wanted us to be happy, to be ourselves.

So Happy Father's Day, dad. May the force be with you, and thanks for always being there for us.

And now let's rock out to one of my dad's favorite singers:

Feel free to leave a note about your father, or the father-figure in your life, in the comments.

Earlier: What Was The Album That Made You Love Music?
When Your Dad Speaks To You Through Random Movie Quotes

Joseph took Gavin to Hungary, and Avril desperately searched for years to find her lost son. "Over the years we tried everything but couldn't find out what had happened to him," she tells the Daily Mail, and according to the Times of London, "Despite appeals via the Hungarian Embassy in London and the British Embassy in Budapest, and an appeal to Margaret Thatcher, then the Prime Minister, Mrs Grube heard nothing more of her son."

Avril's sister, Beryl Watson, decided to take matters in to her own hands and searched for Gavin on Google. The results brought her to Gavin's Facebook profile. She sent Gavin a message, hoping she had the right man, and weeks later, Gavin responded and agreed to meet up with his mother. "I was so overcome and just said ‘my beautiful son' over and over again," Grube says, "He was very quiet and overwhelmed. We just hugged each other. It is the happiest day of my life, there are almost no words to describe it."

Facebook Reunites Mother With Long Lost Son [TimesOnline]
Joy of mother who discovered her 'kidnapped' son after 27 years... by Googling his name and finding his Facebook page [DailyMail]

The rest of his life is a bit murky, told in bits and pieces by my father, who drops small tales now and again, when he thinks nobody is really listening.

Born in 1920, my grandfather hit adolescence as America hit rock bottom. The Depression was a difficult time for him, as it was for most working-class families, and with little opportunities, he signed up for the Marine Reserves at the age of 18, hoping for a chance at a better life. A year later, Adolf Hitler invaded Poland, and World War Two began.

My grandfather was sent to the Pacific, where he engaged in several battles- most notably, The Battle of Iwo Jima, where he stood and watched the famous American flag raising scene that, to many, is the symbol of America's strength during World War Two. My father says he used to joke about it all the time- if only they'd said, "Charlie, come here, help us with this damn flag," he could have been in that famous photograph. Instead, he was on the ground, watching for movement in the distance, clutching his weapon to his chest and dodging the bullets that were taking out his fellow soldiers, his friends.

He survived the Battle of Iwo Jima relatively unscathed; it was the next battle that almost killed him. During the Battle of Okinawa, from what I understand, my grandfather caught sight of a sniper hole and rushed it in order to take out the snipers and save his fellow soldiers. My father has never said if he was successful in this endeavor, but it is an unspoken understanding that he was. Nobody wants to say, "Your grandfather was brave enough to kill people." No father wants to tell his daughter that his own father had to take some lives, in order to save others. War is not a proud thing- the ends justify the means, but it doesn't make the means any easier to talk about.

My grandfather's bravery cost him- he was shot from shoulder to hip and left for dead. When the battle had ended, an officer came by and kicked my grandfather's boot, to see if he was still alive. With all the strength he had, my grandfather waved his pinkie finger. He was awarded the Purple Heart for bravery and sent back home to Massachusetts, where he married my grandmother and became a father to his only son, my dad, three years later.

My father says that he can remember going to the doctor's office with my grandfather, ten years after the war had ended. The doctors would lift my grandfather's shirt and apply salve to the scar that crossed his entire torso. Shrapnel remained in his skin, a painful reminder of the horrors of war and its consequences.

My father says that my grandfather never discussed the war. In pictures, you can see a distant look in his eye, a worried brow and a cigarette that remained in the corner of his mouth at all times. Though he died when I was only four years old, I can remember the way he spoke, his cigarette locked in his mouth, like John Wayne or Gary Cooper, stoic, silent, with eyes that gave both everything and nothing away.

When my father told me that my grandfather's favorite movie was the original "The Day The Earth Stood Still", I felt a little pang of sadness in my heart- it's one of my favorite movies as well, and my father loves it too. My father and I are the antithesis of my grandfather- we are books, we are desks, we are typewriters. My father never fought in a war- just as his number came up for Vietnam, an opening in the National Guard came up as well. Fearful of appearing a coward, my father asked my grandfather for advice. "I didn't want him to be disappointed in me," my father says.

My grandfather told him to take the Guard position. After all, he said, when he signed up for the Marines, he did so before the war had begun. He had no choice. "You have a choice not to go to war," my grandfather told my dad, "so take it."

Memorial Day, I think, is one of those holidays that gets lost in a sea of parties and parades and extra days off from work. It is further compounded by a distaste for war, and the connection to military action that makes us feel angry and betrayed and misrepresented and cold. Many people (including some involved) have trouble separating the military from war itself, trouble separating a soldier from the orders he or she is asked to follow.

My grandfather fought in a war that we were taught in school to celebrate, in battles that were immortalized in bronze. I suppose I should be proud of this fact, but there is a sadness attached to his War, to all wars, that does not elicit a response of pride as much as a desperate wish to eradicate the need for all such holidays, to understand the memories in the context we should understand them, to know that even a person who took a bullet from the enemy of the times never celebrated the end of all things, never talked about the days when the world was falling into darkness all around them, never displayed their Purple Heart, or even took it out of the box, for that matter.

My grandfather made it back from war; he carried the war with him for the rest of his life. But many people do not make it back, and that is what Memorial Day is really about, that is the quieter side of Memorial Day that often gets brushed aside in favor of summer kickoffs and such. We are meant to pause, to remember, to think of the lives lost, the lessons we should be learning. "It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder," Klaatu says in my grandfather's favorite film.

The Purple Heart sits on my father's desk, next to the American Flag they gave my grandmother when my grandfather passed away. It is in its original case, where it sits next to a picture of my niece, my father's granddaughter, who is all eyes and teeth and unaware of the stories that sit in the box beside her.

Harris tells Scientific American's Jonah Lehrer that she wrote her 1998 book The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out The Way They Do in part to show "that parenting didn't have to be such a difficult, anxiety-producing job, that there are many different ways to rear a child, and no convincing evidence that one way produces better results than another." While many people assume that everything you do as a parent marks your child forever, Harris claims that the two most important influences are actually peers and genetics, not parental nurture. She points out that when she was a child, in the thirties and forties, parents used lots of corporal punishment and didn't worry about their kids self-esteem. And, she says:

All these things have changed dramatically in the past 70 years, but the changes haven't had the expected effects. People are the same as ever. Despite the reduction in physical punishment, today's adults are no less aggressive than their grandparents were. Despite the increase in praise and physical affection, they are not happier or more self-confident or in better mental health.

Harris does note "that children learn at home how to behave at home (that's where parents do have power!)," but she also says "they learn outside the home how to behave outside the home." This point of view is upsetting in some ways, especially for parents who think they can raise a model citizen just by trying really, really hard. Middle-class parenting in America has a lot to do with control — over what your child eats, where she goes to school, how much time she spends with you. But if Harris is right, much of this control is an illusion, and maybe parents can back off a little. And for kids who are disadvantaged, maybe we need more school and after-school-based programming, as Harris recommends, rather than putting the onus on mom and dad. In the thirties, Harris says, "parents didn't feel they had to sacrifice their own convenience and comfort in order to gratify the desires of their children." Few would advocate a return to corporal punishment, but the rest of it — an end to potentially useless parental sacrifice — actually sounds kind of nice.

Do Parents Matter? [Scientific American]

The room is stuck in 1997; the stars and moons wallpaper I thought was so awesome in high school is still plastered up on the walls, and the closets and drawers still hold old notebooks, pictures, and the occasional awful 90's outfit or two. I haven't lived with my parents for many years, but the room remains, and though my mom has started to use it as a bit of a storage facility for random things, the room itself stays relatively untouched.

Kate Stone Lombardi of the New York Times is keeping her son's room intact while he's off at college; his room has become a bit of a shrine to the New York Rangers. "This room didn't come together overnight, of course," Lombardi writes, "The memorabilia was collected from the time he was an early fan - back in his elementary school days - until now. Today he is a college sophomore. He still lives and breathes hockey. But he doesn't really live in that room anymore."

It's a strange thing when a version of yourself lives on in a room; when everything else in your life is changing, it's odd to wander into a room that hasn't changed at all. At the same time, however, there is something comforting about the familiarity of an old bedroom, as it stands as a place where you began to become the person that you are today. Lombardi takes comfort in the things her children have left behind, yet she knows that these rooms won't stand forever, a notion that she is both saddened by and willing to accept: "This, I know, is a room in transition. His sister's room is just down the hall, and farther along in the process of transforming from a child's room to the room of someone who once lived there." Lombardi goes on to express her feelings towards her daughter's room: "It's still my daughter's room, but as she settles more deeply into her independent life, her essence gets more and more stripped out of those four walls. I would be lying to say that I miss the disorder - the scattered papers, the piles of clothes, the dirty tea mugs - that were also very much a part of Jeanie's occupancy. But I do miss the girl who lived there."

My parents are hoping to sell the house soon; my little sister's room has already been stripped and redone, and I'm sure my room is next on the list. And while I'm very excited for my parents to begin a new phase in their lives, I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't miss that room, or that stupid ridiculous wallpaper. But hopefully whoever moves into that room will have as much fun creating a time warp as I did.

Shrines To Childhood [NYTimes]