It's pretty priceless to watch Nikpour — ex-proprietor of a "racy website" and defender of schoolchildren against homosexual "techniques" — tell Sam Bee with a straight face that the Christmas ornaments the White House sent to schoolchildren for decoration were a way of "infiltrating them" with socialism. But even better is the way the kids themselves react when Bee tries this socialist-infiltration language — and, for good measure, the birther conspiracy theory — out on them. Their responses start with "do you think before you speak?" and get better from there. Glenn Beck would be no match for them.

December 16, 2009: Obama's Socialist Christmas Ornament Program [Comedy Central]

The boy, a Massachusetts second-grader, was asked to draw something that reminded him of Christmas. He drew a stick figure on a cross, with X's for eyes, and, when questioned, said the figure was himself. The school ordered the kid to get a psychological evaluation, but his father Chester Johnson explained that he had recently seen a statue of the crucifixion and was probably just drawing from memory. Johnson is considering sending his son to a different school, saying, "You can't walk back in an establishment that didn't have confidence in you ... and continue to do business with them. He's been excluded from all the other kids, man."

Johnson sounds like he took parenting classes from the Dude, but he may have the right idea. Children's drawings have become a stock horror trope, signaling impending doom in everything from The Ring to Battlestar Galactica. This may be partly because of evidence that kids reveal abuse through their drawings. But some have questioned whether drawings are a reliable marker of child abuse, and one thing's for sure: kids say, draw, and do a lot of weird shit, and it doesn't necessarily mean they have an abusive home life, or a Jesus complex.

I was a pretty innocent kid, and my drawings of giant eyeballs on legs, while odd, didn't set off any alarm bells. My brother was and is extremely reticent, and apart from his perplexing "my brain is like it has two sticks in it" speech (age 3), I don't remember him freaking anybody out either. But we did grow up with a kid whose drawings of his family looked adorably normal — except that "Mommy" always wore a blue bra instead of a shirt. It turned out that his drawings revealed not his mother's actual sartorial choices, but his abiding love for Princess Jasmine. Tracie writes, "in the third grade I made a Mother's Day card at school where I drew a picture of my mom looking maniacal wearing curlers and a bathrobe on the front, and on the inside I wrote a poem about how I still love her, even though she hits me with a wooden spoon." And Anna H. says that when she was eight or nine, she wrote "sex object" on her inner thigh, causing her mom to weep out of the fear that she'd failed at feminist parenting. But now Anna runs a website where we take Perez Hilton to task for writing things like that (and worse) on photos of women. So I guess what I'm saying is, just because a kid makes a weird Jesus drawing doesn't mean he should be excluded from all the other kids, man.

Boy's Jesus Drawing Alarms School Authorities [AP, via NPR]

Rose tells Wright that "Jodie Foster once said [...] that if you'd wanted to, you could've been the best actress of your generation, suggesting that you didn't want to." Wright says "I never thought I was good," but later Private Lives of Pippa Lee director Rebecca Miller suggests that Wright has had "maybe not the most pragmatic career." And elsewhere Wright has mentioned passing on roles to spend more time with her kids. A recent Redbook interview quotes her as saying, "I turned down so many films because I wanted to be a mom that…they stopped offering." But she also makes it clear that this was a choice, something she "wanted" more than being the best actress of her generation, whatever that means. When Redbook's Stacy Morrison tells her, "People might be tempted to say, 'You gave up your life so he could be Mr. Sean Penn,'" she responds, "He was already Mr. Sean Penn. " And she says,

I really wanted to be a mom. I didn't want my kids to be raised by a nanny, which would have been the case if I were working two movies in a year, you know? And I would have been hospitalized with fatigue. So that's where the no-brainer came in. I did what I wanted to do: I raised my kids.

The fact that Hollywood's version of greatness is incompatible with Wright's preferred family life may be more Hollywood's problem than hers. Underscoring this, Wright makes it clear that The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is the first movie she's truly proud of. It's that pride that appears to prompt Wright's tears, and she later says of working on the film, "Me personally, as an actress, I think I just went, 'get over being scared.'" This kind of confidence comes later in life for many people, not just actresses, and it's a shame that Hollywood is most interested in women when they've not yet developed the self-concept age can bring.

The obsession with youth may be one reason that, as NY Times film critic Manohla Dargis said yesterday, "women are starved for representation of themselves" onscreen. It's not just that older women want to see older women — it's also that women want to see female actors portraying the same variety of human experiences that male actors do, and in order to do that, they may need to mature a little bit. Much has been made of the male actor's ability to grow old and still get roles, but this isn't just about a few gray hairs and the ability to appear opposite younger starlets — it's also about the freedom to grow and change as an artist, something Hollywood doesn't allow very many women. The movie industry, like so many others, needs to make space for women to live their lives, which may include taking some time off to have kids, and definitely includes getting older and wiser.

Related: Robin Wright Penn: Life After Sean [Redbook]

Earlier: "Fuck Them": Times Critic On Hollywood, Women, & Why Romantic Comedies Suck

Writes Judith Warner, after remembering a painful few years of early-teen cruelty,

In fiction. It's what I hope my next book project will be, you see: a tween time-travel novel set in 1977, when there really was a roller rink on Waverly Place, and I was in 7th grade...The book is ostensibly all about a daughter's learning that she can't meddle in her mother's (past) life; she has to let her have bad experiences and grow up to be who she is destined to be. But it's not coincidental that, in the course of learning these lessons, my fictional daughter lives in a world completely controlled, defined and circumscribed by me.

What's as interesting as Warner's interesting piece is the reaction from readers: the comments section is filled with stories of well-remembered pain and a sense of its injustice that never goes away, even if it fades. (That headline quote comes from one of these readers.) There's something about that age, on the cusp of childhood, that's particularly vulnerable. (There's a reason they made a movie, 13, abut this very period.) Yesterday, talking about Tavi the pre-teen blogger, we editors reminisced about our own 13-year-old accomplishments and the wondrous potential of that age. In fact, it's a time I try to avoid thinking about, since it's when the cozy cocoon of childhood broke and I found myself the target of casual mockery on a daily basis. It's funny: I had not acknowledged that for years; I'd blocked 7th grade completely from my consciousness. But it's when I went from self-assured and oblivious to aware that I was unattractive and tiny and ridiculous with my piping voice and big vocabulary. I remember primarily a sense of bewildered inadequacy, a wish to go unnoticed in the halls or the lunchroom and avoid a jibe or a throwaway remark that my antagonists surely forgot as soon as I was out of sight. Most people didn't bother to be cruel, but there were enough. I'm reminded, if forced to think about that time, of the humiliating day when it all became too much and I broke down sobbing in class and was sent home, a victim. And I cease to feel like a normal-looking adult with a career and a basically-average height, and become a nonentity. This isn't even a particularly traumatic case - it's more average than not. Certainly not a horror story, and no cousin to the very real tragedies that we see week after week. But even now, thinking of those days of timing my trips through the halls so as to avoid other kids, or slipping into a seat just as class started so no one would have a chance to make fun of me, causes the base of my skull to tighten with a well-remembered tension.

Warner wishes both to spare her daughter that pain and reconnect with her younger self, and she's clearly not alone: when one looks at the adult women questioning the work of a 13-year-old girl, it's hard not to wonder if they, too, have scars dating back to that age. And wondering, per that commenter's remark, where they and so many other successful women fell on the bullying/victim spectrum.

40 Is Not The New 12 [NY Times]

Earlier: Elle Editor Leads Backlash Against 13-Year-Old Fashion Blogger

In an Atlantic essay called "The Science of Success," David Dobbs writes about two types of children: "orchids" and "dandelions." Dandelion children tend to do pretty well no matter what environment they grow up in. Orchid children, meanwhile, may develop behavior or mood problems in abusive or neglectful homes — but in loving ones, they may thrive even more than dandelions. And according to new research, the difference between dandelions and orchids may be genetic. For instance, kids with a certain variant of a dopamine-processing gene are at greater risk of ADHD and "externalizing behavior" (i.e. "acting out") than other children. But in one study, these kids also improved much more in response to a video-based behavioral intervention than did kids who didn't have the at-risk variant. Similarly, rhesus monkeys with another gene variant (one associated with depression in humans) are worse at processing serotonin than their peers if they are raised as orphans. But when raised by a loving monkey mother, these seemingly at-risk animals process serotonin more efficiently than other monkeys, and are also more socially successful. These and other studies suggest that certain genes confer not risk per se, but a kind of openness to environmental stimuli, positive or negative. Dobbs writes,

At first glance, this idea, which I'll call the orchid hypothesis, may seem a simple amendment to the vulnerability hypothesis. It merely adds that environment and experience can steer a person up instead of down. Yet it's actually a completely new way to think about genetics and human behavior. Risk becomes possibility; vulnerability becomes plasticity and responsiveness. It's one of those simple ideas with big, spreading implications. Gene variants generally considered misfortunes (poor Jim, he got the "bad" gene) can instead now be understood as highly leveraged evolutionary bets, with both high risks and high potential rewards: gambles that help create a diversified-portfolio approach to survival, with selection favoring parents who happen to invest in both dandelions and orchids.

Dobbs spends a lot of time talking about the population-level implications of this new idea. He points out "that a genetic trait tremendously maladaptive in one situation can prove highly adaptive in another" and that "every society needs some individuals who are more aggressive, restless, stubborn, submissive, social, hyperactive, flexible, solitary, anxious, introspective, vigilant-and even more morose, irritable, or outright violent-than the norm." If the orchid hypothesis is true, then perhaps a certain number of people who react extremely strongly to their environment, even if these reactions seem negative to our modern eyes, may be important to the flexibility and survival of our species. But what I found most interesting about Dobbs's piece was its implications for the individual. Dobbs writes of his decision to get tested for a gene variant that increases depression risk but may also confer orchid-like properties. A depression sufferer himself, he turned out to have the variant. Dobbs writes,

[A]s I sat absorbing this information, the chill came to seem less the coldness of fear than a shiver of abrupt and inverted self-knowledge-of suddenly knowing with certainty something I had long suspected, and finding that it meant something other than I thought it would. The orchid hypothesis suggested that this particular allele, the rarest and riskiest of the serotonin-transporter gene's three variants, made me not just more vulnerable but more plastic. And that new way of thinking changed things. I felt no sense that I carried a handicap that would render my efforts futile should I again face deep trouble. In fact, I felt a heightened sense of agency. Anything and everything I did to improve my own environment and experience-every intervention I ran on myself, as it were-would have a magnified effect. In that light, my short/short allele now seems to me less like a trapdoor through which I might fall than like a springboard-slippery and somewhat fragile, perhaps, but a springboard all the same.

In this early age of genetic testing, it's easy to think of genes simplistically — and since most testing is still meant to predict disease, our genotypes sometimes begin to seem like maps full of danger signs. But human beings (and monkeys, too) are extraordinarily complicated, and what seems like a risk may also be a blessing. We still tend to see depression, anxiety, ADHD, and other mood and behavioral abnormalities as defects — if a child is "at risk" for one of these, she needs to be protected as though from a gathering storm. Yet to be at risk may also be to have a unique opportunity.

If the orchid hypothesis is true, then people like Dobbs may possess a plasticity that makes them more vulnerable to sorrow and yet also more capable of change. This would have enormous implications for those suffering from certain mental ailments. Perhaps along with their difficulties, their genes have granted them a tool for solving them — and beyond that, for reaching new heights of personal fulfillment. It would also have an impact on how we raise and teach kids. Some have already speculated that children with ADHD need something different from the one-size-fits-all American educational model. If it's true that some kids are uniquely influenced by environment, then maybe what we need is not to try to make them more like other kids — the current approach — but rather to construct the environment that will best help them thrive. This is likely to be difficult, and expensive, and for these reasons it may not catch on. But we might have much to gain, both as individuals and as a society, by seeing a springboard where we once saw a trapdoor.

The Science Of Success [Atlantic]

Groskop explains that she's dissatisfied with her kids' current bedtime-story fare, and wants something that will teach them feminist gender roles. She writes,

We often read Captain Pugwash and Asterix – but there are no girls in those stories. I was happy with Babar until Celeste became pregnant with triplets and never came out of the nursery again. In Peepo the mother is always ironing. Of course, there are some successes for both boys and girls. Ludwig Bemelmans' Madeline is a wonderful tale of convent girl derring-do, with lots of boy characters, too. Julia Donaldson's books (The Gruffalo, The Smartest Giant in Town) are great fun, but not exactly politically inspiring. I wanted to find something feminist, subversive. The Female Eunuch for five-year-olds.

But while teaching little kids about gender equality is a worthwhile goal, some of the books Groskop tries don't sound very fun. Here's her precis of Girls Are Not Chicks, by Jacinta Bunnell and Julie Novak:

Some of the pictures and captions in this colouring book are funny. A woman riding a tractor: "Who says girls don't like to play in the dirt?" Two ballerinas dancing: "No one wants to fight the patriarchy alone. Make friends." But I'm not sure whether the messages are really for the amusement of children, or adults. One caption reads: "When she stopped chasing the dangling carrot of conventional femininity, she was finally able to savour being a woman." Try explaining that to a three-year-old.

Little kids aren't really known for their love of abstract concepts. What they are known for: resisting well-intentioned parental indoctrination of all kinds. Groskop's son had this to say about Pippi Longstocking, one of his mother's more inspired choices:

It was rubbish. It's stupid. I like Mr Nilsson [Pippi's pet monkey] and the father who was washed overboard and the mother who is up in heaven. Actually, no, it's not rubbish. It's really funny.

And on The Pirate Girl, by Cornelia Funke:

It's the best story in the whole world. Write this: I really like boats.

The problem with using fiction to teach political ideas to kids is that where you see feminism, they may see boats. And books that are specifically designed to teach kids something are often kind of lame. A better approach might be to offer kids exciting books with cool heroines, and let them learn from these that girls can be awesome. Groskop was on the right track with Pippi and Madeline. Other good ideas:

— Beverly Cleary's Ramona Quimby books
— Matilda, by Roald Dahl (also suggested to Groskop by feminist author Natasha Walter)
— David Adler's Cam Jansen mysteries
— Alice in Wonderland
— Anne of Green Gables
— Harriet the Spy
— Kay Thompson's Eloise books
— for slightly older readers, A Wrinkle in Time (although I was sad, in later L'Engle books, when Meg decided not to pursue a career because she felt she couldn't compete with her mom)

Raise kids on a diet of the above, and they'll be reading The Female Eunuch in no time. Or, you know, not. But at least you won't have to read aloud the phrase "the dangling carrot of conventional femininity," which is probably a reward in itself.

Image via Mulatto Diaries.

Feminist Books For Five-Year-Olds [Guardian]

After all, if we can deputize flowers, chafing dishes and seating charts to someone else, I don't see the contradiction in bringing in expert advice where an actual human being is concerned. And apparently, with all the swag and debate clogging Babies R Us and the blogosphere, sometimes you just need a pro to help cut through the spiels.

Okay, "need" is a relative term. But services like Nest Help, the Chicago baby-planning service profiled today on Breitbart, (and that's one of the less cutesy names out there, trust) seem to serve a function, for those who can afford it. As Melissa Moog, president of - wait for it - the National Baby Planner Association (which, unlike the Catholic League, has members),

We're like wedding planners, but we're helping you prepare for your baby's arrival and all the information and research you have to deal with...to basically reduce the overwhelming feelings of stress and save time so you can spend quality time on what matters to you. If what's important to you is going to birthing classes instead of doing research on car seats, I can do that for you.

Or, as another "baby concierge service" puts it, "Whether you are having your baby the old-fashioned way, adopting, or using a surrogate, we take the labor out of your delivery."

Accordingly, they tell you what you need, find the best products, shop if needed, set up registries and can even interview midwives and nannies. (Things we'd probably want to do ourselves, but to each her own.) The price? $50 to $150 an hour, or "by packages, which can cost several hundred to several thousand dollars." From the planner's perspective, why not? It's a great idea, and clearly a service which, in this world of competitive parenting, people are willing to pay for. As Heather Cabot wrote on the HuffPo,

Big business it is. The book, Parenting, Inc. by Pamela Paul estimates the booming "mom market" nets $1.7 trillion dollars every year. Think of all of those fancy "must-have" strollers, diaper wipe warmers and designer layettes and it isn't difficult to comprehend that figure. After researching their idea for more than a year, the partners discovered that busy moms, especially full-time working mothers seemed willing to pay big bucks to outsource some of the preparation and planning.

The issue, of course, is that the services reinforce the notion that all this stuff is still necessary. They're not opting out of competitive parenting; indeed, they're reinforcing its existence and importance. Says one busy mom-to-be in the article,

A mother today looks a lot different than a mother 15 years ago...She is powerful. She is strong. She is knowledgeable. Women today know it's OK to ask for help. That's a victory for all of us.

Well, but what about the strength to throw off society's absurd expectations that a woman be a supermom? Wouldn't that save just as much time - and money? That said, this whole industry is going to inspire a killer rom-com.

New Moms Hiring Baby Planners To Help Pre-Baby [Breitbart]
The Baby Planners [Official Site]
The Baby Planners [Huffington Post]

Harris feels that, lately, there's an unprecedented amount of vitriol directed at moms.

Maybe people were nicer to our moms, maybe people weren't. In one way or another, our culture has always been weird about mothers. Love/hate, Jocasta/Joan Crawford, supermom/"evil" stepmom, you name it. But right now, in some circles, it seems we're leaning toward hate. Yes, even when you control for the anonymous online jerkwad factor. And yes, even — perhaps especially? — as more and more blogs, books, sitcoms and movies, successful or not, explore with unprecedented candor the experience of being a (white, middle-class) mother.

In Harris' view, it's no coincidence that this is all about women.

And it's not only about "parenting," either. No, I am telling you, it's about mothers. (White mothers, generally, and usually urban ones — if in part because they're out and about on sidewalks and subways, not cloistered in carpools and playrooms.) You know them, or at least their epithets: "Stroller moms," the "stroller mafia," the particularly objectionable "stroller Nazis" — and while we're at it, the "helicopter moms" and "sanctimommies."

She adds,

Women — still — are not "supposed" to take up space. Mothers, in particular. We are — still — supposed to remain in the background, doing whatever it is mothers do, smiling. We grow a belly, we need a seat, we say "excuse me, please," we speak up (or, God forbid, blog), and we've crossed the line, said or asked too much, become "entitled."

Okay. I love children. I dote on babies. I plan to have kids at some point. I'm not a child-hating grinch with a vendetta against "breeders," as the haters would have it. And yet, I totally get the mommy rage. And Harris' reaction is disingenuous: It's not about the kids. It's not even about the stroller-blocking. It's about the parents. And as she makes very clear, it's a self-selecting, moneyed, privileged and child-centric group of parents - a tiny percentage of the parents in this country and in the world at large. Much of the baby industry may be geared towards this population, but it's still a very small one. Yes, I said parents. Now, while I'm well able to believe that there's plenty of societal ambivalence coming out here towards women, this is an equal-opportunity resentment. While it's usually moms we see, when one does see an indulgent helicopter dad (and do you ever!) it provokes exactly the same reactions. I could spin you a little yarn about a father, an ill-behaved, angelic flaxen-haired child named after a jazz musician and the artisanal bread booth at the greenmarket, but there's been enough snarking. And the problem with satirizing such a population (and again - it's a specific population, as Harris makes very clear) is that it's beyond parody.

Yes, there's a class element here. But, come on, it's not just a class thing: if this were just a bunch of wealthy parents with nannies and fancy baby clothes, it would be a very different matter. It's the combination of smugness and obliviousness, Berkeley ethics funded by serious money, of campaigning for liberal politicians while complaining about nanny problems. It's people talking knowingly about the obliviousness of the 50s and Betty Draper's terrible parenting and knowing they're superior, while a toddler rolls on the floor under other coffee drinkers' feet (also this weekend). It's not that people just mind the strollers taking up the street; it's then getting mad when you won't move for those strollers. In short, it's the narcissism of single people, but expanded to fit a whole family. As Neal Pollack told the Times, "'I don't think it's a bad thing that people want to continue a semblance of their pre-parenthood lifestyle...Going to rock shows and bars, he added, is "just what their lives were.'" This is really it in a nutshell: the sense some of these parents give is that they'll have it all, on their terms. There will be no concessions made: instead, the world will concede.

Harris brings up Park Slope, the nexus of all New York's fabled mommy-snark. There was a minor fracas in '08 when Union Hall, a bar and music venue in that neighborhood, asked moms not to bring strollers and mobile kids to the bar, because the space was not kid-proof and it was a legal issue. Parents across the blogs were up in arms - so much so that the bar had to take it back. This was, in some eyes, a good answer to Harris's question.

In sum, no one reasonable hates parents. What people don't like is inconsiderate self-absorbed parents who expect the world to be reordered. Of course, what's hard is that defensive, self-righteous and oblivious parents are more than matched by total assholes on the other side of the aisle, who shout their kid-hate from the rooftops. My initial reaction to Harris' piece was, what? We don't dislike moms! And then I read the comments. Here are a few, just from page 1:

"we don't want to hate you, but we will if you deserve it."

"I resent that my choice to be child-free subjects me to condescension and pity, even though I'm not the one taking up the whole aisle at Target with said SUV stroller and screaming, unruly brats named after medieval professions."

"Quite simply I hate your baby."

"Having children these days is something that highly uncreative women do to fill their lives. PERIOD."

"You write vapid, pointless articles about how hard it is to have a kid during the most wide-open, accepting and privileged time and place(s) in history."

"One child per person. Period. The right we all share is to ensure life for everyone not just our own."

Helpful as these comments are, they do serve to underlie the total fruitlessness of this argument. No one is backing down. It's like oil and water coming together, forming a translucent puddle on the internet. Now, in some lights, that oil floating on top of the water is beautiful. But most of us would rather step over it - and help our kids do the same. "I hate moms," sighed my friend Cora the other day. We were pushing her one-year-old in a stroller. And I knew what she meant.

Everybody Hates Mommy [Salon]
Look Who's Getting Rolled Out Of The Bar [New York Times]

The backlash against overinvolved "helicopter" parents has been going on long time, and Nancy Gibbs's description of such people in Time will surprise no one who reads trend pieces. They buy Baby Kneepads! They monitor their kids at college, and even in their jobs! When their precious daughter forgets a necklace she needs for her "coordinated outfit," they race to school to drop it off!

More surprising than these stock Generation-Y anecdotes is the news that some parents are pushing back, not just with rebellious mommy-blogging, but with actual classes designed to curb their overparenting impulses. Gibbs describes one such class:

Eleven parents are sitting in a circle in an airy, glass-walled living room in south Austin, Texas, eating organic, gluten-free, nondairy coconut ice cream. This is a Slow Family Living class, taught by perinatal psychologist Carrie Contey and Bernadette Noll. "Our whole culture," says Contey, 38, "is geared around 'Is your kid making the benchmarks?' There's this fear of 'Is my kid's head the right size?' People think there's some mythical Good Mother out there that they aren't living up to and that it's hurting their child. I just want to pull the plug on that."

Truly committed de-overparenters can get Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting, to "go into your home, weed out your kids' stuff, sort out their schedule, turn off the screens and help your family find space you didn't know you had, like a master closet reorganizer for the soul." Payne recommends that parents get rid of children's broken and outgrown toys, "pare down to the classics that leave the most to the child's imagination and create a kind of toy library kids can visit and swap from. Then build breaks of calm into their schedule so they can actually enjoy the toys." Paring down its possessions seems smart, but "toy library?" "Build breaks into their schedule?" These make fun sound like school, childhood sound like work, and de-overparenting sound a lot like, well, overparenting. In the same vein, "pulling the plug" on unrealistic ideals of motherhood is a worthy goal, but do parents really need a special class — complete with nondairy ice cream — in order to achieve it?

One dad, Matt, tells Gibbs that de-overparenting can be a tough transition. He says, "it's not every day that I consciously sit down and ask myself hard questions about how I want family life to be slower or better." But should the process of being a more relaxed parent really involve "hard questions?" Can't you just do it by, you know, relaxing? Can't parents just lighten up without making lightening up into yet another rulebound parenting project? When did parenting become a gerund anyway?

One point kind of gets lost in all the hysteria over helicopter parents: Gibbs writes, "It's a tricky line to walk, since studies link parents' engagement in a child's education to better grades, higher test scores, less substance abuse and better college outcomes. Given a choice, teachers say, overinvolved parents are preferable to invisible ones." And while she also says "helicopter parents can be found across all income levels," it's certainly easier to hover over your kid if you have the money for things like violin lessons, college admissions coaches, and de-overparenting classes. This is not to say that poorer families never have overparenting problems, but it might be wise to redirect some of the hysteria over helicopter parents towards making it easier for all parents to get an appropriate level of involvement in their children's education. Moms and dads who don't speak English or who work three jobs might not be able to harass teachers or overschedule their kids with extracurriculars, but they also have a harder time helping with homework and addressing kids' difficulties at school — and this might be a bigger problem than a few jerks with Baby Kneepads.

Can These Parents Be Saved? [Time]

Of course, food is often a touchy subject even in non-vegetarian homes. My desire to eat nothing but plain chicken and bagels throughout my childhood caused plenty of bitter fights, and contributed to my parents' early fear that my vegetarianism was just another form of pickiness. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I hated all foods with flavor so much, but I do know that kids start searching at a relatively young age for ways to exercise their own autonomy, and food choice is one of these ways. So should the children of vegetarians get to choose to eat meat?

Emily Sohn of the LA Times addresses several issues surrounding this question, including health. It's a common misconception that growing kids need meat to survive. I remember a sort of legend that made the rounds in college about a student who tried to raise her toddler vegan; all the kid's teeth fell out, and had to be replaced with metal ones. The metal is, I think, a dead giveaway that this story was bullshit (although I'd kind of like to get a look at little Johnny Steelfangs), but it's true that vegetarian and especially vegan diets for kids require a few tweaks. As Sohn says, small children may need calorie-rich foods like peanut butter because a vegetarian diet can otherwise fill them up without giving them enough energy. And breastfeeding vegan moms may need a B12 supplement. But horror stories aside, a meat-free diet shouldn't do kids physical harm.

Then there's the psychological angle. As Sohn points out, "school-age children in particular can become anxious when anything about them is different from their peers, including what they eat for lunch." This actually seems like an opportunity for educating kids about differences — after all, children are always going to stick out in some way, and if parents can teach them to stand up for what's in their lunchboxes, they may be better at standing up for what's in their heads.

What seems more difficult to negotiate is a kid's desire to separate herself from her parents — including their dietary restrictions. Of course, many parents exercise some control over what their kids eat, and in some religions, dietary rules have been passed down for millennia. But, as Sohn notes, "resentment can build up if foods are forbidden completely." And at some point, kids are going to have the opportunity to try a hamburger. Parents can tell their children why they believe vegetarianism is important, and they can make only vegetarian foods at home. But when it comes to the big, bad, omnivorous world, probably the best they can do is teach them to make informed choices and not to let anyone else think for them — including mom and dad.

Don't Make Food A Conflict For A Vegetarian Child [LA Times]
Nutritional Guidelines For Vegetarian Children [LA Times]

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]

As the Times's Jennifer Steinhauer points out, fake guns and swords have long been forbidden at school, and although she depicts mask bans as part of a new crackdown, my brother and I were forbidden from covering our faces back in the nineties. What is new is an insistence on "positive costumes" rather than the traditional ghosts, vampires, zombies, and ax murderers. A school in Plainfield, Ill. encourages "costumes depicting animals and food (preferably carrots or pumpkins)" — the "carrots or pumpkins" preference implies that even dressing as junk food may be beyond the pale. Plainfield district spokesman Tom Hernandez says, "Several years ago, there was some push back in our community. Some people thought Halloween was a Satanic ritual." Perhaps embarrassed to have put himself in the same camp as Harry Potter haters, he backtracks: "Well, let's not say Satanic - let's say they were not comfortable with what it represents." So now, Halloween in Plainfield will represent ... salad.

Riverside Drive Elementary in LA's San Fernando Valley issued a whole memo about Halloween costumes, stipulating the following:

¶They should not depict gangs or horror characters, or be scary.

¶Masks are allowed only during the parade.

¶Costumes may not demean any race, religion, nationality, handicapped condition or gender.

¶No fake fingernails.

¶No weapons, even fake ones.

¶Shoes must be worn.

All of this really sounds pretty reasonable, except for the "no scary costumes" part. It's a little disturbing that schools now feel the need to protect children from fake blood and zombie makeup. But it's not exactly a surprise. I went to public school in the San Fernando Valley, and while I had a largely good experience, I can attest that there's nothing those schools love more than banning shit. I remember not just the mask ban, but also the yo-yo ban, the pog ban, the D&D ban, and the ban on "white socks pulled up to the knees and worn with cutoffs" (I think this was thought to be gang attire, but I never saw anyone wearing it, and the fact that it had to be recited aloud to us in homeroom every day for four years was nothing short of surreal). In some cases, these bans were meant to keep us physically safe. In others, they were meant to reduce conflict or status-jockeying (this never works, as a banned yo-yo is an even bigger status symbol than a legal one). And in others still, they seemed conceived in concert with overprotective parents as a way of keeping our little lives free of any untoward influence of any kind. The ban on scary costumes seems to fall into the last category.

According to Steinhauer, the LA Unified School District has long discouraged sexy costumes, such as French maids, and I find this somewhat easier to support. I get not wanting to initiate kids into the sexual-industrial complex before they're old enough to do their own face paint. But Halloween is supposed to be scary, and while I understand shielding the young and sensitive from horror movies, I doubt many children are going to be permanently scarred by seeing, say, a fake scar. And I find truly scary costumes a welcome antidote to the recent dominance of the sexy.

A few years ago, my mom told me about her favorite trick-or-treater — a fairy princess with a pink dress and an oozing bullet hole smack in the middle of her forehead. Was it in poor taste? Kind of. Did it glorify violence? I guess. But the whole point of Halloween is to acknowledge that death and gore and fear are part of human existence, and to celebrate them rather than fleeing them. Of course, fleeing and denying death (and aging, and disease, and anything else "gross") is exactly what American culture does every other day of the year, so perhaps the fact that we're now forcing our kids to dress up as carrots should come as no surprise. I can sense a backlash already, though: banning "horror characters" will just force kids to find more creative ways to be terrifying. Steinhauer cites one LA kid who's going as a box of Wheaties, which is so wholesome it's actually kind of scary.

Drop The Halloween Mask! You Might Scare Somebody [NYT]

Writes the New York Times' Hilary Stout,

incongruously and with regularity, this is a generation that yells..."I've worked with thousands of parents and I can tell you, without question, that screaming is the new spanking," said Amy McCready, the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, which teaches parenting skills in classes, individual coaching sessions and an online course. "This is so the issue right now. As parents understand that it's not socially acceptable to spank children, they are at a loss for what they can do. They resort to reminding, nagging, timeout, counting 1-2-3 and quickly realize that those strategies don't work to change behavior. In the absence of tools that really work, they feel frustrated and angry and raise their voice. They feel guilty afterward, and the whole cycle begins again."

So, those unenlightened generations who did hit their kids maintained a calm silence at all times? Doubtful. Yelling is apparently traumatic for kids, but having come from such a family - no hitting, plenty of exasperated yelling - at least part of the issue seems to be that it's so ineffective. Yeah, it might mean Mom's mad, but in our house, that was as bad as it got...her being mad. Yelling implied a lack of control that wasn't scary, but certainly didn't suggest authority. On Supernanny, a show to which I'm addicted, if only because she makes parenting look so deceptively easy, Jo arrives at a house full of screaming, ineffectual adults and insolent brats and with a little consistency, plenty of hugs and a few rounds on the Naughty Mat, gets the house running like a well-oiled Duggar machine. (And say what you will about Michelle Duggar, the woman doesn't raise her voice.) The issue isn't "corporal punishment" versus "total lack of discipline," and it seems a little problematic to make the choice seem so diametric. Indeed, isn't that parenting coach (!) kind of implying that spanking is the only solution that "works" - albeit "socially unacceptable?" Many a formerly slap-happy Supernanny success story could tell you otherwise - at least as of two weeks after filming.

For Some Parents, Shouting Is The New Spanking [NYTimes]

What impact this had on our sex lives I don't know, but I do know that as adults my brother and I obviously have to scream this at random intervals whenever we're together. These things make an impression. A piece on MSNBC talks about the dynamics of watching TV together. And forget Where the Wild Things Are. New findings suggest that watching TV with parents can freak kids out.

While it seems logical to protect a child from something scary by watching together, in fact a lot of kids take their cues from parents, and a skittish mom can only add to anxiety. (Like, even flinching; you don't need to be terrified by Dumbo, although some of us are.) "The researchers suggest that well-intentioned parents might be inadvertently turning up the volume on fear. That can happen simply because children are watching their parents' reactions." This logic applies to many facets of childrens' fears, and a lot of it's pretty intuitive: we've all seen a small child "decide" how bad a fall or scrape is - what might have been a small incident if dealt with matter-of-factly can become a screaming tantrum if an adult reacts with excessive concern or panic.

The piece details the various ways coddling can reinforce fears, the way a parent can communicate his own neuroses - and makes the point that the opposite "tough-it-out" extreme's not great, either. Common-sense stuff, for the most part. The TV findings are really interesting though because it's fascinating to think how much of fear is natural and intuitive, how much it's influenced by circumstance. I've seen young children in the same family react completely differently to The Wizard of Oz, and for that matter I have strong memories of being so terrified in a theatre showing of The Black Cauldron that my aunt had to take me out of the theatre; to this day I think of it as the scariest movie in the world.

The article doesn't get into it, but it's hard not to think about that other scary parent-movie scenario, sex scenes. I wonder how much of that squirming discomfort is natural, and how much is communicated by our parents. A friend tells me that sitting between her parents through Don't Look Now remains one of the more traumatic memories of her early-teen years. "But that wasn't even just the normal squirm," she writes, "because my parents kind of looked like Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, so it was doubly awful." Scary indeed.

Mom And Dad Make Scary Movies Even Scarier [MSNBC]

If ever there was a convincing case for parental divorce, it was Barrymore, who, after getting clean, legally distanced herself from an exploitative manager-mom who used her to get into clubs, and a dad who only called to ask for money. It seems to have worked out. And when reading about other cases in which parents seem - ahem - more parasitic than protective, the need for distance seems like a necessary means of achieving a healthy and functional adulthood.

But these are the extreme cases - neglect, exploitation, substance or emotional abuse. Likewise, a psychiatrist in today's New York Times discusses a case in which he took the extreme step of urging a patient to cut off contact with his parents after meeting them - they deemed the patient's homosexual "lifestyle" sinful and had told him it would have been better had he died in a car accident rather than his brother. Obviously, his doctor felt - as did the judge handling Barrymore's "divorce" - that this was the only chance, a process he likens to removing a gangrenous limb.

He's right when he says "the assumption that parents are predisposed to love their children unconditionally and protect them from harm is not universally true." This is why, theoretically, we have social workers and judges (who decide whether balloon-hoaxes and Nazi names are grounds for child removal, rather than the well-intentioned mob). The problem is when it's not so clear-cut - and when someone's an adult. The Times encouraged readers to talk about their own experiences with such untenable relationships, and they did flow: stories of abuse and wrenching decisions to cut off family as adults for the sake of emotional well-being. Much as I feel for those who've experienced real horrors - and there are plenty - I also couldn't help the niggling thought that a lot of it comes down to temperament and, yes, what people are willing or able to endure.

When I decided to see a therapist for the first time, I visited someone who'd come highly-recommended by several family friends. I told her about pressures I felt from my dad, fights with my mom, growing pains. After several sessions she looked at me gravely and said, "Your family is toxic. And I really think you need to cut them out of your life." Huh? Maybe we had some dysfunction, but toxic? Really? I was stunned. Even had this been an option - which it wasn't - I didn't want to cut my parents off! Later, I learned that two of the people who'd recommended this same therapist had, indeed, severed their ties with their families and were the happier for it, but I didn't see her again. Most families are somewhat difficult, and dealing with that - to a reasonable extent - is part of being an adult, surely, not an impediment to growth. I have a friend who's cut off her mother because her mom's drug addiction has turned her into someone she doesn't know, and, for that matter, someone who's drained her bank account. She says she hopes they reconcile, but at the end of the day, this wasn't a choice for her. And I guess that's what it comes down to.

Drew Barrymore [CBS]

Divorcing Your Parents [NY Times]
When Parents Are Too Toxic to Tolerate [NY Times]
60 Minutes: Drew Barrymore [CBS News]

Because the kids in Milk are cool. Really cool. But also: The photography is fun, the fashion is well-styled and, in many ways, Milk kicks Vogue's ass.

Obviously child models are cute. But when shooting them on a blank background, the results could be meh. Instead, Milk pulls off vibrant, interesting portraits.

Instead of models jumping, you get models hamming it up. What's not to love?

There's an attitude here, and it says: "My allowance is paltry. Step it up."

So fresh-faced and fun!

Do you think she has a blog? Do you think she has a Twitter account? Do you think she knows who Madonna is?

I'm fully aware that these kids are being paid and that a professional photographer and stylist are creating the look of this shoot. And still: I'm fully buying the character this kid is playing. He's into chess, cheese and Wes Anderson movies.

If you don't let her watch Breakfast At Tiffany's again, she is going to hold her breath.

Um, can I hang out with you guys after school work?

She's obviously cooking up mischief.

Tyra asked her to be on America's Next Top Child Model, but this young lady was too busy.

"Really? You invited boys to your party? Seriously? How disappointing."

Ah, childhood — full of unicorn dreams and playing in abandoned car graveyards.

"For my next trick, I'll make Brussels sprouts disappear!"

"Attention! Playing with life size trucks is more fun than playing with toy trucks. Pass it on!"

I want to wear this tomorrow. Is that lame?

Just one example of how the photography is more inventive than Vogue.

Dear Anna Wintour: The tiny gauntlet has been thrown.

Earlier: Milk Magazine: Memoirs Of A (Child) Geisha
Milk Magazine Gets In Your Face With Breast Milk

I don't know the circumstances, but a little boy was acting up and his mother spanked him outside the dining room. Well, this was not the place to do that. Within an instant, the mother was surrounded by irate grandmas literally screaming at her. Someone grabbed the child. Someone else called shrilly for social services. And one woman in a nut-brown wig delivered a scathing lecture in which the words "unfit to be a mother" figured prominently.

Now, obviously, watching a child be dealt with with unnecessary harshness is horrible, and seeing the sweetness getting yelled or hit out of a blameless child by an angry parent is one of the most upsetting sights in the world. And when you see that, you understand things like the "spanking ban" that Sweden's had in place for 30 years. There's a really interesting piece on NPR that takes on the issue. It's arguably changed that country's child-rearing culture - but some feel it's overly indulgent. And others simply feel it's nobody's business - and that there's a wide margin between a spank and abuse.

I came from the kind of home where corporal punishment was tantamount to eating fast food - unthinkable! But some of this, I'm sure, was the influence of the times and a deliberate distancing from their parents' generation (at least, on my mom's side.) And yet, plenty of my friends grew up in more traditional setups and don't feel the occasional spank did them any harm. To most of us, there seems to be a wide margin between true abuse and the little boy I babysat whose mother "never wanted him to hear the word 'no' and who has now been kicked out of his school for bad behavior. Now, there are concrete arguments for the legislation: it's been suggested that spanking can be a gateway to more serious abuse, and effect children's cognitive and emotional development. And if either of these things can be prevented in a world where we can't prevent much, obviously, they should.

But in American it's never that simple. The issue is largely cultural, as the Catskills incident shows, and in America, that kind of legislation would have to but up against a myriad of backgrounds and mores. I'm anticipating hearing a wide range of perspectives here, from mothers as well as those of differing backgrounds, and I want to. Because the issue becomes: what is abuse? Is it in the intent? Is it in neglect? And by this logic can harmful indulgence be considered punishable, too? Yes, I'm playing devil's advocate here, but it's an issue that, in its complexity, demands that.

A Spanking Ban In The U.S.? [NPR]
Related: Study: Spanking Worse For Kids Than Yelling

"A Strong Natural Tendency To Escalate": How Mild Spanking Can Lead To Child Abuse