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]

Babble's list includes such archetypes as "the bragger parent" and "the obsessed parent." (Still mired in the mostly-childless morass of people's snack updates and song lyrics, I can only yearn for a time when anyone will have anything as actually important as a baby to discuss, but I can only imagine that for the more restrained parents amongst us, such exhibitionism might grate - and, apparently, worse.) What the author seems to be really objecting to, though, is the assumption of equal fascination that characterizes both many Facebook users and many new (and newish) parents. For a new parent, Facebook and its ilk are a boon - both a connection to the world and to those doting relatives who are hungry for info. But these same qualities might have others reaching for "block status."

And that, of course, is ultimately the point: Facebook, Twitter, they're all optional - you don't need to see or hear anything you don't want to, and the truth is many of us love being annoyed. Facebook giveth, and Facebook taketh away. (Mostly it giveth, and giveth, and giveth, it's just that sometimes it's giving you "Jack-o-lanterns" and witticisms and invitations to join groups of middle-school-level irony.) We all love to grumble about the vagaries of various populations, be it the enthusiasms of our parents' generation, the narcissism of our own, the absorption of new parents. It's silly to complain, but it's just as unreasonable for the article's readers to huff, "then don't join!" All of these are part of the fabric of modern living, all necessary and vital. How anemic would life be with only restrained reports of moves or New York Times links? It's the Great Conversation. With pictures.

Facebook's Five Most Annoying Parents [Babble]

The MSNBC headline really says it all: "It's a boy? Disappointment plagues some moms." Of course, "gender disappointment" exists (as we know) in both forms. But for mothers who've been dreaming of girly bonding - or those, like my grandmother, who have four boys - the boy regret is apparently more common. As one mother quoted in the piece puts it, "There's not going to be any pink dresses. There's not going to be any scrapbooking. That's not going to happen."

Therapists quoted in the piece recommend that those who are super hung up on one sex find out in advance so as to deal with the disappointment. And now there's a resource: Altered Dreams: Living with Gender Disappointment, written by one mom whose sons will, hopefully, never check Amazon. I mean, surely at some point "gender disappointment" turns into "having a baby boy," right? This isn't the 19th century, where a father can't look at a girl without seeing the heir she should have been. And the moms quoted in the piece are sure to affirm that they love their sons, even if one of them "sometimes looks at her son and wonders, just for a moment, what he would look like as a girl." Well, if she's really curious, she can do what one of my friend's mothers did: dress him in dresses and bonnets because, dammit, she wasn't going to be cheated out of the pink.

It's A Boy? Disappointment Plagues Some Moms [MSNBC]

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]

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]

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]

The story of twelve-year-old "Luca" would be extreme in any country. According to Jeff Israely of Time, his parents divorced soon after he was born, and his dad wasn't allowed to see him for nine years. His mother and grandparents seem to have kept him essentially on lockdown, letting him leave the house for school but not to play with friends, do sports, or even go to church. They sent him to school with snacks precut in bite-size pieces, and apparently did so much for him that he was "physically and psychologically stunted." His lawyer, Andrew Marzola, says, "He didn't know how to run. He had the motor skills of a 3-year-old child."

Luca's mother and grandfather have already been convicted of child abuse, and his grandmother is still facing charges. It's a complicated case, given that the family is charged not with neglect but with overinvolvement, with harming a child by trying to help him. Is it really child abuse if your parenting techniques damage a child's ability to live in the world? Don't many parents unintentionally end up doing this?

These questions may have larger implications for Italy, which is facing an epidemic of mammone, or mama's boys. A number of factors contribute to this supposed problem. Ethno-clinical psychologist Henriette Felici-Bach claims that, "In Germany, children are educated from early on to [execute] a task on their own from beginning to end. In southern [European] countries, children are dependent on what people tell them to do." And Italian culture and history may encourage an especially strong bond between mother and children because of Catholicism, economic insecurity, and a long string of weak governments that forced people to rely only on their families for support. 37% of Italian men between 30 and 34 still live with their mothers, and economist Enrico Moretti says, "Italians, unlike parents from most other countries, like living with their grown children."

The case of Luca — and of older mammone, if they are in fact rampant — seems to illustrate the pitfalls of the kind of closeness with parents we discussed yesterday. But why are men more likely to be affected? Israely doesn't really discuss this, other than to point out that Italian women are "statistically less susceptible" to being "hyper-coddled." Maybe that's because daughters are less favored in Italy than sons, or because, as we see in American commercials, it's less acceptable to be childlike and incompetent as a woman than as a man. While women in America are certainly expected to look like teenagers forever, and sometimes to behave in ways that are cute or juvenile, it's not really considered that charming for us to fail to pick up after ourselves. In America as in Italy, men may get more of a pass in this area.

So could Luca's case go to trial in America? Israely makes the obligatory gesture toward American "helicopter parents," saying, "modern society is producing ever more overinformed, overanxious and overprotective parents, blamed for causing or exacerbating all sorts of problems in their children, from learning disabilities to teenage anorexia." But being blamed for these problems isn't the same as actually causing them, and it seems much harder to prove that an overprotective parent actually hurt a child than that an abusive one did. And where would we draw the line between merely ill-advised parenting tactics and actual abuse? Helicopter parenting may not give kids anorexia (I'm especially skeptical on this point), but as Felici-Bach says, "If you don't let your child discover the world, it can do real harm." However, the solution to this problem, at least in America, probably isn't in the courts.

In Italy, A Mamma Accused Of Doting Too Much [Time]

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]

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

Forbes dresses up the article with the obligatory Lindsay/Dina Lohan pic, and author Jenna Goudreau writes that the best-friend mom "dresses like her daughter, offers TMI about her personal life and tries to befriend her children's teenage friends." But watch out: "Moms who try to be befriend their teenage children end up leaving them motherless—at a time when they really need a mom most." It's pretty much common wisdom at this point that trying to be your kid's BFF isn't good parenting. But is this really such a huge social problem?

According to clinical psychologist Stephan B. Poulter, yes. He tells Goudreau, "This trend has become very popular. Just look at People magazine." Poulter claims 30% to 40% of moms are now best-friend moms, a number we hope he arrived at by some method more scientific than flipping through tabloids. So what's behind this "very popular" trend? Goudreau writes,

One theory as to why comes from Poulter, who suggests that there is a greater number of mothers who don't have the time or energy—due to long hours at work, financial stress or otherwise—to put into being a full-time mom. These women are pragmatists in that it's more emotionally rewarding—"easier" as Poulter puts it—to be a friend rather than a traditional mother figure. All that—plus the adage "40 is the new 20." Is anyone growing up?

The culprit is those selfish working moms who are too lazy to discipline their kids — and too skanky to act like proper 40-year-old women. Don't get me wrong — the pressure on older women to continue looking like high school students is upsetting. But articles like Goudreau's imply that it's their fault, that middle-aged women in America are just so into being sexy and having fun that they don't want to "grow up." This attitude — like many discussions of "age-appropriate" clothing — denies middle-aged women's sexuality and makes it sound like the only sensible thing for them to do is slice oranges for the soccer game. And it promulgates a pretty rigid notion of what it means to grow up.

This rigidity is on display elsewhere in Goudreau's article. She talks to author Susan Morris Shaffer, who expounds on mother-daughter bonds today. Goudreau writes,

Shaffer feels that this era presents a new opportunity for adult daughters and their mothers to become closer. Because young women are increasingly attending college, pursuing careers and getting married later, they have an "extended adolescence" in which the mother-daughter bond may be one of their strongest.

It's true that I and many other young women I know have close relationships with our mothers, relationships that are probably closer than they would be if we were married with children. But does that really mean we're in and "extended adolescence?" Goudreau's language is especially strange here, as it seems to indicate that getting an education and pursuing a career are "adolescent" things, while marriage is what really makes you an adult. "Extended adolescence" is a pretty common term lately, and while it's not always as blatant as this, it usually implies that even if you have a job and a degree, until you get married and have a baby you're some sort of ancient teenager.

I have no doubt that it's unhealthy for parents not to discipline their kids, or to base their self-worth on whether their children perceive them as cool. But I do doubt that moms acting "young" is the biggest problem facing kids today. And I don't believe we should be using the standards of the past — either for marital age or for "age-appropriate behavior" — to judge our lives in the present. Being unmarried doesn't make you a teenager, and wearing a miniskirt or going to a club doesn't mean you think "40 is the new 20." Can't media outlets write about childrearing without perpetuating tired stereotypes about what makes a good woman or a good mother? Maybe someday they will, but given its record on issues affecting women, Forbes probably won't be leading the charge.

Are You A Best-Friend Mom? [Forbes]

The study looked at 12,500 five-year-olds, and controlled for factors like socioeconomic status and mothers' education. Researchers found that children of working mothers were more likely to drink soda and eat "crisps and sweets" between meals, and less likely to snack on fruits and vegetables, than their peers with stay-at-home moms. Kids whose mothers worked were also more likely to be driven to school, rather than walking or biking, and more likely to spend two or more hours a day watching TV or using the computer. The effect on kids' eating and exercise habits was less when mothers worked part-time than when they work full-time, but still significant, and in fact, the average employed mom in the study worked only 21 hours a week. According to the Guardian, "flexible working had an impact, but [...] no strong effect on the health of the children."

Study author Catherine Law says, "Our results do not imply that mothers should not work. Rather they highlight the need for policies and programmes to help support parents." But coverage of the study in the British media is sending a more alarmist message. The BBC calls the kids' soda-drinking and TV-watching "health behaviours likely to promote excess weight gain," and cites an earlier study on the same population that found children of working mothers (and, interestingly, children of wealthy parents) have higher obesity risk. The Guardian helpfully illustrates the study with a picture of a pudgy kid eating chips in front of the TV. And the Daily Fail sums up the study thus:

[R]esearchers insist the results 'do not imply that mothers should not work'.

But they say there is a definite link between paid employment and a lifestyle that leaves children more at risk from obesity and disease.

Translation: better stay in the kitchen baking wholesome treats (like the mom in the Daily Mail's accompanying picture), or your kids will get fat and sick. Of course, there's little actual mention of the children's health in the coverage of the study — we don't know if kids of working moms are at higher risk for diabetes, if they have more trouble running a mile, et cetera. We do know that flexible work hours supposedly influenced kids' "unhealthy behaviors" but not their overall health, which is confusing but may indicate that the behaviors of the poor abandoned latchkey kids are less dire than they're made out to be. But if kids' health really does suffer when moms work outside the home, the solution isn't to heap more guilt on moms, who often don't have much choice. Instead, as Law says, parents and kids need better support and facilities to make healthy food and exercise more accessible. The BBC mentions Britain's Change4Life program, which provides education about nutrition and exercise, and sounds like a good start.

The study brings up another question, though. Amid all the headlines like "Working Mums 'Harm Child's Progress'" and "Working Mums' 'Child Weight Risk'" (BBC articles linked from the study coverage), where are those other parents? You know, dads? BBC commenter Naomi says,

I'm cross on so many levels, but mainly a personal one! I work, my husband doesn't, he is our daughter's main carer. He walks her to school, he looks after her after school stuff and cooks her meals every day. She has restricted TV time and is not allowed sweets. Why do people insist on saying 'mother' when they often mean 'parent'. It's wrong on other levels too of course, but for me it's the stupidity of assuming a mum should stay at home and a dad should work - are we still in the 50s?

From the Daily Mail photo, it looks like we are.

Image via Daily Mail.

Working Mothers' Children Unfit [BBC]
Working Mothers Have Unhealthiest Children, Study Finds [Guardian]
Working Mums Beware: Why Children Of Stay-At-Home Mothers Have Healthier Lifestyles [Daily Mail]

The father of five-year-old twins (that's not them in the picture) whose mom is home-schooling them for kindergarten and perhaps beyond, O'Hehir writes, "Let's be honest: It's almost always mothers who react defensively when the subject comes up, as if our personal decision not to send our kids to public school contained an implicit judgment of whatever different choices they may have made." However, he says, "childless women are often curious and even intrigued; the question is hypothetical but possesses a certain allure as a thought experiment." But this childless woman found his home-school manifesto pretty annoying — at least at first.

O'Hehir says he and his wife are just choosing their choice with regard to their kids Nini and Desmond, and that they don't hate public school or judge parents who send their kids there. But they're actually pretty snooty about the education system that they — and most adults today — had to endure. O'Hehir writes,

The real purpose of all this formal schooling is to get the kids out of the house and train them to stand in line and follow instructions while mommy and daddy get back to their ultra-important lives as economic production units.

And,

Ordinary schools tend to socialize children by way of enclosed, age-homogeneous pods, while home schooling tends to socialize children through a wide range of interactions with older kids, younger kids and adults, as well as peers.

And,

But we're also not exposing them to bullying, arbitrary systems of order and discipline, age-inappropriate standards of behavior, and the hegemony of corporatized kid culture.

And,

We're not ready to surrender our kids, and ourselves, to a 10-month-a-year, all-day institution whose primary goal, at least at this age, seems to be teaching kids how to function within a 10-month-a-year, all-day institution.

So basically formal schooling is a bully-filled discipline machine that will turn your kids into pod people just so you can keep on being an "economic production unit." But, you know, we're not judging you or anything. To his credit, O'Hehir does recognize that homeschooling isn't feasible for everyone, for economic and other reasons. And he's certainly not alone among parents in thinking that the way he (and his wife, who does most of the actual schooling) are raising their kids is the right one. But it's a little disingenuous to wonder why people don't respect your "personal decision" when you clearly don't respect the alternative.

As I read O'Hehir's article and his wife's blog, however, I noticed that something other than snootiness was turning me off. On her blog, O'Hehir's wife Leslie Kauffman describes doing some handwriting and reading practice with her kids — about an hour of dedicated "doing kindergarten" every day. The rest of their home-schooled life looks something like this:

We're learning about Hinduism at the moment; we spent hours reading tales of Shiva and Parvati, Rama and Sita, and especially Ganesh. We visited the Met twice to search for images of these deities in the South Asian wing; we paid a visit to Little India in Queens, where the kids admired saris and ate ladoos. The kids even assembled a puzzle map of Asia (which then became a playground first for their toy vehicles and then, somewhat mysteriously, for their Egyptian god and goddess figurines).

When I first read this, I was dismissive. How were kids going to learn about the shitty responsibilities of everyday life if everything they did was, well, fun? Then I thought about my own childhood. Although I did have a lot of fun as a kid, I can't say much of it was in school. I was very lucky in the particular public schools I got to go to (my elementary school, particularly for LA, was pretty awesome), but I still spent a lot of my time filling out repetitive worksheets, learning to sit still, and, yes, getting bullied. I tend to think of these as character-building experiences, lessons that have helped me become a responsible grownup, deal with difficult people, etc. But it's possible I could have learned these lessons another way, and, frankly, I'm jealous of kids who have the opportunity. Now I work (at home, no less) in a job that rewards creativity more than obedience, and it's quite possible that going to museums and building puzzle maps would have prepared me better for my current career. It's also possible that these activities might help kids grow into the kind of nonconformist adults who are capable of reforming a world that clearly has a lot of problems.

But home-schooling wasn't really an option for my family, and it would be nice to see home-schoolers come together a little more with the formal-schooling crowd. Are there ways public-school kids could get some of the benefits of home-schooling? Could home-schoolers help reform the public education system? Much as some might wish it, it seems unlikely that we'll ever live in a society where parents are the only teachers. But maybe home-schooling parents like O'Hehir can teach others something about putting play and exploration back in learning. In order to do this, though, a movement that can seem very isolationist would have to become more communal — and both sides would have to quit insulting each other.

Confessions Of A Home-Schooler [Salon]
"Doing Kindergarten" [DIY Kindergarten]

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]