Sunday, January 02 2011: Yes and No
Modern parenting article from FT Magazine, by Katie Roiphe
I find myself so wanting to wholeheartedly agree with everything the author says in this critique of yuppie, hipster parentdom, but I can't quite get myself to blurt out "Amen!" because while she is railing against particular practices I find ridiculous (overly obsessive childproofing that seeks to remove all sharp edges and hard surfaces) or harmful (hand sanitizer and not allowing children to play in dirt), she is also arguing against the core idea that parental behavior (specifically, parental slacking) isn't likely to have a deleterious effect on a child.
The notion that there is one study that found that drinking alcohol or smoking crack doesn't leave detectable marks on the children studied by some arbitrary developmental milestone (say by age 2 or age 5 or age 10) kind of misses the point that subjecting a fetus to poison in utero for the sake of the mother getting her freak on is child abusish. The fact that we can't notice it in the noise of 1000 children sampled at random X years after the crime seems (to me) beside the point.
The author praises the "benign neglect" of her middle to upper class childhood during the 1970s and 80s, but is oblivious (apparently) of how much parental work was needed to create an environment where she could safely cavort with other children in the absence of direct parental involvement for a couple of hours while her mother got drunk (while she was ex utero, I might add). I've always considered my parenting style rather laid back and I don't even know what "Dwell" or "Oeuf" is, but maybe I'm part of the problem this author is complaining about and the words hit too close to home.
Still, hipsters are ghey.
I find myself so wanting to wholeheartedly agree with everything the author says in this critique of yuppie, hipster parentdom, but I can't quite get myself to blurt out "Amen!" because while she is railing against particular practices I find ridiculous (overly obsessive childproofing that seeks to remove all sharp edges and hard surfaces) or harmful (hand sanitizer and not allowing children to play in dirt), she is also arguing against the core idea that parental behavior (specifically, parental slacking) isn't likely to have a deleterious effect on a child.
The notion that there is one study that found that drinking alcohol or smoking crack doesn't leave detectable marks on the children studied by some arbitrary developmental milestone (say by age 2 or age 5 or age 10) kind of misses the point that subjecting a fetus to poison in utero for the sake of the mother getting her freak on is child abusish. The fact that we can't notice it in the noise of 1000 children sampled at random X years after the crime seems (to me) beside the point.
The author praises the "benign neglect" of her middle to upper class childhood during the 1970s and 80s, but is oblivious (apparently) of how much parental work was needed to create an environment where she could safely cavort with other children in the absence of direct parental involvement for a couple of hours while her mother got drunk (while she was ex utero, I might add). I've always considered my parenting style rather laid back and I don't even know what "Dwell" or "Oeuf" is, but maybe I'm part of the problem this author is complaining about and the words hit too close to home.
Still, hipsters are ghey.
Steve wrote: