Picket Fence Post

For years, I’ve written about and railed against the parental insanity that occurs when people buy strollers that cost more than your first, junky used car, and shell out big bucks for unnecessarily expensive children’s clothing (Cashmere for babies? Seriously? Ever heard of spit-up?) and sign their babies up for specialized classes to give them an edge over their peers.

So when I read a New York Times’ review of Pamela Paul’s book, Parenting Inc.: How We Are Sold on $800 Strollers, Fetal Education, Baby Sign Language, Sleeping Coaches, Toddler Couture and Diaper Wipe Warmers — and What It Means for Our Children, I knew I had to read it and interview the author.

Paul kindly agreed to field a few questions from me about her book. The edited interview — which was conducted via telephone — is posted below.

Meredith O’Brien, Picket Fence Post: Your book details dozens of really expensive items, services and classes that today’s parents purchase for their very young, sometimes infant or unborn children, regardless of whether they’ve been proven effective. After you researched these items, like the so-called “educational” videos, you say the reason parents buy into these things, even if there’s no evidence saying they work, has to do with guilt. How much pressure are parents under to spend money on things that haven’t been proven beneficial for their children?

Pamela Paul, author, Parenting Inc.: I think there’s enormous pressure. I think that parents, as they have in time immemorial, want to do everything for their children. [This has been] translated into buying everything for their children. I talk about in the book the anxiety of under-spending, this feeling that taps into our vulnerability, our sense of competition . . . Parents are worried they’re not spending enough, that, “My child will not be able to get ahead and may possibly fall behind [if I don't buy these things].”

In an era of economic insecurity, this is very powerful. Nobody wants it not to be possible for their children [to do better than their parents]. If parents have succeeded economically, they’re afraid that whatever they’ve achieved, they’re afraid their kids won’t achieve, at least not easily.

The other thing I think is that there’s been research that’s come out about ages 0 to 3, that a baby’s brain stops forming connections at 3 . . . [Parents] think, “I’ve got to have my children learning Mandarin by age 3.” This is fueled by misinterpretation of things, of the need for early learning . . . that you’ve got to cram in as much as possible before the age of three or the child will be a dummy.

O’Brien: Do you think people are trying to emulate celeb parents, like Angelina Jolie or Gwyneth Paltrow pushing around her baby, Moses, in an $800 stroller? Do you think parents are trying to copy these celebrity parents even when they don’t have the money to buy these things? Is that a bigger factor in prompting spending on babies than guilt?

Paul: It all works together. I don’t think that anybody is particularly chomping at the bit to show their children any DVD that Angelina Jolie is showing. They might be interested in what kind of fashions her children are wearing . . . When Shiloh Jolie Pitt appeared in People magazine wearing a crumpled, gray T-shirt that cost $42 [it later sold out]. . . In Style wouldn’t be a best selling magazine if celebrities didn’t influence what people are wearing. You wouldn’t have so many actors and actresses peddling jewelry to fashion to electronics if that didn’t help sales . . . If it works for milk, for fashion and for cars, you bet it works for children and children’s fashion.

O’Brien: One of the most disturbing elements in your book came when you talked about hiring people to help out with things like sleeping, breastfeeding, bike riding and even, literally, nit-picking. You quote a Cornell University professor as saying, “What I see is a complete lack of confidence in how to parent. People don’t seem to trust their positive common sense,” adding that when children see their parents hiring consultants, “outsourcing parenthood,” they lose confidence in their parents. What do you think about this?

Paul: You take a lot of that and think, “She’s overreaching.” [But] children and babies are really intuitive. . . I think children are remarkably tuned to emotions. They sense fear and stress, a mom that is not confident in herself and in parenting. Mom has to have confidence in herself.

. . . The whole notion of parenting has become professionalized. I don’t even like the word “parenting.” It’s child-rearing. [The word "parenting"] assumes that this is some kind of skill and it needs a professional to do it effectively . . . I think we have lost sight of that Dr. Spockian advice, “Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do.”

O’Brien: Ten years ago when my twins were babies, I wrote a satirical piece about parenting safety mania, about which I’d read in parenting magazines and in the media, about how dangerous they said the house is for babies, everything from TVs to shelving. They were all dangers. I wrote a column joking about having a team of security experts coming into my house and practically bubble-wrap it to make it totally safe for my babies. Now, 10 years later, there actually are consultants who will do that, baby-proof your house. There are also things like diaper wipe warmers being sold so that babies won’t have to deal with the discomfort of a cold wipe. Where did all of this come from, this protection mania?

Paul: I think that everybody wants to have a happy baby and we’ve confused having a happy baby with having a happy baby all the time. That’s not realistic. . . [Babies] get hurt. They get messy . . . Part of that [fear about safety] sad to say, is the media who’ve created the impression that kidnapping and molestation and harassment are far more common than they are. We live in a pretty safe world. We’re lucky. A lot of big cities have gotten increasingly safe. . . Certain things like playgrounds, they’re all of a sudden been safetied out. You can’t swing very high on a swing these days. There are regulations that the chains can’t be beyond “X” height. There’s no see-saw because the kids could fall off and get hurt.

. . . I think that marketers [of safety equipment and safety guidelines] build on parents’ fears and guilt and anxieties, their hopes and aspirations. They’re very good at tapping into where parents are.

O’Brien: Parenting, Inc. says that many parents these days don’t live in their hometowns and don’t live near aunts, uncles and grandparents and that they lack familial support systems to help give them child-rearing advice. But you also say that even if they did live near their families, that parents would likely dismiss the advice of earlier generations as outdated because they want the latest, most up-to-date information. What have we lost here?

Paul: We’ve lost the pass-along wisdom. I think that it’s interesting. To a certain degree it’s true. The previous generation, 75 percent of them formula-fed. They’re not familiar with [breastfeeding] . . . They can’t help you out with sleep schedules, which are really dependent on how the baby is being fed. Then there are things that didn’t exist at all, like the whole attachment parenting. And if you’re a Dr. Sears aficionado, you’re not going to really believe anything, any kind of advice that’s given to you because it’ll strike you as antiquated.

Our parents generally went by their own parents’ advice, or their friends’ advice, or they rebelled against it, or they went with Dr. Spock.

Image credit: Pamela Paul, Times Books.