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?

(more…)

Item #1: Book: Over-parenting=Wimpy Kids

Over-parenting. Over-scheduling. Over-bearing. Over-praising. Hmmm, what other hyphenated “over” words could I use to describe the general theme of the new book, A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting by Hara Estroff Marano?

Why don’t I let Wall Street Journal reviewer Tony Woodlief explain the book’s message of urging parents to back off and just let their kids be:

” Ms. Marano’s complaint is that over-involved parents are sapping the will of America’s youth, keeping them from learning how to make decisions and solve problems for themselves . . .

“[Ms. Marano says] we’re focusing on the wrong risks. Let children learn from failure. Let them experience all the childhood freedoms and disappointments that are common in the lives of our nation’s heroes. The college-admissions consultants can wait.”

Sounds like a good read, likely to provide me with more anti-helicopter parent ammo.

Item #2: Going to See ‘Sex’ This Weekend?

 Millions of American women are going to take pleasure in Sex and the City this weekend, including yours truly. And, although the main stars of the uber-hyped film are crazily over-priced fashion, sex, Carrie, Carrie’s friends, sex and fashion, squeezed in between the Jimmy Choos and inevitable Mr. Big disappointments are dramatizations of urban parenting. The new flick promises to depict lawyer Miranda’s life with hubby and child in Brooklyn, as well as Charlotte’s raising of her adopted grade-school-aged daughter and unexpected pregnancy (in the now-canceled TV series, she suffered from infertility).

Hopefully, SATC will be at least a fraction as good as its trailer. Or at least serve as satisfying mind candy.

Item #3: Ankle Woes

The Girl is only 9 years old. Yet, ever since she turned her ankle during a basketball practice this winter, she’s been plagued with ankle aches.

After having had a clean ankle X-ray and giving her injury time to heal, she returned to her normal activities. But ever since the spring soccer season began, The Girl has been complaining, on and off, of ankle pain. Sometimes she has swelling around the area, but not always. She comes home from practice – sometimes in tears – and proceeds to elevate and ice her ankle then wraps it in a bandage.

Another girl from her soccer team is wearing a cast on one of her feet to immobilize her ankle to see if her repeated ankle difficulties will end if she gives her ankle a rest from the tough, cutting movements of soccer. Both girls are in third grade. Aren’t they too young for this kind of thing?

Item #4: Falling Teen Stars

My June Parents & Kids Magazine column revisits the whole Miley Cyrus-Vanity Fair imbroglio and puts it into context with other female, teen idols who have “fallen” and asks the question, “Why?” Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer.

Your latest issue may sell like gangbusters because of the hype generated by the hub-bub over the semi-naked photo of a 15-year-old celebrity you have published inside your magazine, the one where a sad looking girl has a bed sheet wrapped around the upper portion of her body, revealing her back. That will certainly be great for the magazine’s bottom line in a difficult market.

The parents of and the marketing machine surrounding this 15-year-old may or may not have agreed to allow the girl to pose in a way that makes her look as if she’s topless, but for that sheet. Maybe it’s a calculated ploy to nudge the multi-million-dollar franchise that is this child from the tweens-market to a slightly older demographic by having the under-aged girl pose provocatively, with a sheet . . . which belongs on a bed . . . evoking a bed-like scene.

But you decided to publish and post online photos of an under-aged girl, thereby sexualizing her. True, earlier this year a sexy photo of the girl flashing a glimpse of her bra to the camera wielded by a friend was posted on a social networking web site. However couldn’t one argue, that, in an era of fallen and seriously troubled young female starlets, that having a 15-year-old girl pose with simply a sheet wrapped around her upper torso indicates adult approval for being photographed in sexy poses?

This is where the damage is sustained. It’s up to you, as a responsible magazine, to not help take advantage of a 15-year-old, even if she is a mega-celebrity, beloved by millions of tween-aged girls who see her as an idol and want to mimic whatever she does.

If you want to run sexy photos of consenting adults, go for it. Run all the button-pushing photos and articles you want. But in the future, maybe you should think twice before contributing to the exploitation of a child, even if she or her handlers are willing participants.

Signed,

A concerned mom of a 9-year-old girl

Am I the only one who misses thirtysomething, even though the last new episode aired way back when I was in college . . . in the Stone Age?

For all of those who criticized the late 1980s/early 1990s show as whiny and self-absorbed, there were plenty of others (my hand is raised) who found it to be a smart and thoughtful portrait of people struggling with life in their 30s, once kids enter the picture.

I similarly fawned over the late 1990s/early 2000s show Once and Again, created by the thirtysomethingfolks about people who were in their 40s and coping with divorce and raising snarky teenagers.

In a new column for Mommy Track’d, I lament the fact that there just aren’t many working moms whose lives and struggles are the focus of TV dramas anymore.

Image credit: Amazon.com.