|
recent posts
----------
Summer School
Bad Parents on the Brain
Mothers With Devil Tongues
How Many Stories in the Naked City?
Sealed Lips Redux
Baby's First Product Recall
Tradition
Outing
Work Culture
Mind Reading
|
 |
You've got questions, she's got answers. Be among the first to read Elise Mac Adam's new etiquette guide.
Pre-order from:
- Simon & Schuster
- Amazon
- Barnes & Noble
The Savage Mythology of Urban Parents
Selfish showy monsters or just so many fish in a 321 square mile barrel?
At first I was reluctant to read this week's splashy New York Magazine cover story "The Mommy Diaries," which talks about the web site UrbanBaby and how its odd message boards read like, well, some sort of collective journal for maternal angst, complaint, tragedy, nastiness and indecision.
Unless, of course, very little of it is true.
I only say this because at various times while I was pregnant and then when Felix was new and confusing, and now when school looms, I have gone over to UrbanBaby looking for information and found. . . something messy, unhelpful and not at all fun or interesting or funny or addictive. I mean, yes, there is entertainment in people's nastiness, nothing there that can't be satisfied by watching The Women or reading The Group. All of the hand wringing on the boards just seems like stuff that came out of a can.
Still, it is good that it's being talked about in long magazine pieces because otherwise people might forget that they're supposed to think New York City parents (read: mothers) are insane. (Though I have to say that UrbanBaby is doing everything it can to perpetuate this notion. The depressing Nightline "Cutthroat Preschool Wars" two-part program was produced with UrbanBaby's participation.)
And then the New York Observer shows up this week with a big ugly piece about how people (read: mothers) in New York are obsessed with sex selection and willing to shell out tons of money to have the kind of child they want. The piece is really nasty, though the Observer does have a talent for finding ridiculous people and getting them to say the most silly, self-incriminating things. (One Ms. Thompson really wanted a girl: "It was an obsession... Especially as friends and family members were having little girls, it was just hard for me to not be able to shop in the girls' section of the store for my own children.")
Is this really a local phenomenon or is it just another "showcase" article, suggesting that New Yorkers are more crazed, more spoiled, more demanding, more immoral (and that's certainly what I see between all these lines) than everyone else?
But I should point out that even this snarkiest of articles mentions that many of the sex selection clinics in the United States have only recently reached into New York. They started on the West Coast. Gotham is late to this party.
If it makes everyone else feel good, I suppose New York City parents are performing some sort of service in allowing the rest of the country to feel superior.
posted by Elise at 11:33 AM
........................................................
........................................................
<< Home
........................................................
|
