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You've got questions, she's got answers. Be among the first to read Elise Mac Adam's new etiquette guide.
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Musical Chairs
Down Under, two airlines, Air New Zealand and Quantas, have apparently decided not to allow men to sit next to unaccompanied children. I wish I could understand this policy.
Of course there are laws that keep adults away from children everywhere. In New York City, the Parks Department has a regulation providing for "Exclusive Children's Playgrounds: Adults allowed in playground areas only when accompanied by a child under the age of twelve (12)." Mere weeks ago, at the end of September, a woman was slapped with a ticket for sitting in a playground while waiting for an "arts festival" to begin. The summons was issued by some ticket happy cops (who had a quota to issue, perhaps?), since the Parks Department itself says that the police should exercise a little discretion with their ticket writing. The regulation has been in place since 1996 and is meant to protect children from pedophiles, stalkers, abductors, and creepy types, not so much professional belly dancers in their late 40s. One can see why policies like this one for playgrounds exist, even if there is some abuse of their enforcement (but that is true as a general matter, particularly when the City is strapped).
When I was in high school, I worked weekends and holidays selling children's clothing in a 500 square foot store on Madison Avenue (I have almost no idea what I was doing there; sometimes you just fall into things). Because the avenue happens to be rather dense with kid's clothing stores, word tended to get around quickly when the periodic rashes of robberies happened. (The stores probably looked like easy targets. They were small, business wasn't always brisk, and I suspect the female population of the stores gave the impression that they were easy to rob.) Anyway, we had a little sign we would prop up when we got word of robberies elsewhere (they usually started around 90th street), and that sign read: "Men by appointment only." Now, I always thought the sign was silly and never invoked it. Women are just as capable of armed robbery as men, men are just as capable of spending money as women, and to a certain extent robberies are random and it is hard to guard against randomness. But even that gesture makes a bit of sense, when placed in context.
But what are these airlines thinking? Do they suspect men will just pounce on the solo youngsters? Have they had a lot of this? Is there the suspicion that men will molest the children in plain view of everyone in the cabin or abscond with them somehow? Do they think children just find men threatening? Quantas doesn't really explain its reasoning except to say that it is simply doing what it thinks its customers want. But it doesn't seem that parents would make that request. I would think they'd be more likely to ask that their children sit near the flight attendants, so that the kids would at least have the sense that someone in authority had an eye on them.
I am not advocating an attitude that is generally trusting of the world and everyone walking in it, but I do wonder if this sort of rule doesn't do everyone a disservice. Does it really help us to treat all men as if they were potential molesters? Is it wise, as a general matter, to separate men from children as much as possible so that each group becomes afraid of and annoyed by the other? Without a clear reason why this would be sensible- this is an airplane, after all, not a dark movie theatre or an open space or a place that could encourage stalking and repeated encounters- I don't understand the rule.
I love Quantas. I love how generous they are with wine and how nice everyone was when I was in Australia years ago. But really, what could be gained by treating all men as if they were time bombs ready to pop at any moment? I suspect it just means women will end up shouldering even more of the bulk of kid wrangling. And I am certain that if I (a woman) were seated next to a solo kid for a long flight just because I am a woman, I would spend more than I usually do on in-flight cocktails.
Or would that mean I'd be too much of a bad influence?
posted by Elise at 1:54 PM
3 Comments
Even Movie Stars Aren't Immune
One nice thing that Helen Fielding did for us was to come up with some terrific shorthand. All Bridget Jones had to do was scratch the words "Smug Marrieds" into her diary, we all knew who she was describing and how many glasses of wine we've wanted to pour on their floors.
There are other easily captured and annoying groups, the Sensitive Dads, Superior Mothers, and Bragging Creatives, for instance. Recently, a new type of personality sandpaper has begun to abrade: Snotty Celebrity Mom. As a quick glance at the newsstand will tell you, the age of the celebrity mother is in full swing and no matter where you look, there's a beautiful, complacent, big name mother gazing down her nose while spreading her particular form of wisdom.
I wonder why Madonna feels she needs to spread the news about her Mommy Dearest-esque parenting techniques. (Apparently, if her daughter leaves her clothes on the floor, Madonna takes away all of her outfits and forces her to wear the same thing to school every day until the child "earns" back her garments, bit by bit.) Are we expected to applaud her for being such a hard-ass? Is there some glamour in this that I'm missing? Why on earth is this something to brag about? Pulled out of context, out of the life in question and out of the moment that the bad behavior happens, all disciplinary techniques sound absolutely ridiculous and Madonna here just sounds a bit odd.
Another voice that is becoming all too familiar is that of Gwyneth Paltrow. While everyone deserves to be happy, the courtesy they do to everyone else is to shut up about how fabulous they and all their decisions are for a moment. She appears in InStyle magazine this month raving about her child's wonderful schedule that she only occasionally tampers with, the rare pleasures of Goodnight Moon and the bliss that is being a mother. How could anyone begrudge her any of these things, you ask? What kind of a sourpuss am I for lifting an eyebrow at Paltrow's hard-earned joy? Why for this little superior comment she tosses out: "I sort of look at some peers of mine and I think, 'No, you've got it all wrong.' I just want to tell them all to have babies and be happy, and not get sucked into that Hollywood thing."
Now that my disgust has diminished and I am more disposed to be amused, I suppose Gwyneth is really doing us all a favor by reducing movie stars to our level. All through our lives there are friends and relatives, Smug Marrieds and Sensitive Dads who want us to do exactly what they do, because, they would have us believe, they have done the Right Thing and like so many cultists, want to convert people to Their Way of Thinking. Forget that you might have a different agenda and other things beside marriage and kids on your mind.
How nice to see that even superstars have the Cloying Nags in their midst, who can make the most exclusive red carpet affair a small circle of Hell.
posted by Elise at 5:46 AM
2 Comments
Brood Brooding
Is there something inherently hilarious about enormous families? Yours, Mine and Ours, a movie about the union of a man with 8 children and a woman with 10 just opened, and hot on its heels is Cheaper By the Dozen 2 (in which a family with 12 kids has to somehow do battle with a family that has merely 8; plain old Cheaper by the Dozen came out in 2003 and provides the set up for the hilarity). These pictures are new, but the fascination with mondo-families isn't. The original Cheaper By the Dozen came out in 1950 (with the marvelous Myrna Loy presiding over the brood with Clifton Webb) and Yours, Mine and Ours opened in 1968, with the unlikely but charming combo of Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda as the parents. The original movies are based on true stories. Yours, Mine and Ours started out as Who Gets the Drumstick? a memoir by the mother of the family, Helen Beardsley (nee North), and the book Cheaper by the Dozen was written by two of the notorious twelve.
In non-fictionalized real life, October headlines trumpeted the news of a woman in Arkansas who had her 16th child and has high hopes for another one, and it only takes a quick glance at the listings for the Discovery Channel (which made the show "14 Children and Pregnant Again!" about this same family a year ago) to get the measure of our fascination with multiple births ("Triplets and Quints" "Quads: Party of Four" "Triple the Triplets" "The Quad Squad" are some a few shows in the regular rotation).
Where does this come from? Certainly the Hollywood depictions of enormous families are funny and warm. (I've only seen the originals of the pictures I mentioned. I really couldn't be dragged to the remakes; I'd rather see Saw II, I think. Actually, being forced to sit through the remakes would make me want to take a saw to my own neck. I was interested, though, in how we were supposed to believe that Rene Russo had gone through 10 pregnancies and retained her stunning figure but the movie allows us to suspend our disbelief because her character only carried four of her babies and adopted six other kids.) But why are we so eager to see gigantic numbers of children? Is it because it seems like such a circus, so much fun? Is it because we enjoy tales of excess?
I hope so. It would be nice to think this particular fetish comes from some subliminal craving for decadence and the entertaining of a weird fantasy (a VERY weird one). The alternative is something ugly I've also contemplated: that these stories are a reflection of the logical conclusion of a land without birth control.
Now, before you think I've taken some sort of ugly left turn into hysteria, consider the precarious state of birth control in the United States. We have pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for Emergency Contraception Pills. We have a Supreme Court that is probably going to do battle over abortion rights in the very near future. It is impossible to be sanguine about our reproductive rights in the future given what sort of government is in place and what sort of people are making the laws.
It may be a coincidence that these movies have been remade at a time when women's reproductive freedom is in jeopardy. In many ways I hope it is, because it suggests that if enough cozy, cheerful, bland, silly stories come out about how much fun it is to have 10 kids, people may be lulled into such a stupor that they start to believe it. It is one thing to have ten children by choice, another thing entirely to wind up with an enormous brood because of the absence of options.
* And here's a touch of support to my musings. The "trivia" section of the Internet Movie Database notes that the party band featured in the new Yours, Mine and Ours is the Christian alternative rock group Hawk Nelson. Perhaps coincidence, but given the way of things, I suspect not.
posted by Elise at 8:04 AM
5 Comments
The Irony Is Not Lost On Me
Happy Thanksgiving, of course.
Now, for those of you with a wicked bent, here's a little bit of news that was highlighted mere hours ago (though apparently it HAPPENED on the 13th, that's the NY Times for you): Ruth M. Siems, an inventor of Stove Top Stuffing died just in time to avoid the holidays.
I can attest that she touches my life in a little way every year because my father, Thanksgiving Commander, dutifully purchases Stove Top Cornbread stuffing and then proceeds to heavily doctor it in a manner suggested by an enormous regional Italian cookbook (assorted fruit!) that has guided him since the early 1980s.
For my part, I will be consumed with warring needs. On the one hand, I feel I must get a snapshot of Felix wrestling with a turkey leg, and on the other I must be prepared to do battle with my terrier, who has a penchant for thievery and is too bold by half when food is involved.
(Oh, and for those of you with new pups: I have been warned by my vet multiple times to keep the dog away from turkey skin. It's too fatty and apparently can give dogs some digstive distress that no one wants to deal with on a cold November evening.)
Cheers
posted by Elise at 8:38 AM
0 Comments
Child as Taste Receptacle
I had a chance to sneak up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and see an absolutely amazing show of Van Gogh's drawings. Everything about them is remarkable. If you're hitting these shores, it's around until the end of December. Don't miss it.
Having said that, the crowds are savage, which is the case with all "once in a lifetime" art shows- they bring out the worst in everyone. Back, back, way back in the halcyon 1990s I went to the "once in a lifetime" Vermeer show at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and I am hard pressed to picture a surlier crowd. A woman I know who was working at the museum at the time said she frequently wondered at the propensity of Vermeer's exquisite tranquil examinations of interior light and domestic scenes to inspire fistfights.
No one came to blows at Van Gogh, but this trip really reminded me of the visits I used to make to museums with my family. Maybe this was because the drawings seem to have a narrative element. (Often it feels as if one is looking at a beautiful scene from a story. There is a moment where this feeling comes to life in the show where the exhibit presents a letter Van Gogh wrote to a friend in which he just casually drops in a sketch of a man walking with the sun behind him. How amazing to be able to draw and write with such amazing verbal/visual ambidexterity.) We used to go quite a lot and my parents were always good about making art accessible to their children. Of course, the Metropolitan Museum is in many ways made for kids, and I'm not the first person to think that. Arms and Armor, the Egyptian rooms, mythology paintings- so much of the place is perfect for kids, though I suspect the museum trips have to start quite early so that a sense of pleasure can invent itself before the "museums are boring" ethos sets in.
As I looked at the Van Gogh drawings, I kept catching myself thinking with great eagerness about how, when he is older, I want to take Felix to museums and show him the stories in drawings and paintings; how, when he's older, I have so many movies to show him. I've started keeping a list. That delicious Technicolor Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn is at the top right now. And of course I have so many books that I want to give him. Surely all parents get taken up with this urge to pour everything they love into their children. A friend of mine who is amicably divorced says that one of her big tugs-of-war with her ex was over how to divide which books and movies each of them would get to read to or watch with their kid.
Maybe this excitement is brought on by the holidays and the feeling that with Felix, everything is new and today I have traditions and surprises and pleasures that the season hasn't held for me for quite some time. But even more than the holidays I'm looking forward to these other things- films and books, excursions to museums. I only hope my excitement doesn't backfire and I wind up with a kid who would rather pull my hair out than watch a Michael Curtiz swashbuckler.
Pity me, if I am. At least the dog will watch with me, provided I share the popcorn.
posted by Elise at 10:28 AM
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Narrative Gambit #2,654: Cheap Sentiment & Preserving the Status Quo
There's a peculiar article in today's New York Times about the obsession being aired on popular television with doing harm to children: threatening them, sometimes (often?) killing them.
The central argument, which the writer has culled from a studious perusal of the plots of made-for-Lifetime TV movies, "Criminal Minds," several of the "Law & Order" series and "Weeds," is that:
"Television has become an extremely inhospitable place for middle-class children, and in some sense, for the demanding ideals by which they are now raised - a gory receptacle for any and all of our collectively sublimated parental ambivalence."
This seems strange to me, since if the reporting in the New York Times is any indication, "parental ambivalence" busted out of the collective unconscious some time ago and is making itself manifest in the form of angry coffee shop signage, stroller hatred, and various child-free movements. All of which the Times eagerly reports.
This is not to say that people aren't questioning what it means to be parents and, as a card-carrying contrarian, I can attest to how enraged I get when faced with "demanding ideals" of any sort.
Still, the is a history of narrative child threat goes quite far back, predating television, if you can imagine such a thing. Consider all the people waiting on the New York docks for the final installment of Charles Dickens's Old Curiosity Shop, desperate for news of Little Nell. Gone With the Wind has a terrible child death, and so do countless more recent books and movies that still predate this recent "phenomenon" uncovered by the Times. There was a period in the early 1990s when I spent too much energy wishing for child death in some movies (I was desperate for some T-rex to chomp those insipid kids from Jurassic Park).
Are these contemporary stories doing something different with their threatened or dead children? In this case, I'm of the everything-old-is-new-again opinion. This kind of storytelling has always been around, but it is being exaggerated now because people eat it up. Look at the stories that the evening news refuses to relinquish. Look at the stories that generate wild headlines and public outcry. Child threat stories are so successful because the narrative gambit is so supremely manipulative, requires little work on the part of the audience, and covers emotional terrain that is (almost) universally comprehensible: losing a child is unimaginably terrible. No one will argue with that.
When I was in 6th grade, Wednesday afternoons were spectacularly unpleasant (which is saying a lot for middle school) because the educational system decided that students should be taught how to deal with emotional issues. This meant that we were shown awful movies about death and divorce every week. Because we were children, the death was often of beloved animals. Dogs were threatened, a heard of deer was poisoned, horses went lame, cats got sick. I admit now that I spent a better part of these screening sessions in the washroom wishing I could do something terrible to the people who made these movies. They certainly made me miserable, and I was always relieved to go home to find my family and my dog intact.
To a certain extent, if there is a trend, I think its origins have less to do with parenting ambivalence and more to with a need to tease ourselves with worst-case scenarios. Hideous "what ifs" which make us give thanks for our "normal" lives and "good" children.
If this is the case, these stories don't do anything as subversive as the New York Times suggests, they work instead to preserve the preciousness of children that all of the "ambivalent parents" claim to find discomforting while embracing. They don't subvert the ridiculous culture, they reinforce it. Articles like this only support the sense that the world is an evil, threatening place that requires constant vigilance and, indeed "strict ideals" to ward off unspeakable calamity.
And how weird is it really? Children's stories frequently dispense with the parents. (Remember Babar?)
posted by Elise at 8:42 PM
2 Comments
C-Sections Up Up Up
I heard about the statistics and saw that they have been reported on CNN and commented on by Sarah Karnasiewicz in Salon's Broadsheet, but I can't help but feel that something is missing amidst all the anger and defensive arms akimbo that arrived with the news that in 2004 29.1% of births in the U.S. were C-sections.
The general feeling seems to be that the reason for this is that the medical establishment is a cold manipulative organism, disinclined to help women who are having a difficult time with labor and delivery and afraid of malpractice lawsuits that could result from vaginal deliveries gone wrong.
Maybe so. But I wonder if something else is going on beyond the possibility that thousands of women and their partners are too flustered and frightened and unprepared to stand up for themselves.
There is a lot to be said about how defensive doctors and hospitals have to be. When I was in labor, my doctor sat with me for a couple of hours discussing, among other things, mortality rates in childbirth in the 15th century (50%), and the fact that there is a movement afoot, inspired by patients to create a mandate that doctors must mention that a C-section can be a childbirth choice. Patients apparently have been demanding that they know their options. My doctor tends to think this is strange and frightening and that there's nothing wrong with vaginal deliveries, and I agree, but I suspect there are a lot of women who do not necessarily share my perspective. Sometime during her ultra-documented pregnancy, Britney Spears weighed in, loudly saying that she was terrified of labor and wanted a C-section. Her opinion may seem misguided to me, but some people might say she is simply demanding the "birth she wants."
Do women think of themselves as the victims or potential victims of the medical establishment or do they think that by demanding C-sections when they want them that they are taking charge of their bodies? Neither seems quite right.
All of this makes one thing very clear to me. The insurance industry in the United States is a large-scale disaster and does constant disservice to almost everyone- pregnant or not. It creates situations where people are inclined to ignore their physical and emotional problems because it is too expensive to investigate them (I wrote a little about this on August 31st "Soap Box Interlude"). It would behoove us to try to think of this as not just a question of the victimization of pregnant women, but as a question of why health care in the United States functions so poorly and leaves so many so unhappy, and what we can do about fixing it.
posted by Elise at 11:49 AM
1 Comments
Three Little Words
I have always been fortunate that something about me encourages people, for the most part, to keep their distance.
Only rarely did people say: "So when are you going to get a boyfriend?" (Though my grandfather, a physician inclined to worry, did try to give my phone number to some of his healthy patients- for their children. Presumably for their children. One hopes.)
Once I secured a partner, only one person dared ask: "Why don't you live together?" (And since she decided to quiz me in an ICU waiting room, my surly response was attributed to strain.)
After that relationship ended, there was hardly a peep about whether I intended to get married, when that might be and whether a kid might be in the picture. It seems my imperious demeanor intimidated all who would dare pry.
But I got pregnant and the floodgates popped:
How far along are you?
What are you having?
And you're still drinking coffee?
Have you picked any names?
When are you due?
Don't you think that [insert anything fun here] is bad for the baby?
You're not going to have an epidural, are you?
You're having the epidural immediately, right?
Why did you let them talk you into an induction?
Why didn't you get a c-section?
Why did you call him that?
Why are you breastfeeding?
How long are you going to breastfeed?
Really, how long are you going to keep that up?
Don't you want another right away?
When are you going to start trying for another?
How many do you think you can have?
You don't want an only child, do you?
How many years apart do you want your kids to be?
Why aren't you answering my questions?
Many of these queries are reasonable and I have only the small trouble with them that one has when people are intrusive. But now that Felix is in the world, growing and changing, everything is more difficult to parry, particularly the ones about breastfeeding and future children.
This has almost nothing to do with being coy. I have no idea what I'm going to do. It feels a little peculiar that people imagine I would, though of course it is not unreasonable. Many people know how they want to play out the stories of their lives.
But in this moment, when angst is running a little high (and the holidays haven't even hit yet), three little words are saving me (well, two words and a contraction).
I don't know.
I say them over and over and probably sound like a fool, but that's really as far as I can go.
I love Felix, and I hope I never do him a disservice.
But
I don't know, and that will have to do for me and for everyone else who comes asking.
posted by Elise at 2:32 PM
2 Comments
Diagnosis!
A sharp pain in my arm has been troubling me for a couple of weeks, though it has offered the shred of optimism that lives in my heart a nice workout. Each morning I wake up with the hope that I'll be able to flap my arms again with impunity.
Since the Merck Manuals (both the official and "everyday language" versions) are bedside table friends of mine, I blindly explored the nuances of my irritable elbow. Was it tendonitis, bursitis, multiple sclerosis (forgive me my wee hour paranoia), carpal tunnel, arthritis or hypochondria? Finally a wise friend told me that I should stop trying to guess because carpal tunnel is no joke.
So, a trip to my much-neglected GP has come and gone and the mystery solved. Felix has given me tennis elbow. The idea of the word "tennis" used as an adjective being directed towards me is amusing in and of itself. At the bright age of 14 I took a few tennis lessons one summer and the instructor told me that I handled the racket "like a frying pan." The only racquet sport that has been kind to me since is badminton.
It seems that hefting Felix, who is on the big side but not monstrous at 21-ish pounds, has taken its toll, so if you are inclined to carry your kid around and curl your arm in pretzel-like positions while feeding him or her, you, too may wind up with a set of unwanted, inconvenient symptoms and little you can do about it. Learn from my mistakes and be gentle with your tendons. Don't just fling heavy things around assuming the best.
On the Internet, everyone hears you scream and can offer plenty of advice, exercises, cautionary tales, and rumor. Everyone advises the RICE protocol (Rest, Ice, Compress, Elevate) which is fine unless you didn't get tennis elbow from playing tennis but from lifting your child, in which case the "R" part of the equation is impossible to follow. I am stuck replacing "Rest" with "Ibuprofen and I now have one of those compression bands on my forearm. I wish having a sports injury made me feel like more of an athlete, but I am relieved.
My doctor joked that I should record this episode in Felix's baby book as the moment Felix started giving me trouble. I could do that (and the miracle here is that I actually have managed to keep a sporadic baby journal), but the thin edge of the wedge of my optimism is making itself known once again. Why sew the seeds of guilt for something so small when surely something more substantial will make itself known in time? For now, at least when it comes to Felix, I have no complaints.
posted by Elise at 2:08 PM
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The Way the White Queen Worries
I'm a common enough worrier. I worry aggressively in advance of things, the way the White Queen cries before her broach comes undone and pricks her finger in Through the Looking Glass. There are many things that make my brow furrow many years before the fact.
Just this afternoon I had lunch with a friend whose child is in middle school and the subject turned to bullying and various horror stories she's heard from friends involving the usual roster of nastiness: fighting, taunting, email gossip, web site "slam books," and of course school administrations that take an "out of school out of mind" approach to interceding.
The possibility of my child being either bullied or bully makes me truly wretched. Felix is a bumbling baby incapable, even, of truly harassing the terrier (who is smart enough to know when to get out of the way anyway, and plenty speedy). He is a dream to me. But what if he becomes monstrous? How can I shield him and protect him?
This issue will keep hitting the news, of course. Over the weekend, the Guardian wrote about kid bullying in the UK (a "culture of violence" is blamed). I do wonder, contrarian that I am, if this is really headline-worthy or just another plug for attention. There are many famous stories about being tormented in school (in the US and the UK). Maybe some of the shock and fear we have about bullying comes from the fact that children are using technology to reach out and be abusive. Nasty mass emails, web sites, videos, instant messages are all new implements of torture and somehow seem so much more wicked and harmful than the old fashioned horrors we all had to navigate. This might not really be the case, of course, and there are surely things parents and schools should do to minimize horrendous, antisocial, even murderous behavior. As always, it is a matter of arming everyone with decent things to do- active ways to stop the badness. My friend did tell me about one successful intervention on the part of one school.* In another case, the bullied kids parents had to intercede and transplant the child into another school altogether.
I am getting ahead of myself as always. I would be better off taunting myself with different horrors, things that are more of the moment. Fortunately, there is a Photoshop contest on that will help encourage more lively nightmares. I don't really need more phobias, but perhaps some different ones would be novel.
*Apparently, what worked was the school forcing the bullies and their victim to eat lunch together with a counselor for quite a long time. After however many weeks they were finally left to their own devices, and they had, in fairy tale fashion, become lunch friends at least and continued to eat together. Who knows if this works forever, but it is a comforting story.
posted by Elise at 1:08 PM
5 Comments
Beware Babar
Last night I was at a post-elopement party that was, in some ways, more romantic than many weddings I've been to. There was also an "old home week" element to the evening, since many of the people I got to see are folks I see annually at most, usually at less momentous occasion. This was my first post-Felix outing with this crowd and I was overcome by a strange shyness. Since he was at home, I could have tried to "pass" as being unchanged.
I don't know why I was almost inclined not to talk about Felix. In a way, his enormous presence still seems very intimate to me and awkward to mention casually.
In the end, I wasn't coy about Felix, and this made the party something different for me. It wasn't that I had anything more to say, but that my ears were different.
At one point, a conversation about stories opened up. A woman I know was talking about the movies she picks for her preschoolers to watch, and suddenly her husband interrupted: "Have you warned them about Babar?"
This surprised me. Right now Felix has but a single Babar text and it is, Babar's Yoga for Elephants, a present from friends who probably think better of me than they should. I always loved the Babar books, though, and even had a fantastic Babar record album with songs I can still sing (not in public), but apparently I had forgotten the tragedy and violence in the book. My friend's husband reminded me last night that Babar's mother is shot and killed by hunters at the beginning of the story.
Today, now that the haze of Bellinis has worn off, I keep thinking not only about Babar's dead mother, but about all the dead mothers in children's stories. They're legion. From Bambi back to Cinderella and Snow White.
It is late and I should leave off, but I do wonder why it's so important that the mothers die in so many children's stories. Is it because the narrative must derive from extreme despair? Students of folklore must surely have an easy answer, so if you're reading, please do weigh in.
posted by Elise at 8:47 PM
5 Comments
Colic and its Discontents
In the latest in what seems to be an endless string of stories destined to make parents feel defensive and hopeless, and potential parents grateful that they haven't procreated, the New York Times puts COLIC on the front page today.
Make no mistake, the huge headline comes not because there's some sort of colic breakthrough. No, no, that might imply there is actual news to report on the unhappy topic. Sorry. This is one of those "everyone suffers and there's no solution" human interest stories. The Times offers a bunch of Remedies of All Nations:
Cinnamon tea from Colombia
Rosewater tonics from Egypt
Gripe Water famous in the UK
Acupuncture- China
Bellybinding- Haiti
Cowry shells- Africa
Cayenne pepper- Trinidad
Swaddling popularized everywhere.
But the piece is quite clear that nothing really works.
Now, I know my luck. I don't have a kid with colic, and I'm constantly grateful for that, but even I know that there is all sorts of new science on the subject and that there are new and often helpful remedies. There's no mention of the occasional link between acid reflux and colic that has gotten a lot of attention lately. The only medical study mentioned was published in 2001.
I really am all for home remedies and am interested in how all sorts of aspects of child rearing are handled elsewhere, but this not only doesn't seem to be breaking news, the article id actually doing a disservice by not providing more current information, albeit from the perspective of Western Medicine.
Colic isn't cute and I don't think many people in the throes of it feel that they can partake in any "we're all in this together" sort of levity. It would be nice if the Times worked a little harder to offer more actual information instead of saying, in more words but with just as patronizing a tone: This, too shall pass.
Of course colic passes. There are very few people in their 30s getting served with eviction notices because their colic is keeping the neighborhood awake. People need help in the moment, and an uninformed list of home remedies- offered with the caveat that they don't work so well- plastered on the front page is doing a real disservice.
posted by Elise at 8:50 AM
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And While I'm Complaining...
This article showed up in the New York Times today about restaurants setting limits on kids' bad behavior and parental boycotts, in which the dander is up and so thick you can barely read the words on the page.
Everyone has a point, and everyone interviewed is so obnoxious that I can't imagine wanting to eat in any of these places or socialize with any of these people. What is my beef? As always, excessive self-righteousness and poor etiquette on all parts.
Seriously, the whole article begins and ends with a cafe owner who, in addition to posting snarky signs in his establishment, won't hire people who don't live within walking distance of the cafe because he wants to decrease pollution. The mind reels, but I don't know Chicago so well. Maybe his cafe is located in a part of town where people who really need jobs are fighting hand over fist to become baristas and pastry types. But somehow, in a neighborhood where an ice cream cone is $3.75, I don't think so.
And if he seems misguided and nuts, so do some of the mothers who seem to think they deserve a break for having wailing children.
posted by Elise at 11:16 AM
7 Comments
For God's Sake, the Kid Will Outgrow It In 10 Minutes Anyway
So the smocked bubblesuit is girly. I don't really care, and since Felix has outgrown the outfit anyway, it hardly matters. There are some snapshots to make everyone happy or amused or what have you, and that's fine with me.
But I didn't realize how that was just the beginning of the sartorial issues Felix is facing. One of my sisters-in-law kindly visited her storage space and dropped off a batch of long-outgrown outfits of her daughter's. This was fantastic since Felix busted out of everything and I hadn't given his wardrobe much thought. My building's superintendent, witnessing this drop off began a litany that continued for weeks. "Oh, Felix is wearing girl's clothes. Don't let him know that he's wearing girl's clothes. What will people think if they know he's in girl's clothes?" It did not help when I told her that Felix was probably not going to be wearing pink skirts. She remained convinced that this was a bad idea.
A bit later, to dodge a storm on the Upper East Side (a neighborhood Felix and I don't often frequent), we went into a clothing store and got this comment. "Oh, you must live downtown. I can tell from the colors your baby is wearing. Those are very downtown colors." He was wearing black pants and a little denim jacket (handed down from his cousin). I had been thinking that his outfit was a little unremarkable, but apparently, I was wrong.
And then today, the New York Observer published this article about parents dressing their children in "cool" message t-shirts and outfits. The piece voices great objection to parents putting their kids in Che Guevara onesies or Ramones t-shirts, or political outfits that proclaim things like: "I already know more than the president."
To a certain extent, I agree that it is a little easy to make one's kid a billboard. In a sense, though, that is what one does anyway, with one's politics and religion and opinions and style. Every parent I know is astonished when his or her kid starts talking and sounds like a creepy parody of the adults in the house.
Really, though, I think there's enough analysis. If people want to look like idiots (and this is also my Abercrombie and Fitch argument) they can have at it. There's only so long they can inflict their sartorial wills on their kids anyway.
Why shoot the parents like so many prone fish in a barrel? The kid doesn't do much at first but look cute, so what if they get some amusement out of labeling it with a symbol of a revolutionary leader whose causes they don't remember. Hey, maybe the Che onesie will at least make people a little curious. Really, the kid is innocent. The only person who looks foolish is the parent with whom the kid is affiliated.
(For my part, I don't care for outfits that refer to: the kid's smell, breastfeeding, excrement or unpleasant future personality traits ["selfish"] or professions ["tycoon" "socialite" "future rock star"], but more because they're dumb than because they threaten the psyche of the wearer. Then again, I also can't stand the weird pink flowered brain elastics that people stick on little girls, and those can hardly be called "cool.")
The truth of the matter is, stuffing a kid into silly t-shirts and onesies isn't a criminal act and it won't even damage them so much that they need therapy before they're in preschool. People will always dress like fools and people will always find lame ways dress their children. This is hardly a syndrome. It is simply the way it always has been and always will be. I've already built my boat to Hell. I did it with smocking and the "Avant Garde" shirt my mother brought for Felix at the RISD gift shop.
Sex and the City made every day Halloween in Soho, why is it surprising that people inflict fashion on their children? And, it doesn't stop there. Have you noticed what dogs about town have been wearing?
posted by Elise at 10:47 AM
1 Comments
Excavating Snottyness
On Friday, after another weird competitive conversation about whose kid was doing what and breastfeeding and organic this and that and diapers and massage and sign language, I went into a near coma from excessive demurring. It is exhausting- trying to be friendly and open while keeping everything that seems questionable (morally, aesthetically, you name it) on the QT. Why keep silent, you ask? Why not let it all hang out and to Hell with everyone else? When it comes to these things, I have only two registers, I'm afraid: extreme rage and sweet silence. The latter is so much less alienating that I keep my own counsel.
But I still feel confused at the persistence of issues when parenting. Even with the dog, things settled down so that now I only occasionally get the raw food lecture or the shoes for dogs harangue. But in the wee hours this morning, a dim bulb lit up in my mind when I read the Slate piece The Rock Snob, which is about annoying music connoisseurs. Three sentences leapt out at me from Stephen Metcalf's article:
"Snobbery is as woven into the human fabric as the sexual and aggressive impulses it seeks to refine. It's no accident, then, that Rock Snobbery emerged just as young people started dressing in blue jeans and pretending that social class didn't matter. Adolescents simply found novel ways—ways more acceptable to their newly egalitarian pretenses—to marginally differentiate themselves from one another."
Snobby parenting smacks of the same syndrome. And of course it's interesting to see that one can always recapture the less charming personality traits from one's teenage years. But I see very clearly why it happens. When you become a parent, it happens suddenly (not a surprise, by any means, but literally, one day you don't have the kid and the next day there he is, yelling at you) and unless you're a contrarian, it is comforting to set up some rules and structures, ways to feel that you are doing the smart, right thing. (Having said that, I'm a contrarian, wouldn't you know?)
I understand this snottyness better now that I have a handy metaphor, (one that I can truly understand given how passionate my high school / college / graduate school acquaintances were about their music collections, and edifying the hapless creatures who bumbled their way without particular loyalties). I rejoice in the way that parent snobbery crosses class lines and is so equal opportunity that anyone can feel superior to everyone. But I truly wish we could leave the lunchroom behind, because it really seems too dismal that we should cling so hard to a time of life that is almost universally thought to be forgettable, if it weren't so horrific.
posted by Elise at 10:38 AM
15 Comments
From the Rafters
I'm coming late to this, but since I commented on the phenemenon of idiotic t-shirts over the summer, I thought I'd just say one thing about the Abercrombie and Fitch shirt debacle. On the one hand, it's very good that girls realized they could use their wallets to command a clothing giant to stop being (quite so) offensive. But on the other, I wish that a slightly different perspective had been voiced. Where are the people out there saying: "Why would I want to wear something that makes me look like such a nitwit?"
On the plus side, perhaps the "girlcott" is a sign that people are more willing to shop socially and that there is a lot of promise for sites like Buy Blue. My sister-in-law has just informed me that there is a special Buy Blue Holiday Shopping Page coming. Here's hoping it makes a difference.
posted by Elise at 11:18 AM
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Ghost Town
New York makes children of all of us. I mean that in both a good and a bad way. On the bad side, we get petty and squabble over cabs in the rain, get snotty about the bagels in other parts of the world, and in this moment at least, one person is spending over $65 million of his own money to keep the city as his own playground. (This isn't so weird. It's a job requirement that NYC mayors be eccentric.)
On the plus side, if one lives here, it is hard not to become at least interested, if not obsessed with neighborhood lore and history. The city encourages this intimacy. It shares secrets and allows for crazy stories. Fictions become real. Over the summer, the New York Times created a map that pointed out hundreds of spots where things that never really happened occurred in literature. (Not just Eloise at the Plaza but Lyle the crocodile at East 88th street, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Sophie's Choice, Henry James's Washington Square...) They solicited suggestions and I spent a naptime trying to figure out if Nick and Nora Charles were living at the Normandy apartments on Riverside Drive, but the place they stayed was called the Normandie, which I'm sure was different. And I can't visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art without thinking about From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
And then there's "real" city mythology. Everyone has a ghost story (I just heard about a sighting in a nearby bar), every building is loaded with lore, scandal, mystery, intrigue, politics. Just as fictional lives shine in the landscape, so do the hauntings, rumors and dramas.
So I was intrigued yesterday when someone told me a neighborhood ghost story. Apparently, a woman, a neighbor I don't know, but who has lived here for over 20 years kept walking past a weird sanitation department storage area (following the construction of the Holland Tunnel) on Canal Street, and sensed a Presence. (Just one? Really? That seems low. I wonder how many irritated spirits the Department of Transportation is currently inspiring.)
She started to research the park and this Presence apparently influenced a library microfiche reader, scrolling through page after page without human assistance until it pointed her to a page explaining that not only was this ugly sanitation department heap was once a park, but that the law of this land is that it had to become a park once again. Canal Park was reborn after it had been mowed down in 1921.
My husband and I took Felix there yesterday and it is indeed pretty if a little stodgy. None of us sensed the helpful Presence, but I am glad that it managed to wrestle its park back from the Department of Sanitation. I hope I remember to tell him this story, not because it is so wildly fascinating but because it will let him know that his city is alive and if a neighbor could revive a park that was buried for 84 years, he could also bring some part of town back from the dead. He will live in city history and if he wants, he can become part of it.
posted by Elise at 3:02 PM
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Domestic Fictions
One of my favorite holiday-themed movies is Christmas in Connecticut, a clever picture from 1945 starring Barbara Stanwyck and Sydney Greenstreet, a fabulous set of characters and a likable if somewhat forgettable leading man.
Stanwyck plays a food writer for Smart Housekeeping magazine, and her wartime readers- civilians and soldiers alike- thrill to the Martha Stewart-y perfect stories of food, family and farm life that she describes each month. The lie, of course is that she's a hard-boiled career girl living in Manhattan whose delicious recipes have been told to her by the restaurateur (Uncle Felix- played by S.Z. Sakall, who is so fabulous in everything, Casablanca especially) around the corner. Of course, she finds herself having to live the lie, appropriate a farm, borrow a baby and play hostess to a war hero while hoping that she can put one over on everyone and not reveal that she's never changed a diaper or coddled an egg in her life.
Everything about this movie is charming and I really do sleep better at night knowing that Nora Ephron hasn't decided to rediscover it and shoehorn Meg Ryan into another misguided, politically questionable remake.
And one of the things I love about the picture is how it portrays domesticity as something that doesn't really come easily, that it is something men can be better at than women, that it can be weird and foreign, terrifying and funny.
So it was with great interest that I read a review* of a new biography of the famous Mrs. Beeton, the doyenne of housekeeping in the second half of the 19th century. I read a lot of Beeton at one point and found all those details of daily life fascinating. (The biography is out in the UK now, and I am itching to get a copy. I may just have to break down and place an order from Amazon UK. I would really love to see the author's fictional account of what a day in the life of a family living the Beeton style must have been like.)Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management made Beeton the "domestic goddess" of her times. It might be best said that Martha Stewart is the modern Isabella Beeton since Beeton made her name synonymous with an empire of domestic intelligence and organization that can easily be compared to Stewart's.
At the same time, Beeton wasn't exactly a 19th century Hestia. A reprint shows the incredible range of topics covered in the Book of Household Management, but the biography points out that Beeton was chiefly an excellent journalist and clever editor, gathering recipes and information from many other authors. Her magic was not in creating but presentation (though at least one person accused Beeton of plagiarism). Even the greatest homemaker of her age wasn't entirely what she seemed to be. While her image was that of a plump, middle aged learned authority, the real Mrs Beeton published her domestic bible in serial form between the ages of 21 and 25, and died at 28 (from puerperal fever after childbirth).
The super-competent domestic diva is always a marvelous invention. Really, she's a mermaid. People claim to have seen her but she's really something more wished for than real. Martha Stewart herself is hardly a happy model, and I'm not even talking about the jail time. She's kind of interesting because she's a bit of a monster. The silky smoothness of domestic perfection is the mask the disguises work- the sweat that goes into the quotidian. I'm frankly more interested in seeing what is going on underneath than trying to assume the shining mantle myself. And it'sa good thing no one expects me to be a Beeton because the results would have less in common with romantic comedy than one of Douglas Sirk's Technicolor nightmares.
*Unfortunately, I can't link to the review because it is in the Times Literary Supplement, which offers its content only to its print subscribers.
posted by Elise at 8:14 AM
2 Comments
Move Over, Little Ladybug
There's a new favorite book here, and it magically gets the kid to:
Eat when he doesn't want to
Calm down when he's pissy (often)
Grab something that isn't the terrier's tail
Learn how to kiss (or nip? or slobber?)
It's like Pat the Bunny, without the hypnotic non-sequesters. This one is strictly big faces, big textures, lots of color, excess and decadence everywhere.
Welcome, That's Not My Monster.
(and if you have something against monsters, there is a whole "That's Not My" series featuring dinosaurs, kittens, trucks, teddies- the stuffed sort, not the wearable ones- cars, puppies and bunnies, but really, their dinosaurs look a Hell of a lot more like monsters than the things one finds in the Museum of Natural History.)
posted by Elise at 10:43 AM
2 Comments
Post-Patrum Productivity
Productivity has been problematic lately, and when I say lately, I mean the last nine months or so. I wake up every morning and in happier moments, I am a guerilla combatant, my kid under one arm and a machete in my other hand, ready to clear a path through the jungle of a day, leaving solid work and amusement in my wake.
Needless to say, such romantic thinking leads to disappointment, though the fantasy is born again each dawn. Still, I plod along and maybe will somehow figure out how to either adjust my expectations or get super galvanized.
Maybe it is the splitting headache I have today, or it could be the tooth problems (related, perhaps?) that I think have been encouraged by nocturnal grinding, but I have been trying to be a little more lenient, and was heartened when I read an article in the Guardian about Kate Bush.
Now I'm not particularly familiar with Kate Bush's work, though I did read about her recently in The Bronte Myth (where there is mention of Bush's "Wuthering Heights" song. Apparently, she is back after a long hiatus, and here's where she was:
... While pregnant, you write a song about artistic endeavour called An Architect's Dream. You give birth to a boy, Albert, in 1998 and you and your guitarist partner Danny McIntosh find yourselves "completely shattered for a couple of years". You move house and spend months doing it up. You convert the garage into a studio, but being a full-time mother who chooses not to employ a nanny or housekeeper, it's hard to find time to actually work in there. Bit by bit, the ideas come and a notion forms in your mind to make a double album, though you have to adjust to a new working regime of stolen moments as opposed to the 14-hour days of old. Your son begins school and suddenly time opens up and though progress doesn't exactly accelerate ("That's a bit too strong a word"), two years of more concentrated effort later, the album is complete. You look up from the mixing desk and it is 2005.
If the outside world was wondering whether Kate Bush would ever finish her long-awaited album, then it was a feeling shared by its creator. "Oh yeah," she sighs. "I mean, there were so many times I thought, I'll have the album finished this year, definitely, we'll get it out this year. Then there were a couple of years where I thought, I'm never gonna do this. If I could make albums quicker, I'd be on a roll wouldn't I? Everything just seems to take so much time. I don't know why. Time ... evaporates."
Now, I have little in common with Kate Bush, but I know how she feels.
I have to do more, I know, but it is somehow reassuring to know that this battle is fought by everyone on all fronts.
And now, my dentist is waiting.
posted by Elise at 10:10 AM
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