Category Archives: Parental Guidance

Parental Guidance

Our Declaration of Independence from Horrible Questions

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I’ve noticed a trend among a small sample size of me and my wife (roughly twice the number of people needed to warrant a New York Times trend piece). The trend is, people asking us if we’re going to have another kid and us looking at each other awkwardly wondering what to say.

I’ve noticed that the frequency with which people ask us this question has increased as our daughter gets older. My best guess is people used to see we had a baby and were like, “Oh no, you don’t want another baby right now because you have a baby,” but once our baby became a toddler and then a little kid people were like, “Hey, you don’t have a baby anymore. What’s the deal with not having a baby?”

Our respective families, for the most part, do not ask us this question. Our single/childless friends sure as hell don’t ask us this question. It only comes from other couples with kids, and not couples we know well, either. In fact, it seems the more casually I know these other couples, the more likely they are to ask if we’re planning to add to our brood. The chance of being asked the question decreases exponentially with the amount of time it’s been since I’ve met you.

As a human being with a modicum of self respect, one’s first inclination when getting asked this question is to respond, “None of your business, person I barely know.” And yet, we always demur and struggle awkwardly for a response, as if we’re the people who should feel awkward in this situation. “I knew we shouldn’t have gone to this Share Your Reproductive Plans Party–also known as Daring To Leave The House–with only one lousy kid. What a social faux pas!”

Legendary kid-punching football coach Woody Hayes once said of the forward pass, it has three potential outcomes, and two are bad. Similarly, the question “Are you going to have any more kids?” has a million potential answers. Only one of them is not fraught with awkwardness; i.e., “Yes, in fact my wife is pregnant right now.” Every single other answer is a minefield.

Maybe the couple wants another child but can’t for medical reasons. Maybe they can’t for financial reasons. (I know another kid would certainly break my bank, unless Congress finally legalizes organ selling, and I’m sure they will any day now.) Maybe they’re trying to have another child but have been unsuccessful and are feeling really demoralized about it. Maybe they have reason to think they might be pregnant and are stressed out–either in anticipation or fear. Maybe husband and wife have been tensely debating this issue for months and are at the brink of breakup over the strain this is putting on their marriage. Maybe their first kid has some disease or disorder that has them wondering if another kid from the same gene pool is a good idea. Maybe one of the parents has just received bad medical news that has made them rethink their plans.

I’m barely scratching the surface here. I’m sure you can imagine variations on any of these themes that range from uncomfortable to horrifying. The kind of details that you wouldn’t want to know about anyone, really. So why do people ask?

Here’s my theory: When you have a kid, you are assumed by certain other people to have no life. Namely, other parents–not all parents, but in general, only parents see you this way. The more kids these other parents have, the less of a life they assume you possess. If you have no life, ipso facto, there are no details about that non-life that can be kept secret. You are seen as a mere life-giver to your succubus spawn, because that is how they see themselves.

This type knows no class (in all senses of the word). It is found in overachieving Park Slope-ian helicopter moms or harried suburban types. When you talk to these kinds of parents, everything’s on the table. Did you breastfeed? How about immunizations? How difficult was your pregnancy, did you get an epidural, and would you like to hear my feelings on why you were horrible if you did? And those are questions women ask me, a dude whose role in the pregnancy was limited to DNA contribution and moral support. My wife has to sit through way, way worse.

I am officially declaring my independence from feeling bad about responding with anger and disgust to such questions. But my question to you is, What would be the best response, if said response is intended to shame the questioner? Please post your nominees in the comments.

Parental Guidance

Girly Stuff

Julie Klausner recently wrote a great piece begging grown women not to be so girly, which I agree with wholeheartedly. If I can get on a Grampa Simpson soapbox for a moment, I think nearly everyone in my generation and younger, regardless of gender, needs to grow the eff up a little bit. C’mon, guys. We can go a day without playing kickball. Let’s do this.

On top of that, there are some particularly thorny issues when it comes to the ladies acting like kids. Such infantalizing reintroduces an element that I thought was dead, the “what do I know? I’m just a girl!” idiocy, a sort of no-wave feminism. Not to mention the creeptacular implications of women acting girly-but-sexy, which we don’t even need to get into. Naturally, Katy Perry is at the forefront of this nonsense, a personality whose schizophrenic sexuality makes Britney Spears seem like Andrea Dworkin.

However, I wonder if, in the case of women, the Girly Thing is something of a reaction to not having much of a girlhood. Boys can remain boys for a long time. Entire industries rely on it. If men couldn’t act like kids–if they weren’t almost expected to–it’d be the end of Hooters, Dave & Busters, Judd Apatow’s filmography, and every light beer ad campaign of the last 20 years. I doubt there’s a female equivalent of the Mancation, at least as a business model. Dudes feel entitled to have breaks from family life–from adulthood, really. Women rarely have this option.

I hope all of this doesn’t come off as Mansplaining. Women don’t need any dude to detail their plight to the world, least of all me. But now that I’m the father of a girl, one that gets older every day (that’s how the aging process works, apparently), I’m constantly confronted by unfairness like this that I was only vaguely aware of before. Abstractly, I knew all of these things already. Now I get to see it act on my four-year-old, see little bits of kid-dom taken away from her day by day.

Continue reading Girly Stuff →

NYC, Parental Guidance

The Kid Who Knew Too Much

This may be the saddest and most glorious thing I’ve ever seen.

I’ve just gotten off the L train at Grand Street. As I run through the turnstiles and begin climbing the stairs, I see a mother carrying her child 10 steps above me. What caught my eye was the way she was doing it. She was carrying this boy in his stroller. I’m sure you’ve seen moms in the subway do this, but not the same way this mom was doing it.

This mom was holding the stroller parallel to the ground, hard against her stomach. It was an umbrella style stroller, meaning it was relatively light. (As opposed to those huge baby carriages for newborns. Try lugging that thing on a subway some time.) Even so, the ease with which she scaled the stairs while holding this thing so tightly against her body was amazing. She had the grit and determination of The Mom Alone. I need to get out of this station so I can catch the bus, because if I miss the bus I will not get to X on time and I will be screwed.

But the real kicker was the kid. He looked to be three years old, maybe four at the oldest. His head stuck out from his mother’s side at a right angle, as if he’d been screwed into place. And the look on his face was not one of fear, as he probably should have had, or one of kiddish “whee!”-type excitement, as some kids might.

His expression was one of resignation. Not sad, just a look of guess we’re doing this now. A look far too world weary and wan for a three year old. It was chilling in some ways, and in others hilarious, almost admirable. A child who had no illusions about what to expect from this world, who had no illusions to shatter. He knew at any moment, he would be hoisted aloft, hovered two feet above the ground, placed flat against his mother’s stomach, perpendicular to her, and then finally placed on the pavement when back in the light of day.

Part of me wanted to catch up to them and offer help. But the mom was too fast and already at the surface before I could get close. And anyway, what kind of help could I really offer? Maybe this kid had already figured it all out.