"Most of the adults I have encountered seem to suffer from an inability to resolve two conflicting impulses: the desire to make a better life for their children and their children’s children (and, often, for all the members of those generations); and a certain sort of frustration arising from the fact that people won’t just do what was done before because what was so wrong with that? It’s easy to say that people have been surviving for millions of years without this or that modern innovation, and it’s easy to mock parents who stress about all the new threats science uncovers for us each day, but ease doesn’t imply insight. The problem the above essay highlights isn’t with innovation or striving to improve our children’s lives but rather with obsessing to excess about things that don’t warrant obsession. That’s simple to say but it gets obscured by the humor aimed at the stereotypical alpha parents. If newborn babies can’t discern colors outside the gray scale, why not get a high-contrast black-and-white moon if it will help your child learn to see and understand shapes? Or if Baby Mozart might help stimulate your child’s brain (or even if it’s just pleasant for your child to listen to), then why not shell out a couple bucks for a CD (or even less for a downloadable MP3)? And I wouldn’t have minded so much if my parents had bought some French flashcards, given how easily children pick up the structure and content of language (I can read the brief bit of French in Nessel and Ratner’s ditty, but the 5+ years I spent in French classes in middle school, high school and college could have been a little easier if I had been given a head start). What compelled me to write this comment, though, are the subset of things that alpha and (thankfully) many non-alpha parents do that are unequivocally important but that are overlooked because people are too busy laughing and not wanting to look foolish.
To start: who wouldn’t use a fireplace safety gate with a small child in the house? Or even just with people in the house? (And who the heck put a fireplace in that child’s room in the first place? [Just kidding]). The sterilizer is not necessary if you’re willing to boil your bottle for the requisite twenty minutes or so. And that’s all well and good except that many people don’t know that you need to boil things for an extended period to actually disinfect them; if they’re boiled for only five or ten minutes, then you may as well save time and not do anything. And is it really so egregious a transgression to buy organic food, given that babies are considerably more vulnerable to pesticide residue? On a related note, why would you use baby wipes with perfume? The non-scented ones cost the same and don’t irritate skin or risk allergic reaction. Though the danger from scented wipes is minimal, another substance mentioned here carries far more risk: phthalate, which is, I will admit, obscure-sounding and little-discussed. But even so, it is harmful and (no surprise) very cheap for companies to use, companies that are more than happy to continue to listen to people mock those who worry about the effects of these substances that are bad enough for full-grown humans, to say nothing of newborn babies. I have never heard of non-slip socks; I don’t see a problem with brain-development games; nor do I think that a digital archive is inherently less valuable than a physical archive; I don’t know the various doctors mentioned nor what a baby would use a yoga mat for nor do I know what sleep or G & T coaches are; I might be misinterpreting but I think I had a star chart and I’m pretty sure I thought it was cool. As a pasty white person, I can’t imagine not using sunscreen for my child; and sunhats have been making babies look adorable and ridiculous for at least the last two generations (and who doesn’t love a baby in sunglasses?); my au pair was from Denmark but she was still cool and sweet and she and I still stay in touch (thanks to the evils of modern technology); I don’t live in a place that requires a HEPA filter but if I did I wouldn’t hesitate to get one for my son or daughter (and I wouldn’t moan later in their lives about how my parents didn’t buy one for me). I’m aware that this comment is largely humorless and curmudgeonly, but I think humor like the above has an insidious effect made all the more powerful by the ease with which we all join in the mockery."
