Our moment of ascendancy has arrived. New magazines like Violet and Cookie are being targeted toward hip parents. The latest Anthropologie catalogue features a lovely mom and dad with a set of artfully distressed tots lounging near the Christmas tree. The retro code is completely clear, in the loving looks exchanges between Hot Mom and Daddy-O. It’s okay to be parents. Having children is as trendy as practicing yoga or buying organic.
Fair enough. That’s not the part that cheers me. Ever since the Gap started offering clothes in my size (16) I’ve been grateful for certain aspects of the vast corporate conspiracy. Let’s not mistake that for culture.
What I’m noticing is different. Not just a book like The Three Martini Play Date or the term “MILF”, but the idea of a kind of retro, convivial, good-humored brand called Parenthood. For those of us who grew up on commercials and pop music, it’s not a moment too soon. After all, if we’re not being sold to, we scarcely exist.
We struggle with milk wars and sleeplessness in a lonely desert, marked by meetings of our play group, where we all discover as if for the first time, that our designer toddlers bite and eat sand, and love us with an intensity as blinding as the sun. That we are in charge of everything, all the time, and once we stop, their memories of our parenting will live on in them, all their lives. Whew. Who’s for a cocktail?
What encourages me about the shiny new image of the hip parents is the idea that Mom and Dad are allowed to thrive in some kind of collective, heavily-styled imagination. That we continue to generate pheromones in addition to revenue. That becoming Parental does not necessitate turning into a blob of reactive, spit-stained uncertainty (though that is definitely one of the early phases) but that it actually enhances one’s critical thinking. That it’s sexy. That it’s fun.
Because, it is, or can be. Usually, when you get to the point of being able to laugh at yourself. Then you discover the pleasure of no longer being the center of the universe, and the air gets a tad sweeter. All the pressure floats out. And what’s left is your family.
I think one of the biggest secrets of parenting, (which like any quality acquired via suffering and sacrifice is invisible to the uninitiated), is that when you cease to apologize for taking on the responsibility of another human life, you become a person with authority, someone to be reckoned with. It’s kind of like what women over 40 come to understand about the lies they’ve been told all their lives. We grew up with the notion that having a baby diminished us.
When the marketplace begins selling to us as hip consumers, it’s a moment to realize that we are the ones actually driving this unwieldy contraption we call our culture. And for our kids’ sakes, we ought to partake of whatever pleasure it offers us, as parents. We’ve earned it. Let’s enjoy it.
Posted on November 10th, 2005 by MomStar
Filed under: Uncategorized, Daily Life
Nice take on the parental condition, female in particular. Love this writer, more more more.