Monthly Archives: September 2010

What is wrong with us?

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sleep positionerAnother day, another parenting story that should have come from the Onion, not the world of Actual News. From the article’s first paragraph:

Sleep positioners marketed with the promise of helping babies sleep safely are too dangerous to use and should not be sold, U.S. officials warned on Wednesday.

I did not buy any of these types of products, but I could have, especially with the first kid, when we were flushed with fear and ready to believe so many things about what babies need. So I want to make it clear that I’m not attacking anyone who bought these (now known to be dangerous) devices that were supposed to help a child sleep safe. I am merely saying that we are all fucking morons, anxious to the point of actually harming our kids, worrying (as Lisa Belkin put it) about the wrong dangers.

I think (and I hope) that 30 years from now, new parents will look back on our generation of parents with a mix of wonder and pity. How did we get so paranoid? Why were we so arrogant to think our plastic devices or novel methods would solve old uncertainties? (Novel methods! To tackle problems that have been around ever since cavemen were having babies!)

Those future-parents will know that what actually happened was that all our tweaky machinations created a bestiary of kids who were never allowed to sleep on their own, or walk outside on their own, or play with sticks on their own. Instead we bought them plastic safety devices that killed them in their sleep.

As for us parents: we fretted longer and worked harder on parenting than any generation before us, and it left us exhausted, narrow-minded, resentful, and dispirited.

And the worst part is that it wasn’t about the kids ever at all. It was always just about us.

SAHD: Season 2

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I’m not entirely sure I follow the concept of a “new season” of 2-minute Web comedies, but today is the official launch of Stay at Home Dad‘s second season on Atom.com.

The range of Stay-at-Home-Dad commentary and media is many things, but it’s not often laugh-out-loud-funny. This show is. Directed by Adam Jones, the series features Brandon Williams as a laid-off dad who crashes playgrounds, birthday parties, and playdates like a younger Larry David. He tries to buy painkillers off another mom in front of the slide, calls his crying baby a cockblocker, and asks a blonde mom at a birthday party if the carpet matches the drapes.

Over the top, sure, but it’s entertaining stuff for anyone who has ever felt estranged and vaguely emasculated by the pressure of socializing nicely all day in a world of moms. Williams’s character, on the other hand, is all Id in a very repressed world, finding ways to piss off a revolving cast of moms by talking about three-ways, retards, loose labia, and interracial sex (“it’s all pink on the inside, right?”) while watching his kid play on the swings.

Take a look, spread the word, and hopefully there will be a Season 3.

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Media Alert: Teachers Have Sex!

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The New York Post reported today that Melissa Petro, an art and writing teacher in the public school system (who they refer to as a “Sexxx-ed teacher”), and who several years earlier had worked as an escort, was awarded tenure.

I refuse, although it goes against my every instinct, to make any Van Halen references here. I just won’t do it. If you’re reading this, I instruct you not to think about the song “Hot for Teacher,” or the video. That’s just not what I’m about as a professional blogger.

So here’s the Post‘s take:

The failure to do even a cursory investigation of educators up for tenure spotlights a major problem with a system that makes it nearly impossible to fire a teacher who’s gotten the coveted perk.

Petro was recommended for tenure last spring, despite her numerous blogs describing herself as a former “stripper” and “sex worker.” The blogs had begun three years earlier and continued throughout the tenure process.

Months before she received final approval, she blogged, “A sympathetic administrator asked if I couldn’t publish under a pseudonym.”

She wrote that she refused in order to protect the “rights and integrity of myself and every other man or woman who makes or has made choices similar to mine.”

Nowhere is it implied that Petro had in any way brought her sexual history or blogging interests into the classroom. She should denied tenure instead because she had, in the past, broken the law and was now publicly discussing it. Make of that what you will. What’s more interesting to me is how papers pick up on trends—this one being criticism of public school teachers and administrations.

Petro’s tenure has nothing to do with a lack of oversight. Nor does it have something to do with the power of the teacher’s union and the way it protects unqualified educators. But the Post can tie her story—which really is about prurient interest and little else—to those contemporary issues and thus fill their pages.

As much as anything, the coverage given to Petro is about content-scarcity in a consumer-driven media environment. Which is boring. As is all the hot air expended over this woman’s past.

And by the way:

Brought to You by the Letter ‘B’

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The saddest, most beautiful lede ever:

The princess birthday cake for a 3-year-old girl was one of the few things left untouched after a brawl that police said involved 75 people at a hall in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio.

Really, where do you go from there? Well, you explain what led to the fight at that notorious hive of scum and villainy, the Fraternal Order of Eagles Hall. Seems the kid’s bio-dad showed up and had some words with mom’s new beau, and as is wont to happen at a toddler’s birthday party, beer bottles began to fly. I mean, I’m sure this kind of thing happens way more often than most people would like to admit.

It also gives me some ideas for Sasha’s 2nd birthday party, coming up in just two short months. First of all, no princess cake. If there’s going to be a brawl (and there is going to be a brawl, definitely), we’ll need easy-to-launch cupcakes or, better yet, Boston cream pies. Second, rent an FOE hall. Third, no glass beer bottles. Instead, we’ll have a keg or two, which is only fair as Sasha prefers Sixpoint Ales, which are draft-only.

Come one, come all! But please, leave the gang colors at home. And no Dora—Sasha goes apeshit at the sight of her. Don’t blame me if she cuts ya.