DadWagon Q&A: Jennifer Niesslein of the late, lamented Brain, Child

As editors of a dadblog that rarely produces anything particularly smart, we are keenly aware how little protein-rich writing there is about parenting. So at the end of May we were saddened, along with the rest of the Internet, to hear that the magazine Brain, Child would stop publishing. The magazine, run for 13 years by co-founders Stephanie Wilkinson and Jennifer Neisslein, had a unique style of parental inquiry, often expressed through searing personal essays, that seems quite irreplaceable. And yet, they are no more. Neisslein was good enough to chat with DadWagon about Brain, Child, its demise, and the future of writing about parenting.

DadWagon So let’s start at the beginning. Why did you start Brain, Child?

Niesslein The short answer: it’s something Stephanie and I wanted to read. The longer answer is that I didn’t feel as if I had a community (Steph was literally the only new mother I knew at that point), and I was irritated at the condescension directed at mothers.

DadWagon Let’s talk about that condescension. Where did you see it?

Niesslein Oh, holy hell–everywhere? From the ped office calling me “Mommy” to various dogma-based advice-givers warnings that if you don’t follow these parameters, you will almost certainly screw your kid up. We just really wanted something that was a peer-to-peer kind of vibe.

DadWagon The wonderful (!) thing is that those are completely different kinds of condescension, although they both would seem to add to a sort of forced identity change: you are a mother now, I’m going to call you Mommy and tell you how to raise your child

Niesslein Yep! The whole title is a play on, yes, I have a brain and a child, and it’s, as Steph says, not an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp.

DadWagon So that peer-to-peer conversation, did it tend to have its own tilt? That is, did it advocate for more of a free-range parenting approach, for example?

Niesslein Not really. We don’t have any particular parenting philosophy. Honestly, I couldn’t really live with myself if I thought I had all the answers for every family. Do what works for you. I think that’s one reason people liked the magazine. You get to step inside families like yours and families that aren’t like yours. For me, at least, it’s been a big empathy-strengthening experience.

DadWagon I guess that is a bit of a hallmark of the magazine, that open-mindedness. Do you think it’s still as rare now as it was in 1999 to find that kind of writing on parenting?

Niesslein No, not all. What I think is rare still are places to publish the length of work that we do. If you’re writing under 1000 words, there are some outlets, and if you’re writing a book, it’s possible to find a publisher, but if you’re writing long, meaty essays about parenthood, it’s a tough place to be.

DadWagon It does raise the question: your readers (including folks we’ve heard from) were passionate, you were doing something quite different then and now. Why did it fail?

Niesslein I don’t actually think of this as a failure. Maybe I’m being delusional, but we had a good long run, got to do things and meet people we wouldn’t have otherwise, and actually made a modest living for a number of years. The day we made our announcement, the message we got… that was probably the most gratifying day of my professional life.

I’m thinking of this as a transition to a different business model. Why are we having to transition? I wish I knew the answer. But I think it was a combination of rising postage costs, the simple cost of paper, and the internet. Or not really the internet but the perception that the written word should be free.

DadWagon The idea that something like Brain, Child should be free is amazing, because it was already quite a bargain to subscribe (I’m saying that, of course, as the kind of hypocrite who didn’t actually subscribe). But seriously, you were charging very little for some great content. If you had it to do over, would you raise rates, or is there something else you’d change?

Niesslein Hmm. I can’t think of what. All of publishing, from the big six to small independent magazines like Brain, Child, are in flux, it seems to me.

DadWagon You mentioned in your Transitions letter than e-subscriptions had been going well, but not enough to keep the presses running. Will you keep eBooks going? With your anthologies? What is the afterlife plan?

Niesslein It seems like you have to have an ereader version these days, doesn’t it? We still haven’t worked out all the nitty gritty of the anthologies yet. We’re uploading the Summer issue to the printer today, and then I think the plan is rest and vacation, then work on the new plan.

DadWagon Will you go back to journalism?

Niesslein I’m actually working on a novel now–I’m 25K words in. Who knows if I have any talent for fiction, but I’m having fun. It’s like the lamest mid-life crisis ever.

DadWagon Yes, from editing to writing isn’t exactly sailing around the world for a year, but I understand the vertigo.

Niesslein It’s about my speed.

DadWagon Final question: the world of (ick) “mommy blogging” and “dadblogging” has come into existence almost entirely since you started Brain, Child. What’s your view of the parenting blogosphere in general? What is it useful for, what doesn’t it do well?

Niesslein I’m not very well-versed in it. But I once interviewed Jenn Mattern (from the blog Breed ‘Em and Weep), and she made the point that writing is writing–parenthood is just one lens to look at the human experience. I think that’s true, whether you’re writing for a magazine or a blog. Like everything, the quality of blogs can vary and what people are looking to get out of them varies. Sorry to be so wishy-washy here.

DadWagon I can see the point. But to echo what you said before, longform is not a big strength in the blogosphere. I hope someone picks up where you left off, and pushes it forward. There. That’s my closing wish.

Niesslein I’m trying to think of something pithy to say here.

DadWagon Please let us know when the anthologies come out.

Niesslein Oh, definitely! Thanks for the chat.

Q&A: Jacob Sager Weinstein, author of How Not to Kill Your Baby

Photo by Randy Sager (yes, young Jacob's aunt)

Jacob Sager Weinstein has two kids, and has written for The New Yorker and McSweeney’s, and is a former contributor to The Onion, but what he really wants is to take a shower every once in a while without somebody throwing half-eaten bits of bagel into it. His new book is HOW NOT TO KILL YOUR BABY, a parody of every crazy-making, fear-inducing pregnancy and parenting book you’ve ever cringed over. Theodore spoke with Jacob via the miracle of instant messaging, and got the scoop on his book and parental neuroses.

Theodore: First question: did you ever come close to in fact killing your baby? Falls? Drops? Poisoning?

Jacob:  The time I was carrying my daughter across a patch of ice, and I slipped and did a 180 and dropped her, I was too busy falling to see how she landed, so I choose to think she landed on her feet with the perfect grace of a cat, even though she was about one at the time. At any rate, she survived, and she’s brilliant (objectively speaking) so I’m fairly confident she didn’t land on her head. I think that was the scariest moment, in terms of paternal negligence.

Theodore: If that’s the case, and you are in fact, not lethal or possibly lethal as a father, then tell me why you wrote this particular book? It’s very funny–but why turn the attention of your humor to this specific subject?

Jacob:  A friend of mine (and fellow comedy writer) named David Feldman once told me that all comedy comes out of anger. I don’t think that’s universally true– “Singin’ In The Rain” is full of brilliant one-liners and it’s the least-angry movie ever made– but I do think that it’s often true. When my wife was pregnant, I read a lot of pregnancy and parenting books, and a lot of the advice was delivered in a condescending and/or crazy-making way, or was just plain bad, or contradicted the book I had just read. At the time I didn’t know enough to get angry– I figured, hey, these books are written by experts. They must know what they’re talking about, even when they’re contradicting each other. But once I got more experience as a dad, I starting getting retroactively angry with a lot of these books, and because I’m a comedy writer, that anger turned to mockery pretty quickly.

Theodore: That’s interesting, because I didn’t really read anger in it. To me, the subtext of the book was about how fears of parenting are unfounded and absurd, and that we should just worry less. Are you just totally pissed off in person, and it doesn’t come across on the page (or via IM, I should point out)?

Jacob:  HOW DARE YOU ASK ME THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Better?)

Theodore: Very good.

Jacob:  Seriously… I think that’s a very reasonable way of reading the book. What angers me most about certain parenting books and products is that they seem aimed at exploiting the natural but ludicrous fears we all have as parents. And so if I’m satirizing that sales approach, I’m naturally poking fun at those fears. Also, I tend to be a pretty easy-going guy, so the anger that sparked the book probably dissipated itself pretty quickly once I started making myself giggle. But I think you can see it poking through in certain sections. I’m going to thumb the book and look for one while you’re writing your next question.

Theodore: On to an incredibly important question: You and your wife as parents: Helicopter or Benign Neglect? (Full Disclosure: I already wrote my questions. I’m incredibly well prepared!)

Jacob:  OK, first, I found a passage that I think is about as close as I got to expressing my anger– and it’s right at the beginning of the book, in the Introduction. This tends to support the theory that my anger dissolved on impact, leaving behind only a residue of pure goofiness. Here’s the passage:”Dear Parents-to-Be, Ever since you received the good news, you’ve been subjected to an endless barrage of bad news, from dire warnings of dietary health risks to incessant pressure to follow the latest trendy parenting fad. This book is written in the commonsense belief that, no matter how much pressure society puts on you, it’s always possible to add more. Tonsmore. Hundreds of pages more, plus illustrations. So, read on. Unless you’re some kind of baby-hating creep who wants to parent all wrong.” OK, on to the helicopter/benign neglect question.

Theodore:  Nice self-quoting, btw.

 Jacob:  I think we’re somewhere in between. So instead of helicopters, we’re hovering over our kids in those crazy James-Bond jetpacks that never work quite as well as they’re supposed to, and half the time we’re right above them, and the rest of the time, we’re shooting around in the clouds desperately trying to get back down in time to pick them up from school before the teachers call the Child Welfare office on us.

 Theodore:  That sounds about right. Unfortunately my colleagues here at DadWagon (not me) tend more toward a form of not-so-benign neglect. Sad but true. Next question. i think another interesting element of the book is that it’s gender neutral, with COMPLETELY useful advice for both Mom and Dad. Did you have concerns about coming across as a sexist pig while writing sections like “How not to Kill your fetus”? I mean tips from a man about how to read a pregnancy test is practically screaming for a kick in the nuts.

 Jacob: The nice thing about writing a humor book is that if anything seems offensive, I can just claim I was parodying something offensive, and I completely share your outrage about those awful people who did the original thing I’m parodying– Look! They’re right over there! LET’S GET THEM! (Actually, in this case, I can make that claim with some honesty. Part of what annoys me about a lot of pregnancy/parenting advice is that it’s written by men who seem to think pregnant women would just roam their houses drinking cleaning fluids if there weren’t some PhD-equipped male to explain why it’s a bad idea.)

Theodore:  Last one, and then I won’t take up more of your time. You live in London. Does your kind of humor about parenting hold there? Or are the local fears/insecurities different? Or, as we are led to believe of the French, are English parenting problems completely non-existent? (Please add something about being slender and smoking and chocolate.)

 Jacob:  Right now, I don’t have a UK publisher for the book, so I can’t say for sure. (Although maybe the fact that I don’t have an English publisher answers the question already.) But I think that parenting fears and insecurities are mostly the same the world over. Still, you just gave me a million-dollar idea for my next book: “Stiff Upper Lip: How British Parenting Techniques Can Transform You Into A Queen Mum.” The central thesis will be that requiring children to put that extra “u” into “flavour” teaches them patience, and swapping the last two letters of “theatre” teaches them to think outside the box.

 

To Pre-K or Not to Pre-K, That Is the Question

So, we got the letter: Sasha has a spot in a free pre-K program starting this fall! This puts us in a bit of a quandary—since we never thought she’d get in, we didn’t really figure out how we’d respond to an acceptance.

Let me back up a bit. Universal pre-K, for those of you blissfully unaware of the concept, is, in NYC, a bit of a misnomer. It’s a public program available to everyone (hence “universal”), although so limited in practice that most kids have little chance of being accepted, unless they’re willing to go to a school deemed “not so great” by the hordes of over-ambitious, over-protective, over-sensitive parents who populate the blogs of this great metropolis.

We applied, I think, to six schools, expecting to get rejected from our top choices: the bilingual Shuang Wen in the Lower East Side, for instance. And that’s just what happened, except that we put, as our last choice, the school that is only four blocks from our home in Brooklyn, P.S. 38. And that’s where we got in. Yay.

And so now what do we do? As much as I like the idea of FREE PRESCHOOL, it’s complicated to just say yes. For one, Sasha really likes her current preschool, the bilingual English-Chinese Preschool of America. We like it, too, particularly the fact that it runs from 8:30 in the morning till 6 p.m., allowing both me and Jean to work a full day. Will pre-K at P.S. 38 do the same? Not quite—the school day ends around 3, and we’re not too sure of the status of after-school programs for the pre-K kids. So we’d either need to cut our own workday short, or hire a daily babysitter/nanny, whose cost would totally negate the whole FREE PRESCHOOL benefit.

But then, of course, there’s the possibility that my or Jean’s work situation could change drastically at any moment, either freeing us up to spend afternoons with our precious snowflake or burying us deeper in office dilemmas or sending us packing for Taipei post-haste.

Gah!

Why isn’t there some Web version of those mortgage calculators that could just let me enter in all the details and give me one single answer: Yay or Nay? In the end, I think we’ll register her for P.S. 38 and make our actual decision sometime in August, when my book is done, the second baby is imminent, and we have a better sense of our financial future. Blech. Hey, what do you think?

[polldaddy poll=6314436]

Just Poop Already, Dammit: No. 2

This morning started out as a normal morning. I went into Sasha’s room at about 7:20 to get her up, and she told me she wanted to get dressed. No, not that dress, she said, the flower one—the one that’s probably too light for today’s wet weather. Whatever. I helped her into clean undies and put the flowery dress over her head.

As I was zipping up the back of her dress, she started to dance. “Peepee! Peepee!” she said, and I hurried her into the bathroom. She had a nice long pee, and I handed her toilet paper to wipe. She refused.

Huh? Come on, I thought: You’ve wiped a million times before. You can do it again. You’re a big girl, right?

But then Sasha said, “I want to poop.”

And then it came: Plop. Plop. Plop. Plop.

A look of joy spread on Sasha’s face, and it must’ve spread on mine, too. She’d done it, without prompting, and I wiped her ass gratefully. This might be an anomaly, but it felt like a turning point.

“I’m going to tell Mommy!” Sasha cried as she stood and pulled her undies up. Jean came in to see what the fuss was. “Mommy, I pooped!” Sasha said, then held up four fingers. “I did five poops!” (We’ll get her clear on numbers later.)

After Jean left, Sasha turned to me and said, in what I think was a Knuffle Bunny reference, “Daddy, I realized something.”

“What’s that?”

“Poop!”