Am I Blog Enough For You?

I’m home from work today with a sore throat and a cold, so I get to listen to AM radio and catch up on email. The big story on talk radio today is the Georgia woman who went missing before her wedding and turned up in New Mexico with a false story about having been abducted. I wasn’t following this story last week, so it is surprising to me that people are so upset by what she did

Even more insane than the bride-to-be is the groom-to-be who just said in an interview that he is going to take her back. Just how hard up is this guy? This is a setback for guys all around America. Have we learned nothing from all those lad magazines that got so popular all of a sudden? This poor sap was being treated as a suspect, probably at the same time that she was trying on other guys in Las Vegas. [Check out the web sleuth forum on this case and see how the word "Peterson" was being thrown around.] And now he going to be on TV with his fiancee’s dad and pastor. As soon as they get married, he’ll become responsible for not only a very dingy woman but also the $40-60k cost of the search for her. I can’t imagine that she is holding a job (or will be able to ever find a job) that can pay off a bill like that.

The only hope for the men of the world is that going through with the wedding as part of secret plan to get some money or land from her family or to dump her in some spectacular way after the media has gone.

Speaking of raising children wrong, this comment was posted today on the previous entry:

A classic literary expression of relativism. Rather than set clear
boundaries, with consequences for crossing them, we’re supposed to
unconditionally support and approve of a child’s actions — and somehow
reason with them over right and wrong, when at best they’re capable of
stringing three 2-syllable words together in a single sentence. Can’t wait to see how that child reacts when his first employer fire him for "expressing himself" with a 3.5 hour lunch break.

I described the child development talk just as a set up for the crazy talk from S. and the funny picture of Van. I didn’t want to confuse things with a critique of what was said that night.

But now I might as well say that I have serious reservations about the talk that we went to. I could engage in a diatribe about what I disagreed with and what I agreed with but my main problem is with this whole shitty "parental expert" industry.

Like bad financial advisors (and I’ve talked to some very bad ones), the goal of these parent experts is to undermine people’s confidence by presenting parenting as something very difficult to do right and very easy to do completely wrong with disastrous results. Once her (or his) confidence is shaken and she (or he) beings to doubt instincts and common sense, then the experts will set up a dependent relationship so that decisions are only possible after consulting a variety of products for sale: DVDs, books, lectures, workshops, even parenting retreats.

Parenting is similar to financial planning (and losing weight come to think of it) in that (1) it takes place over an extended period of time, (2) it has implications for the future, (3) there is a lot of anxiety and strong opinions around it, and (4) there are a handful of simple core principles that need to be understood to be relatively successful at it. But there is a lot of money in making it seem like the only way to do it well is to buy lots of stuff and ignore instinct, experience, and societal norms. (Actually, I have found that most middle class societal norms can generally be considered and rejected, but you still need to be aware of them to do this.) By the way, this talk was being recorded for a DVD.

There were a few deeply disturbing things that he said that illustrated my complaints. First he said that people want very desperately to think that their parents did a great job because it’s too painful to consider otherwise. This is some tricky logic because if you think that your parents did a good job then you must consider the possibility that they really did a horrible job and your psyche would be shattered if you faced that fact. But most parents that I have talked to are pretty clear eyed about the shortcomings of their parents. I’ve had some brutally hilarious conversations with fellow parents about avoiding the mistakes of their parents. [Aside: If you were raised by Baby Boomers then you probably did have crappy parents. In that case you do need the help of experts but not child development experts.]

Another disturbing thing he said near the end of the lecture was that parents who weren’t ready to follow his precepts should have considered raising fish instead of kids. I think he was getting a little carried away with himself by the end of the lecture because he was amazed that he found such a pliable and sympathetic audience as Bay Area parents. I’m surprised that people weren’t throwing nursing bras on the stage by this time. I wonder how many times this line was repeated at Elysium dinner parties in the following week. The tropical fish rejoinder was the most extreme example of his debating technique in which he would state a weak version of the opposite position, glibly dismiss it and then move on to the next point. (Being a fan of talk radio it was pretty hard to miss.)

His views on parenting are a strange combination of The Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers. The parent is supposed to play the role of The Greatest Generation and perform their duty and be strong. And their duty is to make the world safe for the indulgence of the self-centered children who play the role of the Baby Boomers. So the ideal parenting world would look something like the period between Woodstock and Altamont.

All of the mothers that I talked to after the talk were doubting their abilities to parent at all. D. and a friend spent some time on the phone reassuring each other — of course, after they had both bought his latest book.

I should write up my own guides for financial planning, weight loss, and parenting. It’s not that hard, and it would take about a blog posting. I have to get ready for my show tomorrow. (Why do I always get sick before I have to go on air.)

On talk radio, people are talking about Laura Bush’s comedy routine. I thought it was funny, if a little too cutesy. I can’t believe that caller after caller are saying that they are offended by it. Maybe the screener is stacking the calls on purpose.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 2nd, 2005 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.