Monday, July 15, 2013

The fallacy of hipster parenting

I have spent my fair share of time making entirely unfair and unfounded judgment calls about all sorts of people that I see around town, and that hasn’t changed too much since I’ve become a parent.

But it’s starting to make me uncomfortable.

Honestly, it’s hard not to grumble about people who appear to have such carefully crafted public images that conform to pop culture stereotypes, the same people who (we’re told) move through life with ironic detachment as their default emotional state -- people who (we’re told) don’t care about anything.

Effing hipsters.

How many times have you said that, or at least thought it? How many lumberjack-shirted, skinny-jean dudes, with their handlebar mustaches waxed to curled sharps, riding their fixed gear bicycles, have you muttered that comment about?

Heck, let’s put this in a parental context. See that woman over there in the lululemon yoga pants pushing her Duallie Bob Revolution stroller? She must be a Highland mommy who believes in attachment parenting and breastfeeds her five-year-old. She’s such a cliche, and you know she has money, and her tyrannical kids must be absolute terrors in daycare.

How about that thirty-something guy right there, overstuffed diaper bag slung over one shoulder, bucket carseat dragging in the crook of his arm, carrying a wailing eight-month-old baby with her pants on backward and cereal in her hair? This befuddled daddy must be “babysitting” today. He sure doesn’t look like he knows what he’s doing. Where’s his wife? He really looks like he needs some help.

We spend so much time placing people in categories and making snap judgments, but I have a question for you: How many of your friends are hipsters? Do you really know any hipsters? You know who I mean -- the people for whom the image they project is more important than anything else. And for that matter, how many of you actually know a mother who fits that Denver stereotype? Or a father?

Me? I don’t know any hipsters. Sure, I see them all the time, but I guess they’re someone else’s friends. When I look around town, seems like there sure are a lot of them...but none of my friends are hipsters. How could they be? I mean, my friends care about me, they like a lot of the same stuff I do, they’re generous, they help me take care of my daughter, etc.

Taking care of someone else voids your hipster cred, which probably means that no one is really a hipster, except of course the people who are, the people we don’t like, the people who aren’t like us. Those people are all hipsters.

I’ve been called a hipster, back when I was a indie-music loving teacher wearing my flannel shirt, goatee and horn-rimmed glasses. Now that I’m a parent, I’ve also born the brunt of the befuddled dad stereotype, too. Being on the receiving end of both judgments in recent years has got me thinking about why people are quick to attack hipsters or parents who they believe fit a particular stereotype.

That brings me to tonight’s subject: hipster parenting.

There’s been a lot of talk about trends in parenting, lately, from the rise of stay-at-home dads to what we stupid Americans can learn from middle class French parents to “elimination communication.”

As a parent of a kid who, let’s be honest, poops a lot, that last one seems so ridiculous that I have a really hard time not judging the parents who promote this method.

Effing hipsters.

And don’t get me started on those guys who run Kindling Quarterly. They have the gall to grow beards and live in Brooklyn and care about being good fathers and creating a space for men to talk intelligently and in-depth about modern fatherhood. They also seem to want to promote cool, expensive clothes made by their friends. This last point, along with the hipster beards, apparently invalidates the space they’re creating, according to a vocal group of haters trolling the comment sections of many an article about the magazine.

The magazine itself, and the responses to it, are chock-full of ideas to analyze, reflect on, engage with, etc. I could write a post here just comparing the comments section of a Canadian news article about the magazine to that of an American site’s feature. Both articles deal with similar themes, but the comments are fascinatingly different.

I bought the second issue of this magazine, and while it was really uneven, I am so excited for its potential. A thoughtful engagement with fatherhood as a concept, with essays written by thoughtful fathers, is an unfortunately rare find among major publications in this country.

Let me be clear about what I think: there’s no such thing as a hipster parent. There are a lot of bad parents out there, who don’t provide for their kids, neglect them, abuse them or just don’t care enough to love them deeply. But if you have even the slightest engagement in parenting your child, there's no way to be ironic and detached about that. So if you want to judge people and call them hipsters because they want to try something stupid or faddish or buy expensive stuff like their friends, you should realize that the vast majority of all parents are just doing the best they can to be parents. The job is too hard to do it filled with irony.

Unless you're just an awful person. And that doesn't make you a hipster.

Because it illustrates what parenting is really all about, and because it features Carrie Brownstein (I'm such a hipster!), I love this Portlandia skit about baby books: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw3bG8SrCM4

People try really hard to be good parents, to be the right kind of parents. They’ll do whatever it takes, even if it seems stupid to other people. Me? I made my daughter cry it out at night and then spent six months having her take her naps in my arms or in her car seat. In the end, whatever the trendy parenting thing is and whatever group you think we belong to, we all just give in and find something that works and meets the needs of our kids. And that’s what counts.

Monday, July 1, 2013

On Fatherhood: Turning the Tide

Lately, I’ve been delving into fatherhood as an intellectual concept. Maybe it’s because my daughter just had her first birthday, maybe it’s because of the incident I described in my last post, or maybe it’s because it’s summer, and I’m used to thinking about this particular time of year, after the school year is over, as a time of reflection.

As we’ve passed the year mark, I’ve realized that I have no intention, at least for another year, to re-enter the traditional workforce. Though I still struggle with anxiety and insomnia at times, I am happier, more focused and more relaxed than I have been in a long time. Being at home with my daughter is fun and incredibly challenging, and I have been able to find the spaces in the schedule that allow me some necessary alone time. I plan to continue writing, for which I hope to occasionally get paid, but other than that, I’m not looking for a job. Doing what I’m doing feels right for me and my family.

With that realization comes a renewed focus on the apparent untraditional nature of what I do. I am a stay-at-home dad. My wife is the breadwinner for our household, making each of us part of growing minorities, according to Census data and a recent Pew study.

I’ve never been considered a “manly” man and I’ve never felt like that’s an image that I need to live up to. I’m quite comfortable with my role. I’m happy being who I am and doing what I do. I don’t feel like I need to be more of a man, but I find myself bristling when I get the impression that people think I can’t do what I do because I’m a man. If a man or woman thinks I'm weak because I stay home, it doesn’t really bother me. But I do care if people think I can’t do my job well because I am a man.

I’ve written before about how I sometimes get irritated at the assumptions people make when I am in public with my daughter. Now that I am committing to this role for at least another year, I’m feeling the need to be even more vocal, and essentially political, about pushing against the stereotypes.

My best friend sent me a link to a write-up in the New York Times about Kindling Quarterly, a new magazine about fatherhood that started in January. I read the article, bought issue #2, and I read the magazine cover to cover (more on this, and the fallacy of hipster parenting, in another post). I’ve since been sucked into the rabbit hole of online articles about modern fatherhood, feminism and what it means for me to be inhabit the role that I do.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve read so many articles about what it means to be a “dad” that my head is swimming. I’ve also been fascinated by how gendered they are. Though nearly all of the articles have been very thoughtful, they embody their authors’ assumptions about masculinity and fatherhood, whether they’re feminists from Brooklyn or guys who don’t know how to fold laundry writing for the Esquire.

Here’s my takeaway -- the conversation is changing, and for the better. There are more men (and women) talking about how more men are becoming more involved parents and that sharing parenting roles isn’t some kind of emasculation for men. The notion of dad as an occasional befuddled caregiver filling in for mom is being challenged at the same time that women like Sheryl Sandberg are creating the space for successful, assertive professional moms who have caring partners who share parenting duties.

The most visible evidence that the conversation is changing, of course, comes from commercials. Stewing about insensitive, sexist comments I read at the bottom of many an article about fatherhood and feeling the frustration of a hard day with my daughter, I was watching TV during her nap. I was amazed by the following commercial:


It’s sad that this isn’t the norm, but it really does mean the conversation is changing; this is a competent dad, who clearly spends a lot of quality time with his daughter. This is such an unassuming ad that you might miss just how important it is. And if you don’t think ads are an indicator of where we are as a nation, or that they have no power to drive conversation about social norms, watch this and read news articles about the ensuing controversy.

The conversation needs to continue. That’s why I will be taking on a new role in addition to this blog as a curator of articles about fatherhood. You’ll see more posts from me on Facebook and Twitter. I hope to amplify the current conversation and add my own voice where I see the need and the space for doing so.

So much of what I do now feels like I’m doing it for my daughter. I want her to know that what her mom does is normal and strong and amazing, and I want her to know that a man can be sensitive and caring and a feminist who’s engaged in his family. I don’t know how long I’ll be a stay-at-home dad, but I do know that me being one is important for my family.