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Overnight open thread – Everything Old is New Again (genghis)

According to an article last week in the New York Times Magazine, the latest hot trend in parenting is to leave the kids alone and let them actually be, you know…kids. This is of course a novel concept for those who read the NYT Magazine (and who knew any of their readers actually had kids anyway?) But ok; we’ll play along

”Perhaps you know it by its other names: helicoptering, smothering mothering, alpha parenting, child-centered parenting. Or maybe there’s a description you’ve coined on your own but kept to yourself: Overly enmeshed parenting? Get-them-into-Harvard -or-bust parenting? My-own-mother-never-breast-fed-me-so-I-am-never-going-to-let-my-kid-out-of-my-sight parenting?”

Then follows lots of yadda-yadda full of self-analysis and over-intellectualizing, as is typical of pretty much any “lifestyle” section article you might find in the NYT or its cohorts. Finally, we get to the nub of things: the backlash, and a return to “roots-parenting” (Or “roots-rock.” All “lifestyle” section articles are pretty much the same…just cut and replace the general topic along with the newest fad regarding same and voila! You’re now a writer for the NYT! Or were. Now please box up everything at your desk within the next 10 minutes and security will see you out.) Oops…got off track again.

”After a decade of earnest immersion in parenting, though, the times are ripe for a change. The first sign was the wave of confessionals — from anonymous Web sites like truumomconfessions.com (where mothers admit to transgressions like feigning stomach cramps to steal quiet time hiding in the bathroom)…”

“But in the past few months, a second wave has taken hold — writers are moving past merely venting and are trying to gather the like-minded into a new movement. Carl Honoré is one. He calls it “slow parenting” — no more rushing around physically and metaphorically, no more racing kids from soccer to Suzuki. Lenore Skenazy is another. She calls it “free-range parenting,” a return to the days when childhood was not ruled by the fear (overblown, she says, with statistics to prove it) that children would be maimed, kidnapped or killed if they did something as simple as riding their bikes alone to the park.”

Good Lord! And people need self-help books to tell them this? There’s some more obligatory navel-gazing at the end about whether it’s all a good idea, but you sorta’ get the gist of it.

After all those heavy-duty mind-thoughts, what you need now are some nice relaxing photos by Chinese artist Li Wei via Environmental Graffitti, who really really wants you to know that these aren’t Photoshopped.

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