Most of the people I know in the film business here in New York, the moms and the dads, just take different turns working. So everybody's a working parent, and nobody bats an eyelash at it.
Young parents in America are holy and not to be messed with. If they say something is correct, we all acquiesce. And is there any man, woman or canine who doesn't leap out of the way when one of those giant, all-terrain Bugaboo strollers comes barreling down the sidewalk?
The jewel in the baby product crown is the stroller. And if in America you are what you drive, then in Parentland, you are what you push.
The competitive nature of most mums and dads is astounding. The fear they instil in our promising but sensitive Johnny is utterly depressing. We need a parental cultural revolution.
I'm a little embarrassed to say I'm a little bit of a soccer dad.
It's so interesting that when somebody's pregnant, we are obsessed with knowing the gender of the child so we can figure out what we need to buy that child, what the present would be. Like we're pre-programming the kid before they were born.
In Los Angeles, parenting is a competitive sport. From Beverly Hills baby boutiques to kids' yoga classes, L.A. fuses high style, industrial-strength materialism, and parental outsourcing into our own unique version of child-rearing.
A child of three cannot raise its chubby fist to its mouth to remove a piece of carpet which it is through eating, without being made the subject of a psychological seminar of child-welfare experts, and written up, along with five hundred other children of three who have put their hands to their mouths for the same reason.
Esquire's all about mommy issues now. Breastfeeding, vaccinations, playdate etiquette.
