Parents Magazine and Parental Fuss

Part of the charm of living abroad is that we receive the New Yorker on the later side - and the delay is consistently inconsistent. (I could read it online, which would also be cheaper, but it's just so much nicer and easier to navigate in print.) One article I read belatedly was Jill Lepore's Baby Talk, ostensibly a review of two recent parenting books/memoirs, but even more so an interesting run-through of the founding of Parents magazine and the birth of the parenting literature genre. (In other words, an article I would have skipped six months ago.)
As Lepore notes, "Middle-class mothers and fathers turned out to be a very well-defined consumer group, easily gulled into buying almost anything that might remedy their parental deficiencies." To which, having bought and studied Baby Bargains and agonized over our registry for longer than necessary, I would have to respond: "Um, yeah."
Lepore does a pretty good job - and, of course, is not the first to do so - dispelling the myth of perfect parenting as hawked by these publications. With which I am in general agreement: there is a concept in psychology (specifically, within the object relations school, attributed to Winnicott) of the "good-enough mother" that makes a lot of sense to me.  Although, on the other hand, I must also admit that - as a first-time, middle-class, and probably insecure parent-to-be - I don't mind getting all the help and support I can get.

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He Looks Just Like J!

Last week we had the opportunity to go the hospital where I will be delivering, Clinique Edith Cavell, for some serious sonography. Amazingly, the screen on our doctor's machine, which seems to date back to the '60s, can no longer accommodate our future arrival's full body. I had never seen a 3D/4D (does anyone know what the 4th dimension is?) ultrasound, so I was pretty amazed. The level of detail is mind-boggling . . . down to the very last vertebra and rib, and each of the heart's four chambers - wow. We even got a preview of the little guy's face (complete with nose smushed against my stomach), and the resemblance to J is striking.   

Unwarranted Abuse

I read with shock and horror the comments posted recently to a Motherlode posting on the NYT site about one woman's first-hand experience adopting a girl with special needs from China. (Full disclosure: my sister works for this person, Jenny Johnson, at Hometta. I've only met Jenny once.) Granted, any comments list on any blog in any corner of cyberspace tends to be populated with at least biting acerbity, if not malignant slander. But Jenny, whose contribution I found quite moving, is actually going through the effort of adopting a girl with scoliosis all the way from China. And trust me, counter to some of the commenters' suggestions, this little girl would not be better off if she stayed in China, even if that would spare her the culture shock of intercountry adoption.

Many of the critics attacked Jenny for what they viewed as her shallow motives for wanting to adopt, specifically, a girl: Jenny wrote that she has always wanted to use her grandmother's name, Rosemary, for one of her children. But, alas, she had two boys. Now, I can understand why such pronounced gender preferences can irk, and the fact that she can remedy the absence by paying the sky-high administrative fees (which does not equal "buying") to adopt from China may feel . . . inegalitarian. But isn't there a counter-proverb (because there always is one) to "The road to hell is paved with good intentions?" (And why can't I think of it at the moment?) I also do not buy the argument that she could have much more easily adopted from the same special needs population domestically when so many parents choose to adopt from abroad precisely because domestic adoption is a time-bomb-like logistical nightmare.

So, go Jenny! Don't be too upset about the commenters - they can't even tell "complement" and "compliment" apart, so they must not be able to help themselves. I hope you and your family are having the experience of a lifetime on your trip to welcome Rosemary into your home.