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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