Time

Millennial Parenting

/ bperica / 2 Comments

Yesterday, I sat down to read Time‘s cover story about millennial parents. Before starting out I made a few predictions. One, I would bring my palm to my face on more than one occasion. Two, I would read about a kid with a ridiculous name. And three, I would hear the same old stuff about one generation thinking the way they parented was the best and younger people parenting differently are just wrong.

Well, prediction one and two came true in the first paragraph. First facepalm, when I saw the vegan dad who is raising his kids vegan wearing a t-shirt, which simply said, “VEGAN.” This reminded me of the best joke I have ever heard about vegans. File this one away: How do you know someone is vegan? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.

As for prediction number two, let’s just say that right away there was a name that, in my opinion, seems like a classic case of millennial desperation to make everything about their kid unique starting right away with the name.

Prediction number three was also accurate, although there was not as much worrying about millennial parents as I expected there to be. The article mostly detailed the differences among parents from three generations: millennial,  gen x, and baby boomers.

The author made a few lazy assumptions about millennials. One was right there on the first page, “And they continue to build vast archives of selfies.” Not true in my case. Maybe that is because I am just barely a millennial parent, but it is mostly true because I strongly dislike selfies. I take them, when no one else is around to take a picture of London and I, but that is out of necessity, not because I need to Instagram a selfie right now. Another prediction: if your Instagram profile is chock full of selfies we probably won’t be good friends.

One of the best points in this article was that, due to nearly universal use of social media among millennial parents, it is far easier for us to compare our parenting or family to some other family. The Facebook and Instagram posts often present “impossibly pristine, accomplished version[s] of their family lives on the web.” That is one of the more accurate statements about parents all across social media. We are highly selective about what we share. I am guilty of this so in the margins of the article I wrote, “write about the dirty, time-consuming tasks…Instagram them too.” A couple of nights ago I had the best opportunity to do this. London had vomited all over the couch, Kate, and the floor. Next time, that is going on Instagram.

The author later writes that “millennials say infighting over topics like breast-feeding and vaccines has driven them from online groups.” I haven’t experienced too much of this, but in some cases I have encountered parents of preemies who almost advertise the complications of their kid’s prematurity in their IG profile, Facebook page, or Twitter account. I have certainly shied away from groups or users like that, much in the same way I unfollow people on Facebook whose posts are always political.

A teacher interviewed in the articles makes the point that social media “is leading the children of millennials to form stronger social bonds than previous generations, because they’re in contact with one another more outside of school.” Is this a good thing though? Doesn’t it breed traits into our children such as the need to always be connected to the internet or to always have a smartphone nearby? Are these kids able to be alone? Will they be able to enjoy silence?

The last scrawl in the margins of this article I made was about kids being unique. A mom is quoted as saying, “I just want them to be unique.” Aren’t they unique in your own eyes? That should be enough. My kid or kids will always be unique to me and that is all that matters. Most importantly, I want them to be happy. I know that if they are happy, they will encounter people in their lives who consider them unique. These people will become their friends.

I think there is some urge in millennial parents for their kid to be unique in the eyes of the world, not just their eyes, like we are all trying to raise the next prodigy, celebrity, or savant. If there is a concerning theme in this article, that would be it for me.

A discovery about millennial parents that is particularly promising and hopeful to me is that parents in this generation favor more unstructured playtime and are more encouraging of kids to explore on their own, to be on their own. This, according to the article, is a move away from the helicopter parenting of Gen X. In my experience, this is pretty accurate.

If you are interested at all about Time’s take on millennial parents, then I encourage you to check this article out. I just tried to link to it, but was told that the page is only available to subscribers of the magazine. So it might necessitate a trip to the library or a little more sleuth work on the internet. The title of the article: Help! My Parents Are Millennials.

The Fastest Year of My Life

/ bperica / 4 Comments
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Taking in the sunrise from our room in Mexico.

Last year, Kate and I were in Playa del Carmen for a wedding during the first weekend in November. I was thinking of this trip just last week and I momentarily refused to believe it had almost been a year since Kate and I strolled along on the beach during a midday thunderstorm. That walk and the rest of that trip are so vivid and crisp in my mind, we could have been there last month. How could those memories be a year old?

Less than two weeks after we returned from Mexico we went under contract on our first home. The next 12 days I was busy with the purchase of the home and making sure we could move out of our apartment before the lease ended. Then we were off to Wyoming for Thanksgiving. Then we drove back. A few days later we flew to Orlando for a week. Then it was a week of last minute Christmas gatherings and preparations before we traveled to New Mexico. There for nearly a week, we drove back and closed on our house that Monday, December 30th. I started painting throughout the house that afternoon. We moved furniture on January 7th. The house was a mess and there was still more painting left to do. We then had a relatively calm three weeks (as calm and restful as settling into your first house can be).

Then the night of January 29th arrived and Kate had painful contractions at 26 weeks. The next significant date in my head is May 19th, the day London came home. And then a summer spent on edge as London slowly strengthened and we traveled to weddings. And then fall arrived. And now we’re almost back where we started.

From January 29th to May 19th, it did not matter what day of the week it was. It did not matter the month, the holiday, the weather, the time. It only mattered that London was doing okay and getting better. These days are curiously recalled in my mind. There is so much held within the borders of them that it will take years to process just how much we changed during that time and how it affected us. Yet, at times, those days seem like one really long fast day. And then it was summer and our girl was home. I recall pausing during my walk out of the hospital one day in April to take in the weather. “My God, it’s spring,” I mumbled to myself. Where had winter gone? I was actually dumbfounded. I can easily remember the cold night we arrived. That was the last day I cared about the weather.

Living on edge makes life go by very quickly. That is one thing I have learned in the last year.

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May 23, 2014. 4th day home.

London is home now. She is strong and happy beyond our wildest hopes and expectations. I do not call her a miracle baby because I never want “miracle” to be a term I casually use. But it is true. She is a miracle. And she is not the only miracle of the last year. It is a miracle all three of us made it through. At times it did not seem possible. It did not seem possible that time would slow. But it did. And I care about the weather once more.