Filthy Commerce

Lord, save me from the cute

One of the stylistic quirks of prenatal media is the irritating habit of referring to the reader -- and presumed parent-to-be -- as "Mommy." I'm not linking to any direct examples because I don't make a habit of keeping irritating articles in my bookmarks. Please, just take my word for it: If you become pregnant, you will be exposed to a number of articles that strip you, the gestating woman, of your autonomic personhood and slap you with the infantilized "Mommy."

So there's that.

This infantilization has infested the homekeeping sphere of writing too. There's a lot of cutesy-wootsy out there in domestic blogland. Make your chores into games, take tons of photos of you cracking an egg into a bowl -- be sure to quip about how "Gosh, that's eggs-actly what it's supposed to look like!" -- give your kids quirky nicknames ... It is as if women who take an active, thoughtful interest in domestic science are afraid to put forth their experience and observations with an authoritative voice.

A word about FlyLady: I once proposed doing a profile on Marla Cilley for a newspaper I was working at, because I thought her branding and online expansion were noteworthy for a business audience. I spent about a week negotiating with the assigning editor while also trying to line something up with Ms. Cilley. That woman is focused. Roll your eyes though you may at things like "Twenty-three fling boogie," the person behind them is every bit as dedicated to optimizing her own potential and others;' as, say, Tim Ferriss. I wonder if her focus and ambition are somehow threatening to her core constituency.

There was a recent New Yorker article on Ree Drummond, aka the Pioneer Woman, in which the author reported:

Several bloggers who know Drummond told me, in the furtive tone one might use to convey gossip about a friend, that she is a "very savvy businesswoman." But no one would offer specifics. "She's quietly, insanely ambitious," Ed Levine, a friend and the founder of the Web site Serious Eats, said. "Drummond reminds me of a duck: underneath the water, it’s paddling like mad, but above the surface it’s placid."

-- "O, Pioneer Woman!" May 9, 11

Why are people who take budgeting, cooking and cleaning seriously afraid of tipping their hand as to how serious they are? More specifically, why are women who take this stuff seriously afraid to own their ambition and authority?

Thank God for Martha Stewart. One of the things I've always admired about her publishing empire is its editorial tone. The articles all seem to be written with a few bedrock assumptions firmly in place: Of course, the subject is worth learning about, so of course, you want to master it; of course, you will settle for nothing less than cool proficiency; of course, nothing is worth doing if it's not worth doing well. MSLO's unabashed embrace of high standards has often been lampooned or bitterly remarked upon; I applaud it. She takes homekeeping seriously and if you don't? That's your loss.

There are a few other non-goofball voices in the domestic wilderness: for example, I've been using Cheryl Mendelson's Home Comforts as a reference for years.

It is striking to me: women who want to make a public name for themselves by optimizing the routines and results of their private lives go cutesy. Men go for "life hacking." It's a dichotomy that does nobody any good.

 

Spending on your children: You're doing it wrong

I was reading "Handing Down Hand-Me-Downs Goes High Tech" (GOOD, Mar 1, 11), which details the online children's clothing exchange ThredUp, and I was admiring the business rationale behind it:

There are massive inefficiencies within the second-hand kids clothing market. Millions of parents simply give away hardly worn clothing, and buy new stuff every five months.  It's expensive, wasteful, and time consuming. Why is this the norm? Because no great solution exists to swap outgrown clothes for clothes that fit. That's the problem we wanted to solve.

To me, the attention-grabbing thing was how so many parents today apparently do not have access to the types of informal networks or community organizations that foster children's clothing swaps. It's an interesting reflection on the weakening ties between geographic community and family needs.

To the readers who commented -- one in particular -- here was the takeaway:

If you are paying full retail for any of your kid's clothes, you're doing it wrong.

Comments like this really chafe. If someone is beating down the commenter, ripping money out of her wallet, then spending $55 on a child-sized linen halter dress, then yes, the commenter has a case about someone going about outfitting their child in the wrong way. But otherwise -- why would someone bother making such a snap judgment about how other parents choose to spend their money? What is in it for them?

This is the flip side of the same geographic disconnect that prompted ThredUp in the first place. When you have no incentive to make nice with other parents so you don't get frozen out of the back-porch clothing swaps ... why not tell the nameless, faceless parenting masses out there: SPENDING -- YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG?

I will concede that there are times when how someone else spends their money affects me and my child, and so I'm comfortable tendering an opinion on the matter -- how housing prices in my school district are trending, whether or not a proposed bond measure will save music education in the schools. But when the stakes are so small and so private as what one pays for a child's coat ... picking your battles -- you're doing it wrong.

How to get maternity leave in the U.S.A.

It is really not enough to keep arguing, "Everyone else is doing it, so why can't we?" when it comes to paid parental leave. That is the kind of argument that, on a micro level, usually gets rebutted with "If everyone else were jumping off a bridge, would you?" and given what passes for civic discourse these days, I would not put it past our elected officials to break out the bridge argument as a matter of policy.

Instead, let's focus on how one can actually get maternity leave in the U.S.

So, it's time to learn how to make our kids' toys?

Among my many reasons to dislike the parent-industrial complex -- the ceaseless pimping out of your personal information, the sales pitches that alternate between provoking guilt and panic, the ubiquitous imposition of external gender constructs from day one -- here's another one:

The companies that make things for children view their customers' safety as too expensive to be worth bothering with. And by "customers," I mean children.

In "Child Product Makers Seek to Soften New Rules" (NYT, Feb 21, 11), we learn that:

-- Toy manufacturers, working in concert with members of the House of Representatives, are hoping to spike the public database the Consumer Product Safety Commission is scheduled to launch in three weeks. Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) cites the whole "you can't trust anything you read on the Internet" argument and, to ensure that there's no way to ensure the validity of anything in the database, pushed through an amendment to strip financing for the database.

-- Rep Mary Mack Bono (R-CA) and Rep John Dingell (D-MI) think it's totally unfair that the U.S. government require third party testing of toys and chidren's products. Why can't we just take the word of these companies that their products are safe? Why should we make them pay for proof that their products aren't unsafe?

-- The Toy Industry Association and the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association are both opposed to the database and the third-party testing. Amusingly enough, the TIA has a section on corporate social responsibility urging its members to pay attention to toy safety, and when you click on the toy safety link ... well, it's less about "Hey, maybe we should make toys safer" and more along the lines of "Here are our lobbying efforts regarding current federal regulations." The Juvenile Product Manufacturers Association has taken a different tack: It is promoting its own safety standards. (No word on whether the JPMA gets any money from companies that submit their products to its testing and certification process.)

Nobody is arguing that Mattel is a nonprofit (well, not right now ...). But to argue that it's bad for business for companies to be accountable to anyone other than themselves? That's truly caveat emptor. And it's one thing for the buyer to beware, but what about the buyer's children?

Get on that, IKEA

So we're getting ready to buy a crib for the daughter and we went to IKEA to pick it up. We went during a weekday, all giddy with the prospect of avoiding the usual weekend crowds, and everything was going according to plan until it was time to actually retrieve a flat-pack box from the correct aisle.

Here is why we do not have a crib:

1. Rather than negotiate public spaces with a stroller that contains a persnickety infant, I wear the baby in a sling. The pros: We take up less space, I have both my hands free, the daughter digs this mode of transport. The con: There is no way I can help pull down a 30-pound box of wood pieces from a tall shelf without risking my daughter's fragile eggshell noggin.

2. The crib box is just big and bulky enough so that it's a two-person job wrestling it off the overhead shelf and on to a dolly. Since I'm out of commission and IKEA keeps its low, low prices by hiring maybe one employee per every 20,000 square feet of store, finding someone to help Phil pull the crib box off the shelf was nearly impossible.

3. The crib box is too big to fit into the cargo section of our Subaru Outback Sport without putting down the seats -- and we can't do that on account of the infant car seat we have in the back.

4. It was raining, so lashing the box to the roof rack was not an option.

We'll get the crib eventually. It's just a matter of finding a willing friend or relative to go to the store with Phil while I stay home with the daughter and the car seat -- and prevent the cat from peeing in the car seat again -- and we're willing to ply people with booze if that makes them more willing.

But here's what was striking about the IKEA experience:

All of the cribs were stocked on one aisle. The aisle was packed with lots of pregnant ladies, their partners and their attendant carts. There was a lot of head-scratching as these folks tried to figure out how they were going to get the heavy, cumbersome packages off the shelves and onto the dollies. And there was total freaking gridlock, which is not surprising when you have a mess of pregnant ladies, parents with strollers and IKEA-issue dollies all in one place.

This could be prevented so easily. All IKEA has to do is space out the crib's placements -- one different model per aisle -- and put the boxes at ground level for easy handling. I get why IKEA stocks all of the cribs in one place -- it's easier for whomever has to stock the merchandise, and that efficiency is probably considered better for the bottom line than customer accommodations. But dang, it makes for a very uncomfortable customer experience. And given that this is IKEA, that's saying something.