>Talkin’ Bout My Generation

>Some blogging parents are up in arms right now over an article that appeared in Time Magazine a few weeks ago. The author blasts today’s seemingly hipper-than-thou Gen-X parents who write about everything from their kids’ love for the Dead Milkmen to the vintage-looking toddler t-shirts and hand-knitted hats they wear, viewing the whole alternative child raising experience as “endlessly fascinating.”

“The generation that as children was told by TV that ‘the most important person in the whole wide world is you,'” Time writer James Poniewozik writes, “is finding it hard to pass that torch.”

Poniewozik holds up as an example the bloggers at Babble.com, the newest online hub for edgy urbanites who find themselves saddled with kids. Understandably, the Babble bloggers, several of whom I “know” through this blog and have corresponded with fairly regularly over the last year I’ve been blogging, are upset.

And yet I see some of them struggling under the hipster label, too. A few weeks ago, Babble Blogger CrankMama wrote this over at her personal blog.

I’m afraid I’ve merely swapped one dogma for another. Being hip and trendy is just as limited and defining as any religion, or quilting bee, or PTA meeting ever was. And maybe moreso because those of us circling around in this group are often laboring under the isolation and cynicism of our choices.

CrankMama aside, a few of the writers out there, I suspect, are truly, terminally hip and couldn’t stop being so if they tried: Dutch and Wood at Sweet Juniper as well as Girls Gone Child and MetroDad immediately come to mind. I love reading about their lives spent collecting tattoos and going to concerts. I even like to think I could hang with them if the opportunity arose and be able to discuss just about every music, fashion and cultural reference they could throw at me. I’m well-read that way. But hip? I am not.

In fact, I think this whole hipster parent-Gen X connection that a lot of reporters are smirking over right now is way off base in defining a whole generation by a few urban writers. Generation X wasn’t so much about being hip as it was about rejecting labels, and that’s what I see Gen X parents doing today, whether they live in a big city, a small town or a suburb. We want to do things our way, not the way our parents or “the experts” say they should be done. We want to work on our own schedules, not the 9-to-5 blindly observed by the masses. We want to wear what looks good on us and makes us feel good about ourselves, not necessarily what’s fashionable. We want to listen to music that stirs our souls, not the latest obscure band with a sound that resembles a eunuch singing inside a garbage can. We cringe at the notion of someone giving us the once over and saying “Oh, you’re a hipster,” or “Oh, you’re a soccer mom” or “Oh, you’re a hippie.” Because we’re not that simple.

I see much of today’s writing and blogging by parents as revolutionary simply because we’re rejecting the mainstream, the labels that parents traditionally have been given and can be found in any major parenting magazine full of glossy pictures of perfect babies who don’t cry and their immaculately dressed and made-up moms who always make just the right choices for themselves and their children. Yuck.

But take a look at your favorite blogs. They might feature video of a toddler in the midst of a tantrum, or a picture of one sporting more green snot in his nose than should be legal. Rather than writing about their perfectly wonderful lives, the most widely-read moms out there are likely to be discussing their yearnings for a martini, or a husband who doesn’t go out with his friends twice a week, or a damn shower. Generation X marks the first generation of parents who are saying en masse ‘It’s okay to be imperfect and stressed out and confused and at our wits’ end. In fact, let’s talk about it. Incessantly.‘ And while I can see that being very irritating to a Time Magazine writer safely tucked away in his New York City office, for other parents out there, it means everything.

As for the Time writer’s sympathy for the bloggers’ kids who are growing up in public, I like to think that they’ll learn from their parents’ example that they’re okay despite their imperfections, that they can reject the labels foisted on them by advertisers and magazine writers, and above all, that they must honest with themselves and each other.

What’s more, I’m pretty sure that they’ll look at the amount of time spent their parents spent detailing their first steps, their music tastes and their pooping habits and know they were loved. Even if that love came from a parent who dressed them in Ramones onesies and mini-combat boots, it’s pretty damn awesome and I have faith that good will come from it, no matter what the critics say.