THE WEEK IN REVIEW March 11, 2007

On Monday, I decided to write about the death of families. That little mood darkener began when I read a NYT piece about new mothers in Hollywood .

It seems that many of the affluent are turning to neo-fascist ‘baby coaches’ for ideas on parenting. These coaches are taking the place of grandparents or older sisters, and are being paid handsomely for what the elders in the family used to do for free: gently guide and support the next generations in how to care for the children you love. The title of the article also suggests that parents need help 'simulating' love when their children are driving them crazy.

HOLLYWOOD's HOTTEST BABY COACHES TEACH INDUSTRY PARENTS HOW TO MORE ACCURATELY SIMULATE LOVE

http://defamer.com/hollywood/culture/hollywoods-hottest-baby-coaches-teach-industry-parents-how-to-more-accurately-simulate-love-241757.php


No one, with the occasional exception of my neighbor and friend Beth across the street, ever calls me for advice about child-rearing. My children are grown, but childless. My only niece with kids lives in California. Any advice I have for my own kids is usually politely declined.

So I have this freedom to do other things in my almost-sixties. Try my hand at a new career. Write to my heart’s content. Watch over my parents and elderly aunts. Research my family history. Garden. Donate my time as a psychologist to Rwanda.

And do crazy things. On Tuesday, I"m waiting in my car for a light to turn green, when crazy hits. A dastardly cold day of routines lays ahead: the gym, a tedious writing assignment, a hair appointment.

I spin the wheel sharply on Main and State, drive toward my office, jump on the Internet and cell phone, and decide to surprise visit my parents on Hilton Head Island. I must fly today; a snow storm is dumping over Wisconsin and will arrive by evening.

To move this quickly depends on how completely I can resist the scolding voice that says, ‘this is entirely nuts’ and how efficiently I can pack a suitcase.

Mission accomplished on both counts. The plane touches down about 6:30, and my parents’ good friends meet me at the airport. By 7:00, I’m looking at the ocean. Haw uncrazy is that?

For five days, I’m turning the pages of a virtual family album, revisiting places we romped with our boys. True, it’s hard to separate nostalgia from the pure sensual pleasures of a place like this, but on Day One, I’m already vowing to return with Rob, and asking us what’s it gonna take to spend regular time here.

That my parents have been visitors to the island since 1966—40 years—is part of the draw. And it’s my parents, ages 84 and 86, who are the most interesting part of this trip. To begin with, they have way more fun than anyone in the whole family.

I’m only a bit player in this assembled group of three couples who converge on Hilton Head Island every year from the north and south to vacation together. It's a golf-and-cards- centric affair. Alongside, they talk in a steady stream, re-telling stories: the day Joanne gave my father fish bait for lunch, where Carol slept one vacation (the closet), whatever happened to the one good German restaurant in Grand Rapids(gone). "Memory--" my mother said when I shook my head at all these stories, "Memory is all we've got."

Mixed in were health reports (“I had my prostate seated, didn’t you?”), updates on grandchildren (“the skates alone cost $800"), and patterings about the war, golf courses they love and hate, recipes, computers, stocks, lawn mowers, colonoscopies.

One side benefit: at age 59, I like how young I feel around these septuagenarians and octogenarians, different, say, than walking into either of my son's work offices.


With these old friends in a lovely resort, my parents are as happy as I’ve seen them. Again: as happy as I’ve ever seen them. Sure, I get their attention, and they are very loving and sweet to me, but they’re here to bask in these some long friendships, not to be parents.

And that was the interesting part. Returning from a shopping trip as an entourage of three women, we encountered a fairly young woman trying to stay up with three small children making a way lay for the beach, red and green plastic buckets banging on their swim suits.

The mother--or was it the nannny-- in large sunglasses and ponytail was trying to look serene in her quickening footsteps. I was well down memory lane, thinking of the bulky back and forth trips to the beach with our guys, getting a little teary.

My mother’s childless friend Joanne was already wistful—“Aren’t they darling!”

But my mother dumped cold water over our sentimentality: “Yeah, and then she’ll have to bathe them, and feed them, and get them to sleep, and do their laundry. I don’t miss those days.”

A hard pill to swallow, but watching my parents playing with their friends, being all chatty and lively and happy, led me to wonder really how much they relished parenting, as opposed to having children. Those are different verbs, as the Hollywood coaches undoubtedly understand.





While I have no doubt that they loved us, and never ‘simulated love,’ they may not have had the rock-hard stomach for parenting. When I got a head cold on this trip, my mother went into action: ‘You need Vitamin C and E/a decongestant/rest/more water/a nap.’ My father, watching me doze on the couch, strode over a put his hand on my head, to check on my temperature. I know full well that not being non-well makes both of my parents sick with worry.

Okay, HOllywood, I'm chastened: maybe some parents WILL benefit from the kind of coaching you're handing out to film stars. If they don’t have the stomach for all the upset and worry that comes with raising kids, and if the older generation isn’t available to help with sleepless nights, emergency room trips, finicky eaters, failing grades, back-talk, car accidents, and DUIs, coaches are better than bad parenting.

If this is what it's gonna take to raise the next generation, sign me up. My fee is negotiable. Oh, and I don't do nights, weekends and holidays.