Non­fic­tion

Amer­i­can Par­ent: My Sur­pris­ing Adven­tures in Mod­ern Babyland

Sam Apple
  • Review
By – October 26, 2011

Amer­i­cans prob­a­bly ana­lyze the nature of good par­ent­ing and their own skills (or lack there­of) more than oth­er nation. There may be as many books on rais­ing chil­dren as there are on diet­ing — enough said. This prompts many oth­er Amer­i­cans to throw up their hands and declare: Just do it.” Join­ing the dis­cus­sion are three more authors, with dis­tinc­tive touch­es of intro­spec­tion and feistiness. 

In Amer­i­can Par­ent, Sam Apple takes a jour­nal­is­tic and his­tor­i­cal approach, invit­ing the read­er on a tour of par­ent­ing phe­nom­e­na.” He inter­weaves gen­uine humor (some­times self-dep­re­cat­ing), exten­sive research, and a sense of peren­ni­al sur­prise in his explo­ration of expen­sive strollers, birthing class­es, water birth, col­ic, breast-feed­ing, attach­ment to par­ents, baby names — after con­sid­er­a­tion of a num­ber of exot­ic choic­es, he and his wife end up with Isaac” — and circumcision. 

Apple reads books and ques­tions experts, think­ing they would lead him to find order in the chaos that new par­ents face in the months before and after the birth of a child,” as he writes in the pref­ace. He also con­cludes in that same pref­ace: Now I know bet­ter.” I love the way Amer­i­can Par­ent ends but don’t want to spoil that sur­prise. If the author, by virtue of his gen­der, attracts more males to the ranks of involved (neu­rot­ic?) par­ents, he’ll have done a fur­ther service. 

Free-Range Kids will prob­a­bly have you either cluck­ing with agree­ment or feel­ing your blood pres­sure boil with annoy­ance. Lenore Skenazy’s point that Amer­i­can par­ents tend to be over­pro­tec­tive, judg­men­tal, and intru­sive in the lives of oth­er par­ents may be well tak­en. Maybe the noto­ri­ety she gained for let­ting her nine-year-old ride the sub­way alone was unde­served; the world isn’t more dan­ger­ous than it used to be, and the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion was raised with more permissiveness. 

But there is, I believe, an under­ly­ing fal­la­cy here. If only” ten chil­dren are kid­napped and killed each year and only three are hit by cars, to exag­ger­ate the author’s data, maybe that’s because of the pre­cau­tions par­ents have been tak­ing for years. For bet­ter or for worse, sta­tis­tics are unlike­ly to win this bat­tle any­way. Crime may be down, but peo­ple may still per­ceive urban areas as more dan­ger­ous than the rur­al or sub­ur­ban ones they grew up in. Schools may be safe, but Columbine had its effect. More­over, sar­cas­tic dis­missal of oth­er people’s fears won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly per­suade them either. (A more-rea­soned con­sid­er­a­tion, quot­ing Ske­nazy, appeared in the Sep­tem­ber 13, 2001 The New York Times.)

Hell Is Oth­er Par­ents is some­thing of a mis­nomer, since only a few of the essays in this well-writ­ten book by Deb­o­rah Copak­en Kogan relate to Mom­my (or Dad­dy) Wars. They right­ly con­vey the dif­fi­cul­ties of par­ent­ing — espe­cial­ly in Man­hat­tan with a third child born dur­ing its par­ents’ midlives. Many will relate to the author’s expe­ri­ences as stage mom” when her son gets cast in a Star Trek” movie, and to the fore­see­able con­clu­sion when she takes her tod­dler on a trip of sev­er­al hours to see that son per­form in camp. 

In the fun­ni­est essay, Copak­en Kogan shares a hos­pi­tal room post-deliv­ery with a 16-year-old unwed moth­er, who is vis­it­ed by loud, drink­ing friends with no respect for vis­it­ing hours. The author’s for­mi­da­ble sto­ry­telling abil­i­ties are most in evi­dence here, and least self-con­scious­ly. The breakup of a friend­ship between her daugh­ter and anoth­er child because of the oth­er moth­er is mov­ing­ly true to the title — bor­rowed from Sartre’s sen­ti­ment about oth­er peo­ple in the play No Exit.” In the essays direct­ly about par­ent­ing, the writer demon­strates that par­ent­ing is riski­er than her pre­vi­ous career — war photography. 

If you’re look­ing for a Jew­ish angle on par­ent­ing, the book that pro­vides the most (and then, only tan­gen­tial­ly) is Apple’s. Amidst the more gen­er­al obser­va­tion of Amer­i­cans as a penis­cut­ting peo­ple,” he dis­cuss­es the Jew­ish tra­di­tion of cir­cum­ci­sion as he and his wife search for a mohel. (They end up with a female OB-GYN. One of the lac­ta­tion con­sul­tants they call hap­pens to be an Ortho­dox Jew.)

Addi­tion­al books appear­ing in this review:

Bar­bara Train­in Blank is a free­lance jour­nal­ist and arts previewer/​reviewer, as well as some­time play­wright based in Har­ris­burg, PA.

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