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  • The Hipster Curse: The Parents Who Don't Want to Be Adults

    Hi All,

    Now, as many of you know, I don't generally post articles that have any relationship to religious background but, I found this article on "Hipster Parents" quite interesting.

    The article doesn't seem to have a religious twist so I can't really tell why it was posted to the site it was. It is actually an interesting view on the often elusive "Hipster Parent":

    The Hipster Curse: The Parents Who Don't Want to Be Adults

    The Hipster Curse: The Parents Who Don't Want to Be Adults

    Much has been written about the hovering, smothering ways of the helicopter parent. These are the men and women (usually high achievers themselves) who are so intent on their children's success that they overschedule and overanalyze every moment, completing homework and storming in to do battle with teachers over every A-minus. They are the powerful, micromanaging force behind schools' draconian hand-sanitizer and no-peanut policies. As one private-school administrator in Washington, D.C. recently told me, "We don't call them helicopter parents anymore. We call them Black Hawks," as in the combat-ready helicopters used for military operations.

    So-called hipster parents, by contrast, embrace a different philosophy. They believe becoming a parent should not require one to relinquish creative control over one's life, move to the suburbs, and purchase a minivan. As Ariel Gore, the author of a book entitled The Hip Mama Survival Guide, told MSNBC: "If I'm a punk rocker or I'm really into Hungarian folk dancing ... and that's who I am, why should I have to leave that behind and raise my kid in some generic middle class American reality that doesn't feel authentic to me?"

    For those who fall into these archetypal categories, having children is no longer something people simply do. It is a conscious lifestyle choice, one among many ushered in by access to birth control, delayed marriage, and greater opportunities for women in the workplace. In this sense, the stakes are much higher. If parenthood is a choice, then people risk compromising their sense of identity as well as their much-cherished freedom by making it. And as economists who study choice theory have demonstrated, the more choices you have, the more likely you are to experience anxiety and remorse about the one you ultimately make, even if that choice results in the birth of a beloved child.

    ...

    For this generation of hip parents, children are no longer little people who are seen but not heard. They are celebrated but also resented, in print and online. They are offered up instrumentally as a way of making connections to readers, with only an occasional glimmer of self-awareness about the possible impact on the child (as Armstrong writes, "OH MY GOD what my kid is going to say about me on her website"). For a growing number of parents, the demands of parental expression trump the needs of children for privacy -- a need that children themselves won't understand or be able to articulate until they are much older.

    It is possible to write about one's children without violating their privacy. Writers such as Jean Kenin the 1950s, whose best-selling essay collection of 1957, Please Don't Eat the Daisies, employed a mordant sense of humor to describe the everyday antics of her four sons (she later had two more children). Kerr was attuned to the perversities of life with small children, but she remained a grown-up: arch but never instrumental, using satire rather than self-pity to charm her readers. Women like Kerr and Shirley Jackson, whose books Life Among the Savages (1953) and Raising Demons (1957) adopted a comparably light tone, wrote about their families in order to make broader observations about the culture and their place in it. Today's parent-memoirists use their children as an excuse to talk about themselves. They reveal the intimate and gory details of their childrearing for the same reason politicians hug babies: they believe it humanizes them. But their work is less an exploration of human attachment than a literary version of Munchausen by Proxy syndrome.

    Perhaps the current economic crisis will prove to be a force strong enough to dislodge some of the more extreme fears and pretensions of this parenting class. The hip rebelliousness of this generation required a degree of solvency (and lines of credit) that no longer exists. Old-fashioned moderation and values such as thrift, reticence, and self-sacrifice might eventually reemerge. Parents might focus less on cultivating cool than on building character. Unless and until this generation of parents stops viewing its children as obstacles to personal fulfillment, these attempts to describe the experience of being mothers and fathers will remain mired in narcissism, little more than dreary catalogues of the everyday indignities of life with their children.

    The dominant characteristic of the hipster is knowingness. But parenthood teaches you that there is little you can be knowing about; everything is new and your life caters to fickle little creatures. It is an odd cultural moment that takes extreme measures to protect the physical safety of children, but is unconcerned about Mommy blogging all about Jasper's bed-wetting...
    I guess it all boils down to the fact that no one cares about your aviator glasses, v-neck t-shirt, skinny jeans, rainbow coloured hair, and your photos of your child dressed as Morrissey... But, how you actually parent children and not how cool you or your children look when doing it.

    More on hipster parents and the realization our society is making about them:

    I Hate My Hipster Parents and Halloween! Why Can?t I Just Be Elmo? I've never even heard of Andy Warhol! on LOL Wall, by Magda Lena

    Dumbest Things Hipster Parents Do Photo Gallery - Too Cool For School - Dumb as a Blog on truTV.com

    Hipster parent alert: The Longboardstroller | News.com.au

    TIME: Hipster-parents are pretty much douche bags | The Poop | an SFGate.com blog

    The latest hipster parenting trend: Diaper-free babies - The Globe and Mail

    David Brooks takes on hipster parents - Salon.com

    Good Luck!
    Tayken

  • #2
    As far as I can tell, the dominant characterisic of the hipster was a cynical disdain for anything anyone else tried to express. Everything is crap. It hasn't changed since Aldous Huxley or William Burroughs, except they were somewhat original about it.

    Beyond that it was just a fashion style and affectation like every other counter-culture that was absorbed by mainstream culture.

    Engaging in cynical disdain about hipsterism is hipsterishly ironic. I'm expressing cynical disdain for the cynical disdain.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Mess View Post
      As far as I can tell, the dominant characterisic of the hipster was a cynical disdain for anything anyone else tried to express. Everything is crap. It hasn't changed since Aldous Huxley or William Burroughs, except they were somewhat original about it.
      Not sure I would classify Huxley and Burroughs with the modern "hipster" movements that have evolved in parenting styles. Huxley was a Universalist and more spiritual versus commercially driven like modern "hipsters". Although they may somewhat be the root of today's "hipster parent" but, to relate them to the current movement of parenting style is a bit far fetching.

      What differentiates Huxley and Burroughs is that they were not applying their personal belief to parenting and a fashion statement per-say as todays "hipster parents".

      Also, I rely upon encyclopedia dramatica (humour) for the modern definition of "hipster".

      https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Hipster

      Originally posted by Mess View Post
      Beyond that it was just a fashion style and affectation like every other counter-culture that was absorbed by mainstream culture.
      Huxleya and Baxster were beyond a "fashion style". Although their personal tastes may have been reflected in fashion they were much deeper than what a modern "hipster parent" is. They participated in the cultural revolution in a much deeper context and I wouldn't put them in the same stream as the modern "hipster" movement which really is an extension of the resurgence of "mod" culture of the 80s in my personal opinion. Which was much more about the items of the past "mods" more than the actual culture of modernist thought/beliefs that it came out of.

      Originally posted by Mess View Post
      Engaging in cynical disdain about hipsterism is hipsterishly ironic. I'm expressing cynical disdain for the cynical disdain.
      It is wryly amusing to observe the impact of a cultural movement on modern parenting but, I would argue it isn't hipsterishly ironic per-say. It may be ironic that people in society have taken note of the conduct of these individuals which is why I found the article interesting. What is more interesting on how the culture of "being cool" or "trying to be cool" really doesn't translate to parenting that well possibly. Children are not seeking out to be cool or to have their parent's "make them cool" or "be cool themselves". No matter how hard a parent tries to be "cool" they will never be "cool" to their children... They will just be what they are ... a parent.

      The obsession of ones self and having their children reflect that in their culture, likes and clothing has always been around. It is interesting though to see in our modern society how this manifests itself with mass commercialism and the internet.

      The "fad" of hipsterism I suspect will be short lived and probably be confined to a specific demographic. Outside of the city of Toronto I don't think you will find much of a "hipster parent" culture developing in Canada. There may be pockets but, as children mature and start expressing their own views... You won't see them wearing Smashing Pumpkin's t-shirts.

      Children will develop their own likes and wants... Independent of what their parents think is cool. Ultimately, children come into so many different things that influence them and their likes that parents have very little control over how "cool" their children are... They have no control of how "cool" their children think they are... No matter how hard to try... They are just parents... No parent is cool to their kids...

      Good Luck!
      Tayken

      Comment


      • #4
        As always, when exploring a topic such as "hipster parents" and parenting style one should turn to "The Onion".

        Dress-Up Doll Born To Area Couple | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

        NEW YORK—Two years ago, Manhattan married couple Ron Garver and Becky Meyers weren't sure they were cut out for parenting. They worked long hours, had a thriving social life, and their East Village apartment was small and cramped. But 24 months and 73 outfits later, Garver and Meyers are the proud parents of a 10-month-old dress-up doll.

        ...

        "This isn't about Becky and me," Garver said. "This is about building our child's self-esteem, because we love her. Which reminds me, we're really looking forward to Valentine's Day. We found an adorable pink dress with little wings on the back for our little Cupid. How can she not be happy with all the attention everyone will give her? Plus, her hair's finally growing in, so we can stop using the hats. She never seemed to like those."
        It is always interesting to see how satire, such as that applied in The Onion often reflects on our culture.

        My favorite one:

        Study Finds Every Style Of Parenting Produces Disturbed, Miserable Adults | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

        SANTA ROSA, CA—A study released by the California Parenting Institute Tuesday shows that every style of parenting inevitably causes children to grow into profoundly unhappy adults. "Our research suggests that while overprotective parenting ultimately produces adults unprepared to contend with life's difficulties, highly permissive parenting leads to feelings of bitterness and isolation throughout adulthood," lead researcher Daniel Porter said. "And, interestingly, we found that anything between those two extremes is equally damaging, always resulting in an adult who suffers from some debilitating combination of unpreparedness and isolation. Despite great variance in parenting styles across populations, the end product is always the same: a profoundly flawed and joyless human being." The study did find, however, that adults often achieve temporary happiness when they have children of their own to perpetuate the cycle of human misery.
        Study Finds Owning Cool Leather Jacket More Rewarding Than Raising Children | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

        SEATTLE—A study released Thursday by the Pacific Parenting Institute found that owning a seriously cool leather jacket is significantly more fulfilling than raising a child to adulthood. "Our research suggests that the feeling of purchasing a really amazing leather jacket and then proudly watching over time as it gradually becomes broken in and forms perfectly to your body is, by a very wide margin, more rewarding than conceiving a child and then raising it from birth to 18 years of age," said lead researcher Dr. Marcus Aiello, adding that it was on average 63 percent more gratifying to regularly condition a leather jacket that had awesome vertical zippers on the sleeves than it was to read nightly bedtime stories to a son or daughter.


        Cool Dad Raising Daughter On Media That Will Put Her Entirely Out Of Touch With Her Generation | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

        RENTON, WA—Local man Paul Campbell confirmed Saturday he was raising his daughter Emma on a variety of media carefully selected to help her cultivate an appreciation for artistic quality, a move that will reportedly put the 12-year-old girl hopelessly out of touch with her generation.
        Good Luck!
        Tayken

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Mess View Post
          Engaging in cynical disdain about hipsterism is hipsterishly ironic. I'm expressing cynical disdain for the cynical disdain.
          We could go to Applebee's... No seriously... We could go to Applebee's. Wouldn't it be funny to go to Applebee's?

          New Ad Urges Hipsters To Go To Applebee's Ironically | Video | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

          On a side note... Maybe Alex P. Keaton is the reality that hipster parents of today may face in the near future?

          Good Luck!
          Tayken
          Last edited by Tayken; 07-01-2013, 09:28 PM.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Tayken View Post

            Now, as many of you know, I don't generally post articles that have any relationship to religious background but, I found this article on "Hipster Parents" quite interesting.

            The article doesn't seem to have a religious twist so I can't really tell why it was posted to the site it was. It is actually an interesting view on the often elusive "Hipster Parent":

            The Hipster Curse: The Parents Who Don't Want to Be Adults

            The Hipster Curse: The Parents Who Don't Want to Be Adults

            Tayken
            I'm not Catholic, but CERC appears to be quite a reliable resource for up to date information. I looked up the Executive and Advisory boards and also the video (didn't watch it all).

            Comment

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