(no subject)

[naomikritzer]

Have I mentioned how much I hate most parenting magazines?

I had a checkup today, and killed time in the waiting room by picking up a copy of a magazine called ePregnancy. (The superfluous "e" at the beginning to make the magazine seem cool is admittedly reason enough to hate it, but there wasn't anything else handy except, puzzlingly, a large stack of old TV Guides.) One of the headlines on the cover was something like, Should you get a FLU SHOT while pregnant? Don't do a thing until you read our article!



The first thing I hate about parenting magazines are all the "Ten MORE Implausible Freak Accidents to Obsess Over!" stories they run, typically under titles like, "Ten Hidden Household Dangers -- Which One Could Kill YOUR Child During the Thirty Seconds In Which You Run to the Bathroom?" The dangers in these articles tend to fall into two categories:

(1) The incredibly obvious. Is your child in a carseat? Do you make your child wear a bike helmet? Do you store your kitchen knives in the toy box, or do you keep them somewhere at least marginally inaccessible to your kid? Molly and Kiera ride in carseats. Molly wears a bike helmet. We do not keep our kitchen knives mixed in with Molly's kitchen toys.

(2) The incredibly unlikely. There was a warning that got circulated around the Internet a year or two back, paranoid mother to paranoid mother, about how you should never ever put sharp knives in the dishwasher pointing up, because this one mother did that, and her three-year-old child tripped and fell while walking through the kitchen and fell on one of the knives and died. This really did happen. Now, as it happens, we don't wash our sharp knives in the dishwasher and we put everything pointing down because we're klutzes and don't want to cut ourselves unloading the dishwasher. But even if you wash all your knives pointing up, the chances of someone duplicating this horrible, tragic freak accident are probably lower than Minnesota suffering a catastrophic earthquake. Yet, though I know all about the proper loading of kitchen knives into the dishwasher, I know pretty much nothing about what you're supposed to do in the event of an earthquake. (For some reason, I think you're supposed to stand in a doorway. I read it on the Internet, so it must be true.)

Anyway, so ePregnancy's headline strongly implied that the flu shot was a REALLY BAD IDEA while pregnant. I am not pregnant, but I was curious, so I flipped to the article. It turns out that in fact, new research indicates that having the flu during the first trimester of pregnancy puts your child at a greatly increased risk of developing schizophrenia as an adult. The odds are still low (97% of people whose mothers had the flu during pregnancy will NOT become schizophrenic) but still, eek. So the headline was not only hysterical, but misleading.

Oh, plus, this year, most of the women who read this article probably won't be able to find a flu shot anyway. So it's hysterical, misleading, AND likely to cause additional worrying. It's like the grand slam of the parenting magazine "our goal is to make YOU feel inadequate!" brigade.

The next article in ePregnancy was all about pregnancy wardrobes. The pictures showed pregnant models who were baring their bellies in sexy poses -- now, I will show my belly while pregnant but I am a rare bird in that I actually think I look pretty good while pregnant. (pegkerr is another.) The fashion advice was dubious. (They suggested that you wear a sweater and then jazz it up with a belt. A belt? Are they on crack? Belts while pregnant are a bad idea. BAD. I am not a fashion genius but I know that much.) Finally, they note that while it is possible to get an entire maternity wardrobe for as little as $500, you shouldn't try to recycle it in subsequent pregnancies because you'll look dated. Which answers my earlier question: why yes, in fact, they are on crack. I added exactly three items to my pregnancy wardrobe the second time around: everything else was recycled. (And it cost less than $500 the first time.) The only women I know who bought a new wardrobe for later pregnancies had thought they were done and gotten rid of their maternity clothes.

It's a funny thing, incidentally. It really is true that no matter how much you like something when you're pregnant, you will NEVER wear a maternity item while not pregnant (unless you have to, because you haven't yet lost your pregnancy weight.) In fact, you will want it out of your house, if at all possible. You will find yourself trying to lend things to pregnant friends that will never fit them, because you're six inches shorter than they are. At least, this was true for me. When I got pregnant with Kiera, though, I opened up my rubbermaid tub full of maternity wear with a certain amount of apprehension...and instantly got a delightful rush of nostalgia. Oh yes, the overalls. I loved wearing these. And the yellow jumper! I'd forgotten all about the yellow jumper.

So much for ePregnancy. That was this morning; this afternoon, Molly went to the dentist for a cleaning, and I entertained myself in that waiting room with a copy of Good Housekeeping. That had an article about how the big new fad among teenaged girls is to give their male "platonic" friends unreciprocated oral sex.

Now, to be fair, I haven't read any recent sociological studies on this trend, and it might be a real trend, and something new. But the author of the article hadn't read any recent sociological studies, either. She'd heard a rumor, and had checked it out by asking a teenager, "Is it true that a lot of girls give blow jobs to their male friends now?" The teenagers told her that this was absolutely true: one new a boy who'd had a girl offer him a blow job, and one knew of a girl who gave them out behind the gym.

I've been out of high school for a while. (I graduated in 1991.) But, there are a few things I'm quite certain of, and one is that if you ask a teenager about the things that are going on at their school, you will hear some wild as hell rumors. (Even better -- ask a junior high schooler, because twelve-year-olds will believe ANYTHING.) It doesn't mean that these things are actually happening. They might be, or it might just be that everyone knows that some girl offered blowjobs to the football team / baseball team / Science Olympics team / senior class if they met her behind the gym / in the faculty parking lot / next to her locker / in the end zone of the football field.

People believe some weird stuff. And I have to say, based on 8 zillion hysterical threads I've seen on parenting message boards, adults will believe absolutely anything when it comes to teenagers and sex. (I am aware that teenagers have sex, incidentally, and I'm sure there are girls who give out blow jobs casually. My high school boyfriend was offered a blow job in exchange for $5 by a girl who wanted the money for a pack of cigarettes. This doesn't mean that in the early 1990s, there was a societal trend in which high school girls were turning to extremely low-cost prostitution in order to finance their nicotine habits. It means that there was one girl who made this offer; had anyone taken her up on it, she might have said she was just joking, in any case. It would be nice if more parenting magazine authors would learn the difference between sociological research and anecdote, and write accordingly.)



On an unrelated note:

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY RED SOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I had a great revelation once, which was that I only ever worried about how awful I looked when I read Cosmopolitan and I only ever worried about what a terrible mother I was when I read parenting magazines, and so the best way to solve the problems of me being fat, ugly, hairy, and a terrified mother from hell, would be to just stop reading them. This means I have to go to extreme lengths -- well, bookshops and newsagents -- to make sure that I have plenty to read in waiting rooms.