I think your best point is true...we are not all the same.

It is not hip vs non hip....you can't categorize people that easily and write people off.

Though I think he was on the mark with many things...but more about this generation compared to later than urban vs suburban.

My sentiments exactly. The “parenting establishment” (some of whom, i.e. doctors, psychologists, etc. are not even parents themselves) has tried to censor real workaday parents’ opinions for decades.

I am ready to print this on my business card: I am the first mother on my neighborhood’s Yahoo group to be banned. Why? Because I am against mandatory HPV vaccination on teenage girls and wanted to voice my opinion. I was the first one to even post a link on it on the group’s message board. To my surprise, most of the moms who posted replies advocated the vaccine. I balked. I had to say what was on my mind – that parents should be able to opt out, sex/HPV education and testing before mass vaccination, and that parents, pro or con, should be more vocal with their local politicians on the matter. I also said they should be weary of the HPV-vaccine drug maker’s ad campaigns, which employs actors and catchy slogans, and not real sufferers of HPV, cervical cancer or genital warts. I cited the HIV/AIDS advocacy during the early ‘80s, which took it to the streets to make its point.

The moderator and other women branded me anti-vaccine development and pro-abstinence, labeling me “misplaced,” “short-sighted,” “fallacious,” “muddled,” “clueless,” and above all “angry.” I tried to placate the women by complementing that how nice it was that they were even engaging in a discourse. When I posted this New York Times article: “Immunizations: More Education May Not Mean More Vaccination” (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9C0DEEDB1030F935A25752C0A9619C8B63&n=Top%2fNews%2fHealth%2fDiseases%2c%20Conditions%2c%20and%20Health%20Topics%2fVaccination%20and%20Immunization), women on the group complained I would not “let go” of the issue and that the forum was a place to discuss “diaper rash, temper tantrums, sippy cups, potty training and other random tidbits.” One woman accused me of “hammering” my opinion. They used piquant language like “precious” to describe their Yahoo group. One said, that “maybe the reality is that [the group] is no longer helpful for you.”

I felt those few vocal women on the group were hypocritical, racist and classist (the originating members are white co-op owners, who are also members of a private community park, a so-called “safe haven” from the public parks in NYC). I was determined, though, to stay on the group until they physically banned me through Yahoo. I made what I knew would be my swan song post and let it rip: I told them they were blacklisting me, “much like how the Salem Witch Trials or Senator Joseph McCarthy did.” The moderator finally banned me.

A few days later, I found babble.com. You are blessing upon my militant soul.

Thank you all who have to the balls to start a commotion.

P.S. If you are interested, I saved the whole HPV vaccine debate on the group to a Word file before I was banned. I am proud to share it with those interested.

Anyone who is in the minority or is different is going to be ignored and tossed aside-with no media outlets catering to their needs.

However, it's when that minority rises up and creates a community (hello Civil Rights activists, Women activists, Gay rights activists) that people of the "safe" majority start to persecute and criticize that community-because there are strength in numbers, and let's face it, large numbers can be scary.

Mr. Zero Boss has it right, we don't try to be "hip" or cool.  

I think the difference between "us" and "them" is that our kids don't become our lives.  They become a wonderful addition to our lives-contributing and enriching it in so many fabulous ways.

But we keep our cool clothes, our neato hairstyles, and our place in the city.

Most of us have realistic views on parenting and don't make it out to be all baby powder poof and ribbons like most parenting magazines do.

I stand firm on my parenting views and anyone who wants to criticize them are open to do it.  But before they waste their type/breath...I just want it to be known that I can't hear them through the Zeppelin blasting through my iPod.

I think this is a generational thing, not a hip/unhip thing.  We have more choices and take advantage of that.

Dude,

I want you to take your hand off the mouse, read the bios of your fellow bloggers and then tell me again that you guys aren't trying to be "hip." There's a bit of everything:

Lame irony mixed with "action sport" bona fides:  "His hobbies include surfing, skateboarding, muttering under his breath, haggis tasting, macrame', and writing short descriptions about himself in the third person."

Actual description of physical manifestations of hipness: " . . . is a tattooed, liberal, pottymouthed, undercover-hippie stay-at-home mama to two girls, Hazel, four, and Violet, nineteen months."

Hip community name dropping: "near Seattle," "San Francisco," "the San Francisco suburbs," etc.

You guys are hipsters.  Just cop to it.

Whatever, Athanasius. There's a difference between being proud of who you are, and trying to be hipper-than-thou.

TIME and the establishment may be old-school but, whoa, it has your number! The story was hardly "about Babble," people.  Babble had a tiny mention in the piece.  Wasn't this self absorbtion kind of the point of "The Parenting Conversation?"  

Which is why my response didn't concentrate on Babble, Catherine, but on the parenting blogosphere as such.

"Hipness" is really in the eye of the beholder.

First, I know, I used the word "blogosphere." I apologize. Second, in case you haven't heard, James Poniewozick

Some dude at Time.com is ragging on parent bloggers for being narcissists with a skewed sense of priorities, more interested in making our offspring cool, and thereby remaining (or in my case, becoming) cool through their reflected hipness, then in the actual act of parenting.  Now I proudly admit to being a narcissist, and an especially compelling, fascinating one at that, but otherwise, I think the article misses the mark.

I like to write online about what's going on in my life, for my own amusement and for the entertainment of anyone who clicks on by.  And what's going on in my life now is parenting.  I don't write about the Lads in place of spending time with them; I write about them because I devote so much of myself to them.  I find my sons endlessly amazing and amusing, and I'm just bursting with joy at their very existence.  This is just an outlet for that.  There's a certain element of navel-gazing in blogging, but for now, I'm gazing at the Lads' navels -- and as any parent of two-year-olds knows, there's nothing more interesting than a belly button.

What i don't understand is how blogging about your child rearing experiences is any different than writing them down in cutesie-poo little baby journals... sure its more public but it also creates a community that is larger than your neighborhood park or momy and me class. Personally (as a nonblogger and parent to be who has been documeting this growing bump of mine) i think its great that people are out there who are willing to talk about the issues of the day that will effect our children and not just the adorable things their children do/say/swallow.

In the 8 months i have been pregnant, i have been labeled a hipster (by people who dont even know me) more than in any other time in my life, simply because of where i live and my own personal views on environmental/social/economic issues. But the reality is i am just a person trying to do better by my unborn than my parents did for me and my siblings- a dream that if i am not mistaken was and is shared by parents all over past and present; if that makes me a hipster than bring it on, maybe when i figure out how to i will blog about it!

First, I know, I used the word "blogosphere." I apologize. Second, in case you haven't heard, James Poniewozick

James Poniewozik, author of the much Babbled about "Too Cool for Preschool" piece in this week's Time Magazine, kindly agreed to answer some of our questions about his problem with hip parent bloggers and writers. STROLLER DERBY: You seem concerned that

Our discussion continues as James Poniewozik responds to Babble's contention that "We are nothing more or less than parents who, in some fashion, defy the traditional image of uptight cardigan-wearing Donna Reed clones who are perpetually alienated from

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