New York Times
February 25, 2007
Mosh Pit Meets Sandbox
By David Brooks
Can we please get over the hipster parent moment? Can we
please see the end of those Park Slope alternative Stepford Moms in their
black-on-black maternity tunics who turn their babies into fashion-forward,
anticorporate indie-infants in order to stay one step ahead of the cool police?
Can we stop hearing about downtown parents who dress their
babies in black skull slippers, Punky Monkey T-shirts and camo toddler ponchos
until the little ones end up looking like sad-parody club clones of mom and
dad? Can we finally stop reading about the musical Antoinettes who would get
the vapors if their tykes were caught listening to Disney tunes, and who
instead force-feed Brian Eno, Radiohead and Sufjan Stevens into their little
babies’ iPods?
I mean, don’t today’s much-discussed hipster parents notice
that their claims to rebellious individuality are undercut by the fact that
they are fascistically turning their children into miniature reproductions of
their hipper-than-thou selves? Don’t they observe that with their inevitable
hummus snacks, their pastel-free wardrobes, their unearned sense of superiority
and their abusively pretentious children’s names like Anouschka and Elijah,
they are displaying a degree of conformity that makes your average suburban
cul-de-sac look like Renaissance Florence?
Enough already. The hipster parent trend has been going on
too long and it’s got to stop. It’s been nearly three years since reporters for
sociologically attuned publications like The New York Observer began noticing
oversophisticated infants in “Anarchy in the Pre-K” shirts. Since then, the
trend has exhausted its life cycle.
A witty essay by Adam Sternbergh announced the phenomenon in
an April 2006 New York magazine. Sternbergh described 40-year-old men and women
with $200 bedhead haircuts and $600 messenger bags, who “look, talk, act and
dress like people who are 22 years old,” and dress their infants as if they’re
16. He called these pseudo-adults “Grups,” observing that they smashed any
remaining semblance of a generation gap.
He noticed that the music of the parental generation sounds
exactly like the music of the kids’ generation. They have the same rock star
fashion sense, and share the same taste for distressed denim. He found a music
video director, Adam Levite, who had a guitar collection propped up in his
TriBeCa loft, and then similar miniature versions of the same guitars for his
6-year-old son, Asa.
Then came the hipster parents’ own online magazine, Babble.com.
Babble is a normal parental advice magazine submerged under
geological layers of attitudinizing. There are articles about products from the
alternative industrial complex (early ’60s retro baby food organizers). There’s
a blog from a rock star mom (it’s lonely on the road). There’s a column by
L.A.’s Rebecca Woolf, a sort of Silver Lake Erma Bombeck. (“Who says becoming a
mom means succumbing to laser tattoo removal and moving to the suburbs?”)
On top of that there’s been a flourishing of the movement’s
official gathering site — the message board complex UrbanBaby.com. Here, highly
educated parents trade tips about the toxic dangers of aluminum foil.
Stay-at-home Martyr Mommies trade gibes with their working mom frenemies.
High-achieving types try to restrain their judgmental, perfectionist tendencies
with self-mockery: “I horrified myself the other day when I found myself being
surprised that Angelina [Jolie] would let Zahara eat Ms. Vickie’s chips. Shoot
me before I turn into a sanctimommy!”
Finally, in a sign that the hip parenting thing has jumped
the shark, the movement got its own book, the indescribably dull “Alternadad,”
about a self-described whiny narcissist who tries not to let his son’s birth
get in the way of his rock festival lifestyle. Surely a trend has hit absurdity
when you have a book in which the most memorable moment comes when the writer
succumbs to the corporate temptations of Toys “R” Us.
Let me be clear: I’m not against the indie/alternative
lifestyle. There is nothing more reassuringly traditionalist than the
counterculture. For 30 years, the music, the fashions, the poses and the urban
weeklies have all been the same. Everything in this society changes except
nonconformity.
What I object to is people who make their children
ludicrous. Innocent infants should not be compelled to sport “My Mom’s Blog Is
Better Than Your Mom’s Blog” infant wear. They should not be turned into
deceptive edginess badges by parents who refuse to face that their days of
chaotic, unscheduled moshing are over.
For God’s sake, let’s respect the dignity of youth.
