This is from a place of genuine curiosity as a Gen X parent (the kiddos are teens now).
My pregnancies were awful. Simply awful. And the idea that an app would have helped that, or helped with why I couldn't nurse my first seems so... foreign.
It looks like a Snoo costs $1700 without accessories. That price tag would have had to have been born (ha!) by my parents or a group of friends or something with my kids. It would have been something given to us in lieu of spending time with the baby/us.
And I would bet there's a whole ecosystem around if you don't have just the right THING for your kid they are going to miss out on something.
I guess my questions are:
1- is there a FOMO involved here? Do y'all think your kid is going to miss out on something based on not having a particular thing? I swear this is not a snarky question. I ask because FOMO is basically something my Gen X friends and family don't have.
2- And if the answer to 1 is a yes... how much of that came from your/the parent upbringing? I think the Millennial generation is the first set of parents to have been raised in the era of competitive parenthood (something GenX has WHOLLY bought into /genX-DER) and I just wonder, cause we've opted out of that, what your thoughts are.
Either way... very interesting essay and what tough things to grapple with on top of the things that we go through with the kids!
My boss (a woman, a mother) and myself (also a boss) are both electrical engineers. Each one of us has several years of experience. We both believe in the human touch - being personable, treating people well. She worked on a doctorate and presented to professors with a baby in the stroller next to her. In my own master’s degree in electrical engineering, some of my books are about technical subjects that render the books useful only to a small population. For example, my electromagnetics textbook was only available as an expensive paperback. With all the vector calculus, triple integrals, conversion between spherical coordinates (like latitude and longitude as well as the radius of the earth, but since that’s assumed to be constant more or less, we just use the two angular coordinates) and rectangular ones. The thing is, such a coordinate system makes math easier - such as designing a cell phone antenna. Then there are Bessel functions - those help us with math where circles are involved. Even in my computational electromagnetics course, the first few weeks was strictly paper and pencil! Pencil and paper for a computer class? Darn right! You need to understand the concept in your mind before you apply it. I collected so many pencils! Even the least experienced engineer who reports to me - she graduated college about 3 years ago - even she uses a paper engineering notebook! Bottom line: You have to learn concepts, and there’s no app for that (OK, so apps help, but still, I’m trying to learn Spanish and Rosetta Stone, Duo Lingo, and Babel only go so far. As soon as I get my master’s degree in December I am signing up for an in person Spanish class - when I speak the language to people who grew up speaking it, the smile on people’s faces means so much!}. Life. There’s no app for that.
This was very interesting. I can relate to it, a bit, but as my two are 36 and 33, also I was struck dumb by some of it.
There are many things about parenting now that I question. I don't understand attachment parenting, or anti-science, or anti-vaccines.
I am so old that as a child we lined up at our elementary school for vaccines. The state of Minnesota and the city of Crystal and the good educators at Forest Elementary all understood that children needed vaccines, and not all of our families could afford to drive to Minneapolis to see a pediatrician, so they lined us up and we stuck out our little arms and hoped for a band aid and a sucker. No one got exemptions. Not sure if they consulted our parents. They just got it done. We would have made fun of anyone who cried.
In fourth grade, we all loved our teacher, Miss Bergquist. She was kind, and hot, and wore miniskirts.
We knew Miss Bergquist had a boyfriend, and that he was in Viet Nam. We spoke amongst ourselves about the war, and what was happening there. Unable to reach a conclusion, we decided to ask Miss Bergquist.
I think it was me who volunteered to ask. "Miss Bergquist, why are we fighting in Viet Nam? It seems wrong."
Miss Bergquist said quietly, "I don't know."
We were all stunned. For many of us, Miss Bergquist was the coolest, the most all-knowing person we knew.
In conclusion, sometimes the people or the technologies, we rely on, and trust can let us down, and shatter us.
Sorry for the rambling, but I have a hard time being concise these days.
I feel lucky that 2003 when my son was born is like 100 years technology-wise. It seemed like we had adequate information but not the firehose of stuff coming in via social media these days. The only real downside of parenting in the pre-smartphone world is lack of easy video capture. We bought a camcorder but rarely used it and anything we did capture is stuck on a tape somewhere. Having a video camera is your pocket is a definite upgrade.
My sons are 39 and 43 and we lived far from family when they were small and my husband at the time was of little help. I was on my own. When anything at all came up it was a trip to the library for a stack of books. I read child development books all the time. The idea that your partner would stay home to help after the baby was born or get up at night to bring you the baby or do a load of laundry or cook a meal? I had really low expectations, I knew no one was coming to help. I was really lucky to have had two non complex pregnancies and deliveries, two healthy babies.
Still I think it was easier than the constant inputs and systems of sleep training etc and technologies making you feel inadequate and nervous, unable to trust your intuition . It feels like there is pressure to optimize parenting.
Now I have two grandchildren and am available nearby as much as they need me, a huge plus for me as well as them. They are growing up with family from both sides nearby to provide help.
When my son went out of town for two days I did school pickups and after school care and my DIL’s father arrived with bags of groceries and fixed meals so my DIL did not have to cook. It’s a rarity among their friends.
This is from a place of genuine curiosity as a Gen X parent (the kiddos are teens now).
My pregnancies were awful. Simply awful. And the idea that an app would have helped that, or helped with why I couldn't nurse my first seems so... foreign.
It looks like a Snoo costs $1700 without accessories. That price tag would have had to have been born (ha!) by my parents or a group of friends or something with my kids. It would have been something given to us in lieu of spending time with the baby/us.
And I would bet there's a whole ecosystem around if you don't have just the right THING for your kid they are going to miss out on something.
I guess my questions are:
1- is there a FOMO involved here? Do y'all think your kid is going to miss out on something based on not having a particular thing? I swear this is not a snarky question. I ask because FOMO is basically something my Gen X friends and family don't have.
2- And if the answer to 1 is a yes... how much of that came from your/the parent upbringing? I think the Millennial generation is the first set of parents to have been raised in the era of competitive parenthood (something GenX has WHOLLY bought into /genX-DER) and I just wonder, cause we've opted out of that, what your thoughts are.
Either way... very interesting essay and what tough things to grapple with on top of the things that we go through with the kids!
Your kids, when they grow up, may not remember what apps you used, but they will remember the love.
My boss (a woman, a mother) and myself (also a boss) are both electrical engineers. Each one of us has several years of experience. We both believe in the human touch - being personable, treating people well. She worked on a doctorate and presented to professors with a baby in the stroller next to her. In my own master’s degree in electrical engineering, some of my books are about technical subjects that render the books useful only to a small population. For example, my electromagnetics textbook was only available as an expensive paperback. With all the vector calculus, triple integrals, conversion between spherical coordinates (like latitude and longitude as well as the radius of the earth, but since that’s assumed to be constant more or less, we just use the two angular coordinates) and rectangular ones. The thing is, such a coordinate system makes math easier - such as designing a cell phone antenna. Then there are Bessel functions - those help us with math where circles are involved. Even in my computational electromagnetics course, the first few weeks was strictly paper and pencil! Pencil and paper for a computer class? Darn right! You need to understand the concept in your mind before you apply it. I collected so many pencils! Even the least experienced engineer who reports to me - she graduated college about 3 years ago - even she uses a paper engineering notebook! Bottom line: You have to learn concepts, and there’s no app for that (OK, so apps help, but still, I’m trying to learn Spanish and Rosetta Stone, Duo Lingo, and Babel only go so far. As soon as I get my master’s degree in December I am signing up for an in person Spanish class - when I speak the language to people who grew up speaking it, the smile on people’s faces means so much!}. Life. There’s no app for that.
This was very interesting. I can relate to it, a bit, but as my two are 36 and 33, also I was struck dumb by some of it.
There are many things about parenting now that I question. I don't understand attachment parenting, or anti-science, or anti-vaccines.
I am so old that as a child we lined up at our elementary school for vaccines. The state of Minnesota and the city of Crystal and the good educators at Forest Elementary all understood that children needed vaccines, and not all of our families could afford to drive to Minneapolis to see a pediatrician, so they lined us up and we stuck out our little arms and hoped for a band aid and a sucker. No one got exemptions. Not sure if they consulted our parents. They just got it done. We would have made fun of anyone who cried.
In fourth grade, we all loved our teacher, Miss Bergquist. She was kind, and hot, and wore miniskirts.
We knew Miss Bergquist had a boyfriend, and that he was in Viet Nam. We spoke amongst ourselves about the war, and what was happening there. Unable to reach a conclusion, we decided to ask Miss Bergquist.
I think it was me who volunteered to ask. "Miss Bergquist, why are we fighting in Viet Nam? It seems wrong."
Miss Bergquist said quietly, "I don't know."
We were all stunned. For many of us, Miss Bergquist was the coolest, the most all-knowing person we knew.
In conclusion, sometimes the people or the technologies, we rely on, and trust can let us down, and shatter us.
Sorry for the rambling, but I have a hard time being concise these days.
Thank you for reading.
I feel lucky that 2003 when my son was born is like 100 years technology-wise. It seemed like we had adequate information but not the firehose of stuff coming in via social media these days. The only real downside of parenting in the pre-smartphone world is lack of easy video capture. We bought a camcorder but rarely used it and anything we did capture is stuck on a tape somewhere. Having a video camera is your pocket is a definite upgrade.
My sons are 39 and 43 and we lived far from family when they were small and my husband at the time was of little help. I was on my own. When anything at all came up it was a trip to the library for a stack of books. I read child development books all the time. The idea that your partner would stay home to help after the baby was born or get up at night to bring you the baby or do a load of laundry or cook a meal? I had really low expectations, I knew no one was coming to help. I was really lucky to have had two non complex pregnancies and deliveries, two healthy babies.
Still I think it was easier than the constant inputs and systems of sleep training etc and technologies making you feel inadequate and nervous, unable to trust your intuition . It feels like there is pressure to optimize parenting.
Now I have two grandchildren and am available nearby as much as they need me, a huge plus for me as well as them. They are growing up with family from both sides nearby to provide help.
When my son went out of town for two days I did school pickups and after school care and my DIL’s father arrived with bags of groceries and fixed meals so my DIL did not have to cook. It’s a rarity among their friends.
Amanda is so cool and smart!!!!