Young Parents in 2008

Yesterday, my friend "Tim" called me and we engaged ourselves in a conversation about how young parents act these days. What started all of this was when Tim called his friend "Mike" to invite him to a concert. Mike said that he was a family man now and he can't go to concerts all the time, his famblee is his top priority,etc. All Tim did was ask him to one concert and Mike gave him a lecture about not understanding about what it's like to be a pahrunt. Mike could have just said "no", but had to talk down to Tim like he was a lesser human being. Tim is adamantly CF by the way and plans to get a vasectomy soon.

I clearly remember my parents having a social life when I was little. They had a good amount of single or childless friends and didn't snub them. My parents went to concerts.movies, parties, etc. and left us with babysitters. It wasn't all the time, mind you, but still, their lives didn't only revolve around myself and my brother.

Which is why, in a matter of months, they won't be friends anymore.
The breedershit gets annoying.
Granted, there should be famblee time, but not the be-all and end-all of everything.

edit: Tim, if he had wanted to end it immediately (especially getting lectured on famblee responsibilities) could have said "That is why I'll never have kids..." and hung up. ... aug 5--man I gotta watch my tenses

"How DARE you invite me to something like a concert!! You just want to rub your carefree life in my face!! Don't you know I'm a parent now?!! You can't do fun things IN HELL!" (Hangs up phone, runs to bathroom to sob while kids pound on door)

YAY! Asshole Duh!

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

In my experience, when a young MAN (aka new father, especially) gets all uppity about his famblee responsibilities, it's for a reason (s) which is not generally a lofty ideal that sprang from his own instinct or conscience. His wife is likely standing within earshot, or else he will brag later of his turning down the invite to log some bedroom points,, and/or he has already been scolded for having dared to do the least little thing which could appear non famblee friendly. Perhaps he played some basketball at the Y, went deer hunting, or threw a football at the park with a friend last week and missed baybee's first solid dump, or something of equal importantance.

I remember being excited when my mom had a date- I got to stay up late with a cool teenager and watch scary movies, and when I woke up my glamorous mother (not kidding) always left some wonderful little surprise from wherever she'd been on my nightstand.

I learned how to be a girl watching her put her hose on (with the lines!) and doing her clothes and makeup. I mean GOING OUT.

My parents, and my friends parents had social lives when we were kids. We were left with our grandparents or my gay and totally awesome babysitter. If we fucked up and misbehaved, we got our asses beat.

Not parents today, they want to be their kid's best friends. They're not doing anybody any favors.

I hear you on that one Rose Red. I always enjoyed hanging out with a teenage babysitter when I was little. Sometimes my grandmother would watch us, keeping us up super late while giving us candy and watching horror movies on HBO. Staying with a sitter, whether it was a teenage girl or one of my relatives, sort of made me feel independent. My parents got a break from us while we got to to have supervision that was less strict than normal.

Something else that comes to mind is how pahrunts let their sprogs dictate what music, movies, and TV shows the family watches. I got to watch Saturday morning cartoons and Sesame Street, but I also had to watch 60 Minutes, ABC World News, In Living Color, Married With Children, and other "adult" shows if my parents had the remote. One time my mom secretly broke some annoying children's music tape that I kept playing over and over again. They always played their classic rock records and would have been damned if they let me control every form of entertainment played in the house.

It's very plebian, all this 'fambly fambly fambly' stuff. What are they, Appalachian backwoods peasants? That is NOT how one gets on in life - cutting yourself and your relatives off from the world and not letting any of them experience relationships with people who are not members of the fambly. Oh unless it's a potential breeding-match, then yes, they accept that outsider so long as they're willing to loan the use of their genitals to make MORE FAMBLY.

And it's always these people who end up going postal if something goes wrong with the fambly. Because they don't know how to relate to any other part of society.

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"The death of creativity is a pram in the hallway"
- Cyril Connolly

It's not just the young parents taking their sprogs everywhere. Last Saturday was my hubby's company picnic--lots of good food, adult-type entertainment, and free beer. This is a yearly event, and always a nice time. The announcement arrives in the mail about a month before the picnic, and it ALWAYS says "please bring only one (adult) guest." Not hard to understand, one would think.

This year, however, I saw two different sets of pahrunts with hugh-jass strollers. One set looked to be in their twenties, both smoking like chimneys. The others were in the bingo tent with their sprog of maybe a year. He was really fussy and whiny, probably because the day was hot and humid. I don't fault the child for being upset, but can't Moo and Duh actually follow directions and leave the kyds at home!:scr

They NEVER leave the kids at home. Even if you ask them.

"They NEVER leave the kids at home."

Amen to that! A couple of weeks ago my hubby and I went with another CF couple to see OAR in concert. Now, they're a pretty mild band, but for some reason there were a bunch of underage drunk idiots looking for a fight in the crowd. Tired of the underage bitches behind us, we moved to the back of the GA area, only to be surrounded by parents with their five-to-ten year old 'miracles' in tow...at a rock concert...with most of the crowd smoking pot and getting drunk...am I missing something? When I was a kid, if my parents wanted to go to a concert, movie, whatever, they left me with my teenage cousin-I was all too happy to have an evening that involved chick flicks, popcorn and getting my nails painted, and they got to be young and carefree for an evening. Win-win.

I saw a tiny infant at a Dave Matthews Band concert this past June, strapped to the moo in one of those sling things. The thing was so small it couldn't even hold its own head up.

I know I would take a baby to DMB. Because, you know, nobody ever gets drunk or smokes weed at DMB concerts. They're famblee friendly!

I'm so embarrassed. My aunt took my cousin, her 16-yo daughter to the Club Diner at 1 am last nite. It isn't that big of a deal since it's not a school night and they don't serve alcohol there, however 95% of their clientele at that hour is drunks out of the bars that are closing. So one came in and picked on my cousin a little. SHE was the one who wanted to go here, or rather, was hungry and didn't want to go to Wendy's. Her mother was just driving all over town looking for places that were open and her daughter would like. I would have just gone to Wendy's or a convenience store and said, "Find something in 30 seconds or less." Yes, I would have done that because I, too do this kind of thing. But I will not be dictated by a fickle teenager! I remember when this kid was 3, she used to pull this shit with her mother about food AT HOME, and now she's doing it with take-out and diners, LATE AT NIGHT, no less. When she was little and I had her with me, we (my BF at the time) used to just say, "You can eat what we're eating, or you don't have to eat anything," and she would ALWAYS taste what we had and LIKED it usually. We ate lots of Mexican and Asian food and usually got everything "spicy", and she would eat it and go home, and later her mother would make something and say "She won't eat it, it's too spicy" and the kid wouldn't even TRY it because she heard her mother say she wouldn't like it. This is STILL going on.

I don't remember having a teenage babysitter to hang with because my parents started leaving me home alone at age 6. The only time I remember being babysat was when I had chicken pox at age 4, and my parent's pot-smoking hippy friends babysat me during the day for a week. Without them I wouldn't know the joys of watching cartoons with the sound off while Led Zep blared on the stereo.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

"...my parents started leaving me home alone at age 6."

Likewise! My parents would go out for a couple hours of an evening when I was six. If it was all evening, I had a babysitter, but the last time I had one of those I was 9.

I was babysitting (and hating it!) for neighbouring couples by the time I was 11 -- a very ugly 4-month old, a weird 3-year old, and three girls all under 6.

When I was 12, my parents flew off for a weekend on the east coast and left me alone with a fridge full of food and a couple people's phone numbers taped to the phone in case I wanted anything. I had a great time!

- - - - - - - -
"The death of creativity is a pram in the hallway"
- Cyril Connolly

Blah, my mom was like this with me. She felt she couldn't go anywhere without me. Fuck there was a time her and her man wanted to go out for New Years' Eve - I was about 15, and definitely old enough to be home alone. Mom said she wouldn't go unless I found somewhere to send the night...my uncle wouldn't take me, neither of my aunts would take me and Mom was very angry at my grandma at the time. So, instead of leaving me home to my video game and movies and the cats, she decided she wouldn't go. Her BF wasn't too happy when he found out they'd be staying home watching a crappy movie and drinking beer.

My mom firmly believed that if she left me alone for one night, that particular night, of all the other nights that ever were or ever would be, would be the night all the murderers, thieves, rapists, pedophiles and otherwise criminals would break into the house and kill me and then set the house on fire and steal everything and eat the cats (okay, she never actually said that last part, but you get the idea). It's not like the house would appear uninhabited - the lights would be on, there would have been one car in the driveway and fuck, I had no problem sticking a carving knife in some bastard's face if he broke in.

I wish she'd have just gone out for doG's sake...now I'm 21 and she couldn't come check on me if she wanted to. She's very short on cash and I live 300 miles away ATM. And yanno what? I haven't been killed or raped or mugged yet, and although nothing really goes on in this city, there's a much better chance of me being in danger in the city than in our crappy little hometown.

Maybe that's why her BF is such an asshole to me - my existence essentially prevented him from going out with his partner. Well, so did my mom's crazy paranoia, but I'm sure he'd sooner look to blame me than her. Good times.