Me. She.

I've been thinking about the discussion over at Bub and Pie's today. It links, I think, to something that I've been trying to work through in my head for a long time, namely the boundaries between me and she, The Mama and The Offspring, Mimi and Miss Baby.

Here we are in matching outfits -- not unlike the mocked mother/baby pair in the Time article B&P linked to. For the record, Pynchon dressed her that day, after I'd got ready. And for the record, I found it absolutely adorable. In some measure, procreation is about extending our own selves into the future: who will care for me when I'm old? who will carry on the family name? who will remember me? who will bring forth this prominent shnoz into the future so that our sinuses may honk out in perpetuity?

She, that is, is in some way a handcrafted extra me. This is why people name children after themselves. Miss Baby is a mini-mimi, as AlphaDogMa would have it (great phrase, btw). And so I can dress her the way that I like, send her to French school if I like, try to foster a left-wing perspective and a love of cottaging if I like. This is at once completely self-serving and, well, the job of parenting. If everyone is always lamenting about the lack of parenting in our culture, about television and the internet raising our children for us, what else is the alternative? To make an effort to raise our children in what can be seen as our own image is just another way of understanding what you might also call the active instilling of values. If I raise my baby to know all the lyrics to all The Cure back catalogue and to become a Fluevog afficionado and a chopstick-wielding vegetarian, how is this different, really from raising my baby to (say ...) go to church, be polite to her elders, and be seen but not heard? In both cases, values that are important to the parents are carefully instilled in the children. That's called active parenting no matter how you slice it. You may call my values shallow or inconsequential, but they are my values and it is my right to attempt to pass these on to my children. Maybe I want my little girl always to wear pants because I think they're more stylish and also practical. Call me a hipster doofus. Maybe my (ex) sister-in-law won't let her daughters wear pants at all, for religious reasons. I'm to be mocked because I'm an urban ideologue? And she's a 'traditional parent'? The differences are of content, not form, here.

The article's author may take issue with what he sees as hipster parenting. But it's parenting. And in any case, sooner or later, the kids will speak for themselves, and the negotiation of boundaries and beliefs will begin. Maybe Miss Baby will turn out not to be a jeans and black turtleneck kind of gal. Maybe she'll vote Tory and listen to Celine Dion. I can't help but try to raise her to believe the things I believe, to hold dear the things that I hold dear. Otherwise, what will she rebel against as a teenager and return to in her twenties? :-)

I'm being a little flip. But I think the basic point still holds. Making fun of stylish, affected, and opinionated parents is really to pick on the values that they are aiming to instill in their kids--but really, parenting is all about making these attempts. And unlike the author, I applaud the parenting energy and attention that goes into the attempt, even if I may disagree with some of the values transmitted.