Parental Worry
December 6, 2007
As soon as I got pregnant and started reading pregnancy books and magazines, I realized that our generation of parents in unique in its anxiety. Sure, parents have always worried about their children. I know my grandmother is still kicking herself for the time she let my infant dad fall off the bed. My parents still worry about us. And yet, there’s something different about this current generation of parents.
Maybe it’s the availability of information. We have access to scary information in a way that no generation before us has. If we worry about the safety record of a particular toy or the chance of allergies with a particular food, the information we need is at our fingertips. It seems like the anxiety goes beyond information availability, though. All you have to do is pick up a copy of “Parenting” or “Parents” or “American Baby” (all great magazines that I devour in a matter of days) to realize that this sense of anxiety is pervasive. This month’s “Parenting,” for instance, contains an article on holiday safety with a special section on “Troubleshooting new toys.” The article cautions that pull toys with a cord longer than 12 inches are a strangulation hazard, board books can cut a baby’s tongue or poke an eye, and stuffed animals can cause SIDS. Ack.
All of this information is likely very accurate. Sure, your baby could poke his eye with a book. But he’s not going to poke his eye out. He could cut his tongue, but I’ve never heard of a baby severing his tongue with a book. This anxiety-loaded parenting culture is hard to deal with, especially if, like me, you tend to be anxious anyway. But beyond that, what is it teaching our kids? You can’t read a book without Mommy watching. Don’t hang yourself with the cord on your play telephone. You have to wear a bathing suit that covers your entire body to avoid sun exposure. It goes on and on. Before they can even talk, our kids are inundated with worry.
Yet, I don’t feel Eian with Lexan baby bottles. I try to buy organic food. I check his toys for lead recalls. I was a back-to-sleep Nazi. Our culture tells us that neglecting parenting advice like this is tantamount to leaving your child by the roadside. I struggle every day with finding the right level of protectiveness.
I can’t even read those magazines. It’s almost like they commercialize motherhood and capitalize on our insecurities. When you think about it, there’s no end to the things we could do to protect our chidlren, but as we begin to do those things, their world becomes smaller and smaller. I vote for the common-sense approach to motherhood – if it’s working for you, stick with it and let the parental magazines do the worrying when their sales decline.
Yeah, I don’t want to knock those magazines, though. I do love them – just not so much the anxiety-producing articles. I think I’m learning to pick and choose the things I want to panic about. My child getting weird chemicals through his bottle? Yes. My child getting poked in the eye with a book. Heck no! Sometimes you get poked in the eye. That’s life.