Couple of Parent-Centric Columns: Lessons from 2011's TV Parents & Why Moms Should Run for Office

Lessons from 2011's TV Parents

It's been quite the year for parents on the small screen.

We've been entertained by the hijinks of the Modern Family's Claire & Phil Dunphy and their bedroom door that should've had a lock on it before their kids surprised them at inopportune moment.

We've seen Parenthood's Adam and Kristina Braverman try and fail to ban their teen daughter from dating an older man who had his own apartment.

We witnessed The Middle's Frankie and Mike Heck declare themselves to be free from their children's unreasonable demands which reduced them to little more than unpaid, disrespected servants (although the self-declared freedom was short-lived).

We laughed as Up All Night's new parents, Chris and Reagan Brinkley, tried in vain to prove that they're hip and cool and able to party it up on weeknights, even though their baby isn't sleeping through the night yet, they're sleep deprived and Reagan needed to work in the morning.

My recent Pop Culture and Politics column details these child-rearing lessons that I gleaned from watching TV parents during 2011.

Why Moms Should Run for Office

In another recent Pop Culture and Politics column I extended an invitation to women who are raising the next generation to run for public office because, all too often, women's voices are not heard or represented in our elected bodies.

The advocacy group She Should Run offered up this dour data on the state of women in American politics:

• "Women hold only 17 percent of the seats in Congress."
• "State legislatures only have 23 percent women."
• "Only 6 out of 50 states have a female governor."
• "The United States trails behind the rest of the world -- ranking 87th in the number of women in our national legislature."
• ". . . [W]omen are 50 percent less likely than men to seriously consider running for office, less likely than men to actually run for office and far less likely to run for higher office."

As one of the founders of The White House Project (whose goals include electing a female commander in chief) said in the powerful documentary Miss Representation, when it comes to our daughters, "You can't be what you can't see."

Image credit: She Should Run.

Three for Thursday: A Disheartening Week of News . . . Then a Few Laughs for Good Measure

Item #1: Horrors at Penn State

I cannot, for the life of me, understand how no one alerted the police after two people witnessed a member of the Penn State football coaching staff, Jerry Sandusky, on separate occasions, according to a grand jury report, allegedly molest/rape young boys. The man who was accused of committing these crimes was allowed to continue to have an affiliation with Penn State. Why did no one put a stop to this man’s alleged serial child molestation by reporting him to the cops?

I also cannot understand how a 28-year-old man, Mike McQueary, could allegedly see a grown man raping a young boy and then just walk away, instead of rushing to protect the child or, at the very least, immediately summoning the police as the crime was still in progress. This does not compute with me. At all.

I further cannot understand how students from Penn State, upon learning about the firing of head football coach Joe Paterno, Sandusky’s boss -- who a grand jury said was told by McQueary about the alleged rape of a child at the hands of his subordinate, but didn’t call police – took to the streets to protest and riot, not the molestation or rape, but Paterno's sacking. I want to go up to each one of those students and make them read the horrific grand jury report about how the Penn State football program and Penn State officials allegedly seemed to care more about themselves and keeping things under wraps – like the Catholic church did with its pedophile priests who preyed upon vulnerable children – than about children. Some of the alleged victims are now the same age as the college students who were doing the protesting. Which is more important in the long run, the Penn State football program or stopping a serial pedophile?

Some provocative columns on this subject:

Buzz Bissinger’s “Good Riddance, Joe Paterno” in The Daily Beast:

“I think the answer to the question of inaction is simple. It wasn’t a matter of university officials and football staffers in Happy Valley not wanting to deal with it (which they didn’t), or not following up (which they didn’t), or having better things to do like attending Friday-night football pep rallies. There is no great conspiracy theory at work.


. . . What happened, or more accurately did not happen, goes to the core of evil that major college sports programs in this country have become, equivalent to Mafia families in which the code of omerta rules and coaches and staff always close ranks around their own, even if it means letting someone who was first accused of inappropriate sexual conduct in 1998 continue to roam.”

Amy Davidson’s “Joe Paterno’s Tears" in the New Yorker:

In commenting on the debate over whether Paterno had been “robbed of his dignity” because of the way in which he was fired from his job (on the phone), Davidson asked:

"But what was the understanding of dignity that any of the adults in this situation had? It didn’t extend to even trying to find out the name of the child who Mike McQueary, a coaching assistant, said that he saw Sandusky rape in the football locker room shower in 2002 . . . That boy is simply called Victim 2 in the grand jury’s findings; McQueary guessed that he was about 10 years old. McQueary told Paterno; Paterno told the athletic director, who brought in a university vice president. And then Sandusky lost his locker room keys – but nothing else.


McQueary, who for now still works at Penn State . . . told the grand jury that he ‘noticed that both Victim 2 and Sandusky saw him.’ What did the boy think when he saw him walk away, and of the silence that followed? What did it say to him about his own dignity?”

Amy Wilson’s “What If a Mother Had Been in That Locker Room?” in the Huffington Post:

“I believe, a mother in that locker room would not have witnessed that act and walked away. A mother would have not left without that child. A mother would have asked him his name.”

Item #2: Allegations of Harassment on the Campaign Trail & in Middle, High Schools

While we were treated to saturation news coverage this week about allegations that GOP hopeful Herman Cain sexually harassed multiple women (and I got to explain what "sexual harassment" is to my kids), a depressing new report was released by the American Association of University Women which found that “sexual harassment pervades the lives of students in grades 7-12.” That's kids from middle through high school. Female students, the organization said, were “more likely than boys to say sexual harassment caused them to have trouble sleeping” and “not wanting to go to school.”

And in the current context of adult women being pilloried, called a variety of horrible names and having their motivations questioned after they dared to accuse Cain of sexual harassment (I've heard talk show hosts mock at least one accuser's appearance and body), girls in middle and high school are observing what happens to women who complain about harassment. And it's going to make a lasting impression.

Item #3: Two Shows to Make You Laugh

In the wake of all of that severely depressing news, I know that I was in sore need of a laugh, how 'bout you? And NBC’s Up All Night did the trick with its latest episode about new parents, Reagan and Chris Brinkley (Christina Applegate and Will Arnett), fretting about leaving their daughter overnight with a babysitter for the first time. The show was right on the money, sarcastic and touching and funny. (See my review of the episode here.)
Watching the episode brought me back to the first time I left The Eldest Boy and The Girl with a babysitter. When the twins were a little more than two months old, The Spouse and I left them with “Sporty Spice” (aka, my husband’s younger sister who was already dressed up for a Halloween costume party she’d be attending later in the night). The Spouse and I literally wolfed down a meal at a nice restaurant and were back at the house in under two hours because, well, because we felt as though we HAD to be back. You can watch the Up All Night version of this story online at the NBC web site.
Also worth checking out for a laugh, the recent episode of The Middle, where a confused elderly aunt gave the two younger kids her cell phone and they started abusing it by sending out a bazillion texts, while their mother Frankie tried to be the “best” mother she could be . . . and no one really noticed. You can also watch this episode online at the ABC site.

Mother's Day E-Greetings from 'Modern Family's' Claire Dunphy

As I eagerly anticipate the new episodes of both The Middle and Modern Family, as they will be Mother's Day themed (And what's Mother's Day if not an awesome opportunity to bring massive disappointment, chaos and burnt toast to mothers everywhere?), I learned that Modern Family's Facebook page is affording fans the opportunity to send personalized e-cards.

I pretended as though the Picket Fence Post kids were sending me an e-card featuring Claire Dunphy there were pre-written greetings from which you could choose.

(There are also e-cards featuring Gloria and Cam.)

Three for Thursday: The Pop Culture Edition: 'The Middle,' 'Modern Family' & 'Parenthood'

Image credit: ABC

The Middle: Don’t Cave on the Punishment

The latest episode of The Middle sparked all kinds of debate in the Picket Fence Post house about how far The Spouse and I would go to make a point and stand our ground when we punish a kid in the hopes of teaching him or her a lesson.

In The Middle’s fictional Heck family, the obnoxious, clueless teenage son Axl would not stop leaving his dirty socks all over the house. This habit was driving his father Mike absolutely insane. After repeatedly asking Axl to refrain from abandoning his socks, Axl continued with his slovenly ways until Mike threw down the gauntlet: If Mike found one more dirty sock lying around the house, he’d punish him, big time, take away something Axl cares about.

That next time occurred shortly thereafter. Mike was highly frustrated and, when Axl got all snarky and challenged Mike to take away whatever he wanted, Mike told him he couldn’t play in his final basketball game of the season . . . a move Mike immediately regretted and which his wife Frankie, behind closed doors, said she thought was idiotic. (She said she would’ve taken away use of the car, his iPod, his cell phone or TV before going to the extreme of taking away a kid’s season ending hoop game.)

And when Mike and Frankie learned that Axl was on the cusp of breaking his father’s high school record for the most free throws in a single season, they started actively looking for ways to try to back off the punishment without looking like they were backing off. They, in essence, caved.

The Spouse and I agreed that had one of us hastily punished a kid without realizing that he or she was on the verge of breaking a record, we’d likely offer the kid a choice: Miss the game OR lose the car/iPod/cell phone. However if it wasn’t the last game, too freakin’ bad. Next time, pick up your damned socks kid.



Modern Family’s 'We Love the Word'

Modern Family was so fun this week. I really needed the laughter it gave me like a little gift I didn't know I needed.

From Phil Dunphy’s ill-advised minivan shrink-wrap scheme to promote his real estate business – which would up making the family minivan look like a giant ad for an escort service with Claire and Haley serving as Phil’s escorts – to Cameron’s over-the-top middle school musical direction, I was thoroughly entertained.

As the end of the season draws near, I’m already starting to feel Modern Family withdrawal symptoms.

Image credit: NBC

Parenthood: Dealing with Teens is a Massive Emotional Challenge

Boy was NBC’s Parenthood a tough watch this week, leading up to the season finale next Tuesday.

There was the distinctly uncomfortable scenario of parents learning that their 16-year-old was having sex with her boyfriend. Sure, the mom, Kristina Braverman, had come right out and asked her daughter Haddie if she and her boyfriend were having sex, so when the girl eventually told her they were, Kristina should’ve had some kind of plan about what she’d do with that information. Instead, Kristina, who first had sex at age 15, looked baffled and uncertain as to what she was supposed to do next. Her husband Adam was horrified, wouldn’t even look at Haddie and had a great deal of trouble dealing with the contrast of him seeing her as a little girl and seeing Haddie as a young woman who was discovering her sexuality. (I covered this in more detail in my episode review.) The subject of teenage sex was dealt with in such a realistic fashion that The Spouse was definitely squirming in his seat.

Then there was the sadness surrounding the whip-smart and edgy Amber, the high school senior who plunged into a downward spiral when she learned that she didn’t get into either of the colleges to which she applied. She started doing drugs, drinking and engaging in reckless behavior, including showing up at a restaurant to meet her mother for dinner while high and dressed bizarrely.

It just breaks your heart as a parent to watch a child endure emotional pain and watch her mother Sarah struggle with how to help her child guide through this wrenchingly difficult time.

The entire episode made me admire parents of teens – which I’ll become at the end of the summer – all the more for the challenges with which they must deal and still attempt to retain their sanity.

Image credits: Eric McCandless/ABC and NBC.

Three for Thursday: Controversy Over 'Chinese Mothering,' Teens on TV & 'The Middle's' Little Brick

Image credit: Wall Street Journal

Item #1: Controversy Over ‘Chinese Mothering’

Amy Chua wrote a book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. It’s about how she started off her life as a mother of two girls as a very strict, “traditional Chinese” mother, like her parents before her. By the end of the book – in which Chua says she gets her “comeuppance” – Chua says she realized she wanted to “retreat . . . from the strict immigrant model” of raising her daughters, according to an interview she gave to the Wall Street Journal.

However the Wall Street Journal ran an excerpt of the first part of Chua’s book, when Chua was describing being fully bought into the strict, no messin’ around style of parenting that believes that children are strong and need to be pushed, not coddled or allowed to choose the direction of their lives. Outside of the context of the whole book -- and without knowing that Chua says she’s “not exactly the same person at the end of the book” -- Chua seems extremely domineering. Combine that excerpt with the headline (which Chua didn’t chose) “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” and you'll see why folks went nuts on the internet, calling Chua every variation on "Mommy Dearest" which they could come up with. Here are some excerpts which’ll give you a sense of why people were outraged by what ran in the Journal:

“Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.”

Then there was the anecdote about Chua's then-7-year-old who was having trouble with a piano piece and, after the girl and her mom worked on it “nonstop for a week” and the daughter wanted to give up, Chua ordered her back to the piano:

“Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu’s dollhouse to the car and told her I’d donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn’t have ‘The Little White Donkey’ perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, ‘I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?’ I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn’t do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.”

Three for Thursday: 'Soccer Mommed' Spoof, 'The Middle' Parents Revolt & I Won't Watch Dead/Dying Kid Fare

Item #1: 'Soccer Mommed' Spoof

Jen Singer, of MommaSaid, has created a fabulous send-up video lampooning how super-involved and nutty the world of youth soccer has become. In the video, a mother of a 9-year-old boy wants to sign him up for soccer and another woman, whose son has been playing since pre-school, said it’s too late for the 9-year-old. When the first mom says she herself didn’t start playing soccer until she was 10 and played all the way through college, the second mom scoffed at that as representative of the “dark ages of youth soccer in America.”

My favorite part? When the first mom asks when practices are held and the second mom says matter-of-factly that they're on, “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.” Sundays are reserved for games, of course.

Item #2: The Middle Parents Try to Take Back Their Lives

The Spouse and I loved the latest episode of The Middle in which the parents of three, Frankie and Mike, decided to spark a revolution and “take back” their house from the tyranny of their children after Frankie had raced around to three different fast food restaurants to get a separate meal for each kid, blowing off the parents desires. And her kids still weren't satisfied and wanted her, who worked all day, to run back out to different places and buy them a few more items. The parents had been caving on everything the kids asked of them because they thought that’s what they needed to do to be good parents.

And even though, after taking a strong stand that adults are in charge, NOT the children, Frankie and Mike capitulated in the end to their offspring, I think it’s worth having a substantive discussion about how American parents SHOULD aggressively strive to strike a balance between spending time with their children and attending to their needs, with the fact that the kids should NOT rule the roost and be catered to as though the parents are indentured servants at the children's beck and call.

Item #3: I Won’t Watch Dead/Dying Kid-Centric Fare

With the voluminous critical acclaim which has been heaped upon the film Rabbit Hole and its star Nicole Kidman, you’d think that a pop culture buff like yours truly would’ve put the film on my shortlist to see either in the theater or on DVD.

But no. Hell no.

Why? The film focuses on the aftermath of the death of a married couple’s 4-year-old son in a car accident. Kidman plays the mom in mourning while Aaron Eckhart plays the haunted father, their marriage fraying under the emotional gravity of what has happened.

My Pop Culture column this week over on Mommy Tracked is about how I tend to avoid, if I can help it, watching TV shows or movies in which kids are gravely ill and/or die. Why? Because I’m already an intense worrier – I think of myself as an in-recovery helicopter/safety crazed parent – who doesn’t need to start obsessing over the varied ways in which harm could befall my three children, nor do I need to try to put myself in the place of a grieving parent because that would prove painful. As Liz Lemon might say, "I don't want to go to there."

Does that make me a wimp?

Three for Thursday: Ice Rink Part 47 Billion, Kids to the Polls, 'The Middle' . . . for a Much-Needed Laugh

Image credit: Amazon.com

Ice Rink, Part 47 Billion

Yes, we’re trying again.

To do this home ice rink thing.

(And yes, we know we're fools.)

For years, The Spouse and I have thought, “Gee, wouldn’t it be nice to have an ice rink in the backyard?” The Youngest Boy plays hockey and adores skating, while The Eldest Boy and The Girl have eagerly chimed in how much they’d love to skate at home. I’d even be willing to get myself a pair of skates if we had a rink at home.

The problem? All of our previous attempts have failed miserably. (We took a break from our annual humiliation last year.) I’ve chronicled our mishaps for years, much to The Spouse’s chagrin, including the time when we tried just flooding the yard with water and the time when we got the wrong kind of tarp resulting in the water draining out of the rink area and into the woods, where it frozen amid the trees. The Spouse is really sick of hearing about how we never got the ice rink thing off the ground.

But he’s back again for punishment this year, emboldened with a new tarp. I’m not sure what else he’s planning to use because I’ve been hesitant to bring the subject up. It's been a sore subject, though I suspect he was motivated by me saying that I was thinking of buying one of those ice rink kits and giving it to the kids for Christmas.

Anyone with a home ice rink, got any suggestions or advice before we embark upon this . . . again?

Kids to the Polls

We all made our family trek to the polls on Tuesday, the entirety of the Picket Fence Post family, minus Max the dog and the 400 pounds of Halloween candy that now lives with us. The Girl accompanied me to the voting booth. The Youngest Boy was with The Spouse, while The Eldest Boy moved back and forth between booths relaying questions to and from The Spouse and checking out for whom I was voting.

When we checked out, The Girl and The Eldest Boy were jostling over who would get to feed my ballot – a sheet of paper – into the voting machine. I was a bit concerned that they’d wrinkle it, thereby rendering my ballot invalid, so I started getting antsy, muttering under my breath that someone needed to let go, NOW. The Eldest Boy finally relinquished it so his sister could feed it into the machine.

The next day, however, when some of the folks whom The Youngest Boy hoped would win didn’t, I had to remind him that the concept of good sportsmanship applies to politics as well as sport.



The Middle . . . for a laugh

It’s been a fairly stressful couple of weeks here at the Picket Fence Post house. And I sorely needed a laugh last night. In a big way. And watching a new episode of The Middle did just the trick. I laughed out loud while watching it -- more so than I did with Modern Family, which was also funny, but not as much as The Middle.

The episode focused on the hilarious birth story of the youngest child in the family, Brick. It was not at all what I expected when the story was finally told. The tale involved lies, greed, rabid football fandom and idiocy.

Image credit: Amazon.com.

Me & The Mom from 'The Middle:' Trying to Get (And Stay) Organized for School

Image credit: ABC

While watching The Middle’s season premiere this week I felt as though I was a kindred spirit with the lead character, Frankie Heck, played by Patricia Heaton.

After a disastrous first day of school in the Heck household – everyone got up late, the grade-school-aged boy’s backpack still had a rotting sandwich from the previous school year inside, the kids (including the teen boy who was still in his boxers but was holding his clothes in his hand) missed the bus – Frankie vowed to change things when it came to school, “get in front" of the things they needed to do” for once in their lives.

The following morning, Frankie got up early and prepared a hot breakfast of bacon and eggs (which seriously confused her kids because she never does that), got and set an alarm for her teenage son so he could get himself up, bought her youngest a new backpack, baked a freezer full of brownies so she’d be prepared for a year’s worth of school bake sales, filled out all school paperwork immediately, dashed off a check for her daughter’s cross country team sweatshirt right away and met with her youngest son’s teacher on day three of school to give her a head’s up on his idiosyncratic behavior.

I’ve been trying to do a similar thing since the Picket Fence Post kids have returned to school. Thus far, I’ve filled out and returned every form immediately (or at least I’ve handed them to the kids, whether they’ve submitted them is anyone’s guess). I’ve grabbed my BlackBerry and the family calendar in our kitchen and recorded the dates and times for things like school picture day, curriculum nights and parental information nights so as to not inadvertently miss them. I’ve been writing the day’s events on our white board in the kitchen (next to the fridge and the family calendar) the evening beforehand after the kids are in bed so everyone can see what’s on the agenda and plan accordingly.

After a disastrous first day of school in the Heck household – everyone got up late, the grade-school-aged boy’s backpack still had a rotting sandwich from the previous school year inside, the kids (even the teen boy in boxers, holding his clothes in his hand) missed the bus – Frankie vowed to change things when it came to school, “get in front of them” for once.

The following morning, Frankie got up early and prepared a hot breakfast of bacon and eggs (which seriously confused her kids because she never does that), got and set an alarm for her teenage son so he could get himself up, bought her youngest a new backpack, baked a freezer full of brownies so she’d be prepared for a year’s worth of school bake sales, filled out all school paperwork immediately, dashed off a check for her daughter’s cross country team sweatshirt right away and met with her youngest son’s teacher on day three of school to give her a head’s up on his idiosyncratic behavior.

I’ve been trying to do a similar thing since the Picket Fence Post kids have returned to school. Thus far, I’ve filled out and returned every form immediately (or at least I’ve handed them to the kids, whether they’ve submitted them is anyone’s guess). I’ve grabbed my BlackBerry and the family calendar in our kitchen and recorded the dates and times for things like school picture day, curriculum nights and parental information nights so as to not inadvertently miss them. I’ve been writing the day’s events on our white board the evening beforehand after the kids are in bed so everyone can see what’s on the agenda and plan accordingly.

Then I went to two different back-to-school nights and learned that one kid had reading assignments he was already supposed to be doing at home but hadn’t been. Teachers referred to some textbooks that the students had been given, assuming that we parents knew all about them. (I know that my kids had to – and promptly did – put covers on their textbooks. The Spouse helped them turn paper grocery bags into book covers the night the books came home, but I personally didn’t had a chance to comb through all their books. I did peek at a social studies text though.)

The two boys are in their school bands but neither child can seem to remember exactly when they’re supposed to go to school early and when they’re supposed to bring their instruments to school. Given that The Youngest Boy has a giant xylophone in a rolling case, it’s kind of important to know when he’s expected to lug it there. Though I’m really big on getting the kids to be responsible for their own things and assignments – how will they learn if they don’t make mistakes? – I must admit I’ve sent e-mails to their band teachers attempting to clear the confusion so the kids don’t spring a “Hey mom you need to drive me to school!” announcement while I’m still in my PJs and they have to leave immediately.

For the fictional Frankie Heck on The Middle, her valiant attempts to “get in front” of all the school madness backfired, went kaflooey and she gave up. Hopefully, that won’t be my fate too. I’m still doggedly hanging on the illusion that I can keep on top of this school stuff. Then again, it’s only September.

Image credit: ABC.