My cousins son, who is a polite, bright kid, turned 6 last week.
His mother, who is usually sensable and level headed, is acting like his birthday is the second coming of Christ. It’s absurd. First she has this huge, lavish party for him inviting 1,000,006 of his school mates. Then, 2 days later, she has a huge party for him and every relative they have.
THEN, 3 days later she has another party for him at 6 Flags. My family of course was invited to all this horse shit. This nonesense is getting expensive. But then, she tells me that for his birthday she told him I’d give him a ride on my Harley!:mad:I never said I would do that! I don’t want to do that! He’s still too little for that! She had no right promising him that!
I don’t know why she’s going on a week long nut case over his birthday. She’s not usually this damn goofy.
But I see this alot with other parents too. They can’t just have a simple little party for the kid, they have to act like he’s the king of the world and lavish him with worship.
I never did any of this with my kids. Are people fucking nuts?
A two-word:one-word explanation: Placenta-Brain. A foul disease wherein everyone is expected to bow down to the great miracle. Feh, give me a real miracle anyday…
Yes.
I never got dragged into the “My little darling is having a party, and it’s bigger than your party!” thing. It’s a heap of shite and annoys the hell out of me. My two have cake, some sweets and maybe a friend round, that’s it, that’s enough, they aint spoilt, and guess what? They APPRECIATE it!
Middle-aged suburban house-wives don’t have a whole lot else to do. I have little brothers and I know their friend’s parents. A lot of the moms spend most of their time fussing over their kids so that THEY can show THEY care about their kid the most. It’s a big competition and the kids are, of course, the victims.
But did they always appreciate it? I mean not to call you a liar, but I can’t see a 6 year old saying “You know what mommy? I’m really glad I didn’t have a big fun party like Jimmy did. I wouldn’t want to be spoiled like that.”
Uh yeah I get you point Kaje, I think. I never said they enjoyed their parties more, I said they appreciated what they did have. And the fact that you see their eyes light up when they have their own little thing well <shrug> you just have to assume that yes they do in fact appreciate it.
I’m one of those “Middle-aged suburban house-wives”, and let me tell you, you have no clue about the time, effort, and work it takes to successfully raise children and maintain a household.
I’m now a full-time student as well as being a house-wife, but for 10 years, I made raising my children my full-time job, and I did it (and still do it), damn well, thank you very much.
No, I don’t throw the lavish parties you are talking about, mostly because as an enlisted military family, we can’t afford it, but yeah, I do put effort into making my kids birthdays creative and fun. And you know what? I don’t do it because I’m in some sort of “competition”, I do it because I love my kids, and I love to see them having fun. Is that concept too hard for you to get, so that you have to instead subscribe such vapid and selfish motives to any mother that tries to make their child’s day special?
Grow up, have some kids yourself, then come tell me how much spare time I have, and what my reasons are for raising my kids the way I do.
My daughter will turn 16 in September… should I not rent the Gator Bowl for the extravaganza?? No fly-over by the Blue Angels?? You think hiring half a dozen boy-bands is a bit over the top??
OK, that was sarcasm. I’ve never bowed to the pressure to have her b-days “done” somewhere - no ice rinks, no Chuck E Cheezey, no clowns, no moon walk. Among her favorite parties were “Decorate-a-Hat” - I bought big straw hats for all the girls, and they decorated them with feathers, gems, felt, glitter, lace - and the sleep-over party where I got all the girls plain white T-shirts and a pile of iron-on crayons to make their own designs - keep 'em entertained and send them home with a special party favor. We’ve had make-your-own-pizza parties or make your own sundaes. I always bake her whatever kind of cake she wants.
Oh yeah - and we’ve never had more than 6 friends in attendance. Not all of us go nuts for ours kids - even the kids who are obviously superior to all others… As for those who do - whatever. I feel no pressure to conform or compete. Then again, that’s just me.
Perhaps there is a historical parallel that can be viewed as well. Many times I have read (no cites handy, I apologize) that in late Victorian times, with the rise of an English Middle to Upper-Middle class, children took on a whole new importance to the family. Children were almost worshipped, and had many extravagances bestowed upon them. Even on the Antiques Roadshow they will go to lengths to point out how much more ornate and fancy children’s toys, dress, and furnishings are - relative to the eras preceeding and following the 1880-1900 time frame.
I have read that the Middle Class/Upper-Middle Class then had a problem with a decline in religious faith and belief systems, and the children filled a spiritual hole in a proxy sense. I don’t know if any of that is at play in modern day.
I can say that the phenomenon of a sort of “baby madness” does exist in my city and my workplace, and it is very pervasive and widespread. It does appear, anecdotally speaking, that after about age 10-12 the children cease being worshipped so - as the first stirrings of puberty come about, most likely.
In my family we kinda let the kid plan the party. Not the nitty gritty work angle, but picking out what happens is part of the special day.
Parties have ranged from turning the yard into a carnival and inviting the neighbourhood (I was six.) to a nice dinner with family and one friend at Outback steakhouse and a Mickey cake at home. (Becca turned 11. She likes steak.)
The pattern so far with the three of us has been we want one big thingmy, and then we decide we like a smaller, gentler get together. I didn’t even want to go out for dinner this year. I wanted my family and a friend and then went to a movie. It was fine and just what I wanted to have happen.
First off I’ll appologize. I really did mean to add something to the beginning to the tune of “most” or “many”, but in the midst of editting and chopping up sentences that I was changing I messed that up. And in light of your post, perhaps I should limit it further to “many middle-aged house-wifes with rich husbands who live in semi-posh suburbia with subconscious competative urges…which does not include Lucretia”
However, with that teensy change the rest stands… I can’t begin to count how many of my brothers’ friends’ moms came to me through my high school years to “help” their kids with science projects. What this ammounted to was a month or so every year of moms calling me up to give them a topic, do background research, design the experiment, and then once the kid had taken his picture with enough apparatus, analyze the results and try to explain them to the mom (which was often harder than explaining them to the kid). Now I understand that a lot of moms don’t have much time to do these things, but it’s not their science project. Their kid does not have to win the science fair at the behest of learning a god-damn thing for themselves. In my elementary school days my dad worked long hours and when my mom wasn’t working she was taking care of infants (two siblings 2 years apart) so did my mom demand that I win and call up some hapless high school kid to do my project for me? No. I did my projects with my teachers. And guess what? They taught! I learned the scientific method, I learned how to do background research (though this was limited mainly to encyclopedias and a very small set of readable books), I learned how to control variables, I LEARNED SCIENCE. I never did win a science fair, but I guaruntee I learned more about science than any of the kids who did because they didn’t DO their projects (and yes, I did know these kids, they were my friends, and I know for a fact that they didn’t do jack shit).
[/rant]
I’m a group of social acquaintances who all started families about the same time, and we’ve all been there for the big milestones, including birthdays (our kids are all toddlers now). Some of them are party-throwers, and some aren’t. None of them are bored middle-aged housewives, I will point out, but I think that angle has been addressed.
I think it has to do with your sense of how one celebrates. Some people think all occasions are for everyone to take joy in. My friend Kay had an engagement party, a bachelorette party, several wedding showers, a huge wedding, a birthday party every year for her and her husband’s birthday, a christening party, and a party for each of her daughter’s birthdays. All with pretty extensive guest lists. It’s just how she is.
I celebrated all those things as privately as possible. For example, I wouldn’t let her throw me a wedding shower, we had a small wedding, our son’s baptism was a family-only event, we didn’t have a first-year birthday party. It’s just how we are. Not better than her, just real different.
The thing that gets to me, however–and what makes me say “PREACH ON BABY” to the OP–is that some people don’t seem to get that your emotional investment in their celebration isn’t the same as theirs. Yes, I’m happy for you, but no, I didn’t bring my video camera to your event. And I don’t need a reception favor with your wedding date on it. And I’m not getting your kid a bike for his birthday. AND DON’T TAKE OFFENSE AT THIS!
Nope. I’m too busy getting my head around a parent who would ask another student to do their children’s work. And a student stupid enough or venial enough to do it. Did they pay you?
And stop with the bloody insults to middle-aged women with children. It might seem ever so clever and smart to say that the students grasped it better than the mothers but somehow I truly doubt it. Ah no! Of course! Anyone getting you to design a science fair project probably wasn’t all that smart to begin with
Amen. Furthermore, your finacial investment is also not the same. As the OP pointed out, these things can get expensive quickly. One of the main reasons I ran off and got married in a courthouse is that I can’t help but feel in my heart that hosting any event where gifts are expected is just horribly, unforgivably tacky. I know in my head that this is not true–weddings and wedding gifts are a pretty well established tradition, and as long as you don’t have one more than two or three times a decade, it isn’t tacky–I can’t make myself comfortable with the idea. And if I can’t throw a wedding, lord knows I can’t imagine throwing a birthday party.
In general I dislike gift-giving. I don’t mind the concept, per se, but I hate the way we have a whole catogory of products out there that are even the designers never thought that anyone would ever buy them because they themselves wanted them. They are things you would only buy as gifts. Golf accessories are a good example of this. Novelty Monopoly games are another. Humourous stuffed animals that hang over the sofa arm and theorectically hold Daddy’s remote. Bath sets, as opposed to bath products. Advertisers have done a good job of convinceing us that loving someone = giving them something, anything, whether or not they want it. Every X-mas I see poeple go into serious debt to by Kitch for other poeple who don’t even want it.
This brings us to the other reason why these celebration-happy people always irritate me. Some–perhaps most–certainly understand that it takes all types and that no way is “right” or “best.” However, I have met people over the years who, when it came up that I don’t really celebrate anything, reacted as if I must be some sort of emotionless android, as if not celebrating my anniversary by going to Vegas means that I don’t really love my husband, or that if my family dosen’t do Xmas presents we must be disfunctional, or that that was the equivalent of child abuse.
Nope I was never paid. And its not that I minded doing it either. I like science. I mainly did it because my mom saw it as a “little favor”, though she never knew the full extent of what I did.
Perhaps you would prefer my more limitting change to the subject of my rant as seen at hte beginning of my last post. Nothing about what I said was an exaggeration or meant to be clever at the expense of accuracy. These mothers were just like that, completely oblivious. Another example I might add is one of the same mothers for whom I did science fair projects. Her son has one of the worst lisps out of any kids I know that age. One time she was talking to my mom about how bad the spanish program was at the montessorri (sp?) school. She complained that “those spanish words” are just too hard and they weren’t teaching her son how to prounounce them. My mom asked if she’d ever taken her son to a speech therapist. The mom instantly went off blabbing about how its not her son and there’s nothing wrong with her son its just those damn spanish words! Now in this example, not only is the mom wearing her ignorance like a shiny new broach, but its directly harming her son. Because she won’t admit that he has a speech impediment, he’ll grow up lisping and being made of for a long time to come (He’s kinda a pushover, too, but still a good kid). Later found out that early in elementary school the school speech therapist had contacted the mother to receive the same welcome my mother had.
I might add that this same mother has not had a job since her son was born, WHICH IS FINE, but don’t tell me she has no time. This is her only kid, they have a live-in maid that does all the cleaning and cooking. And this is the case for the vast majority of the parents I was discussing in this and previous posts.
So in conclusion, my statements do not apply to all middle-aged housewives, but a significant portion of my sample there (which has been previously described), I am not exaggerating about the comprehension levels of the mothers and their sons, and I was not paid.
oh well kaje I guess I can just sit back and watch you do it all perfectly when you breed
Amazing how expert people are before they have kids isn’t it?
WRT the speech therapy issue - when my son desperately needed ST I was the last person to realise. I can/could understand him perfectly. He just sounded normal to me. In the end he did/does see a ST but I guess given enough malice or judgmental attitude around me, people could construe my inaction on his speech impediment to be either dumb or uncaring. Another issue is that you do not have full knowledge of what that mother did. With my younger son I’ve seen three speech therapists. One recommended teaching him sign language. One said there was nothing wrong. The other one said there was a lot wrong but there was nothing to be done about it. I’m currently seeking another referral. Not taking up services can actually sometimes mean the complete opposite of what you are taking from that situation.
Kaje, for most of life I was raised in households with income in the top 5% of the population. I was raised comfortably upper middle class. In all that time I have never, ever, ever met, let alone gone to school with, anyone who had a live in maid. I suspect that fewer than 1% of 1% of the people in America can afford to even live in the same school district as people that can afford live-in help. May I humblely suggest that you will never have any sucess extrapolating observations about this bizarre minority onto the rest of “mainstream” America (which in itself is sort of a myth anyway). I really think that the life of the live-in maid crowd has as little to do with most of us as does the life of migrant workers in California. It is totally outside our ken.
