I know, I should just ignore David Brooks, especially when he does his grumpy old man routine. But his latest “kids these days” schtick is unusually misguided. (Sorry, no link, the column is behind the NYT content wall.) Yesterday, Brooks tackled the scourge of hipster parents, decrying the “Park Slope alternative Stepford Moms” who are “fascistically turning their children into miniature reproductions of their hipper-than-thou selves.” Their sins: Giving their kids pretentious names like Anouschka, making them listen to Radiohead, and dressing them in annoyingly precocious t-shirts. All because they “refuse to face that their days of chaotic, unscheduled moshing are over.” (Not to be confused with the orderly, scheduled kind.) This is serious stuff: “The hipster parent trend has been going on too long and it’s got to stop.”
I’m actually sympathetic to some of Brooks’ ranting. I’m a new, un-hip parent who wants my kid to be a sheltered, uncoordinated nerd like I was. I think it’s dumb to name your baby Kal-El (unless it’s a family name), give him a fauxhawk, and stick him in a Che onesie or a “Boob Man” t-shirt. But I’m not too worried that the progeny of young bobos are being turned into what Brooks calls “deceptive edginess badges”—whatever that means. The trappings of hipster parenting are pretty superficial. New parents are naturally self-absorbed, but behind the impulse to be a cool parent with a stylish kid lurk big questions about mortgages and mortality. I’m with Slate‘s Michael Agger (also an occasional contributor to Mother Jones), who concludes after reading Neil Pollack’s parenting memoir Alternadad, “The difference between an alternadad, a banker dad, and a soccer dad is ultimately aesthetic and pointless. Sure, Pollack is psyched when [his son] Eli develops a love of the Ramones and Spider-Man, but most of his book recounts his struggle to find what America used to offer easily: a solid house, a living wage, a decent public school.” Child rearing in the U.S. has always been faddish and consumeristic, but the bottom line hasn’t changed much: Parents—even the ones with tattoos—want what’s best for their kids. Brooks should put on some Dan Zanes and chill for a couple of years. By then, the hipsters will have gotten the hang of this post-adolescent parenting thing and will be buying minivans. Now that’s scary.
