You may have noticed, in the last few years, a proliferation of crafting, baking, clothing-making, all photographed to dreamy perfection in perfect light with a perfectly designed (and clean!) home as the backdrop.
Domestic perfection is in, and no one has been harder hit than moms.
No longer can a mother park the kid in front of a TV with some warmed-up frozen chicken fingers while she and her friends mix Manhattans. A kid’s dinner today should be local, organic, gluten-free, dairy-free and prepared to a photographic quality by a naturally beautiful mother.
No longer are kiddie parties an event of pizza and sheet cake. The trend is for moms to themselves bake and decorate an elaborate cake in cohesion with the party’s theme. Yes, kiddie birthday parties now have themes.
It’s all so twee and cute. The best part is that it all seems almost, possibly, within reach.
Thanks to social media and sharing, not only will the perfect homemaker show you her photos of little Penelope’s perfect “Frozen” birthday party, but also where to buy the milk in glass bottles with colored paper straws, where to get the printables for seating cards and how to painstakingly construct that life-sized Queen Elsa cake.
Heather Havrilesky had a piece in The New York Times a few days ago saying, Enough! “The current culture demands that every mother be all in, all the time.”
She went on: “There’s too much pressure, on parents in general and mothers in particular, to keep our kids away from corn syrup and bullies and industrially farmed beef while introducing them to chapter books and charcoal drawings and parasailing.”
Is it really the culture, though? Is it “society” that’s making us take up woodworking so we can repurpose an old bookcase into a fetching new dresser, or is it the deep human desire to keep up with the Joneses?
Or is it possible you are always Type A, and parenthood just gives you another outlet in which to try to overachieve?
It used to be coveting the new Mercedes in the Joneses’ garage, but now they’re on the Internet showing us the birdhouse they built using reclaimed wood and recycled wire and making us feel bad about ourselves in a whole new way.
Is it really the culture, though? … Or is it the deep human desire to keep up with the Joneses?
We want to be better than our parents; we want to give our kids more than we were given. There’s an instinct in every parent (we hope) to try to give our kids everything.
But “everything” doesn’t have to be living up to some picture-ready ideal you saw on the Web.
You’re not going to be Gwyneth Paltrow, creating kid-friendly meals out of quinoa and kale.
Actually, Gwyneth Paltrow wouldn’t be Gwyneth Paltrow without all the behind-the-scenes cooks, drivers, personal assistants, photographers and editors.
And real perfection happens when you aren’t looking.
On Saturday, I dragged my kids around from perfect background location to perfect background location to shoot pictures for our holiday card. But the best shot of the day came when they sat down to rest on a neighbor’s stoop. The neighbor still had little pumpkins out, the sunlight fell just right and they both had relaxed smiles.
We’re overthinking child-raising, perhaps to make up for past generations who underthought it.
Much of what our kids will remember will have nothing to do with whether their mac ’n’ cheese was organic and served on personalized plates made of glass you blew yourself.
Try your best; if cake-making is your forte, then sure — make the extravagant cake, take a photo and post it on Pinterest. But if it’s not, that’s OK, too.
Make sure your child’s life is fun and meaningful, instead of pretty and picturesque. Their memories will all have that perfect light you try so hard to achieve. No kid grows up feeling neglected because her mom couldn’t repurpose her school T-shirt into couture.
You can take the time that you would’ve spent getting frustrated at art projects that you don’t want to do, and use it sitting on a couch with your child under your arm reading his favorite book.
Or watching her favorite TV show. No one has to know.