The Best and Worst of 2008
The year in parenting, from Sarah Palin to Suri Cruise.
by Babble Editors
December 15, 2008
As a parent, it's easy to feel cut off from the world outside your kids — but not in 2008, when parenting issues took center stage in news, politics, and entertainment. Whether we were crushing on the Obamas, arguing about homeschooling and home birth, obsessing over Bristol Palin's pregnancy or cheering the moms of the Olympics, 2008 gave us a lot to talk about at Babble. Here are the 52 events, movies, videos, trends, products, baby names that shaped our year in parenting, for better or for worse. — The Babble Editors
Irrationality-inducing parent of the year: Sarah Palin
Is she a saintlike role model for working mothers, a privileged, book-banning control freak, or a pregnancy-faking, cue-card-reading huckster? Probably none of the above, but try telling that to anybody during the last couple months of the U.S. election. While Obama urged us to stick to the issues, Sarah Palin drove the electorate into a frenzy of half-truths and hearsay — and no one took her candidacy more personally than the mothers of America.
Controversial parenting topic of the year: Unschooling
In this era of pressure-cooker schools and No Child Left Behind budget cuts, alternative schooling (either homeschooling or "unschooling") has become an increasingly popular option. Unfortunately, the lack of clear guidelines for homeschooling parents means that kids who miss out on school could miss out on a lot more. Then again, isn't the world outside the ultimate classroom? Nearly 300 parents hotly debated the issue in the comments section of Babble's "Bad Parent: Unschooling" Essay, which then got name-checked in the New York Times.
Emerging hot topic of the year: Home birth
We haven't heard the last about home birth, a possibly-unsafe, sometimes-illegal, sometimes-better-than-the hospital practice the American Medical Association condemned earlier this year.
Parenting topic that still won't go away: Childhood Obesity
The CDC wants to have childhood obesity wiped out as part of its Healthy People 2010 program. Kids are still fat, and there's only one year to go. Better hit the treadmill.
Most over-hyped parenting story of the year: the birth of the Brangelina twins
You'd have thought that no woman had ever given birth before. Or that Angelina had somehow finessed a virgin conception, which, come to think of it, might possibly have made it a less interesting story, seeing as the whole sex-with-Brad-Pitt angle seems to have had much to do with the hype. In any case, this story amounted to a big fat whatever. Celebrity couple produces offspring? That's cool and all — and the babies were cute — but really, they were just babies. Now, if she had given birth to divine beings, or, perhaps, to unicorns, that might have justified the hype. Otherwise: meh.
Viral video of the year: "Once Upon a Time..."
Darling French tot Capucine enchanted English speakers this year with her elaborate improvised story about Winnie the Pooh, a baby-eating crocodile, a hippo who is allergic to magic, an ill-fated trip to heaven, a witch-killing ring, a plague of "chicken-box" and a "tremendously bad" mammoth.
Once upon a time... from Capucha on Vimeo.
©2008 Babble
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