Editor's Note: Exile in Grupville
Our take on the great Alternadad debate of '07.
by Ada Calhoun
January 30, 2007
Now on Babble: Lisa Carver's review of Alternadad and Neal Pollack's response.
Here's the backstory:
Last spring, when we at Nerve Media were just starting to put Babble together, a friend at New York magazine (where I used to work) called to ask me, then five months pregnant, if I wanted to be in a photo shoot for an article about urban parents. As I suspected New York's position would be that the subjects were in some way making fools of themselves and I had marathons of Law & Order to watch, I declined.
When the article in question came out, it featured pages of pictures of parents and pregnant people dressed in sneakers and hoodies, T-shirts and jeans. They were labeled "grups" — Adam Sternbergh's Star Trek-derived designation for parents who haven't grown up themselves. Other designations: "yupster (yuppie + hipster), yindie (yuppie + indie), and alterna-yuppie."
The article's argument: There's no more generation gap, because people in their forties like the same fashion and music as people in their twenties. Urban-dwelling people of procreating age who dress down at work and like indie music are a new kind of grown-up, one with some combination of too much money, fanatical musical taste and a disregard for authority.
The implication: much of this new generation of urban parents is vain, shallow and chGrup, yupster, yindie, alterna-yuppie . . . ildish — ill-equipped to provide their progeny with anything but an appreciation for Bloc Party, a collection of $34 Ramones onesies and a sure future as the most straight-laced 9-to-5ers since Alex P. Keaton.
In his quotes for the New York magazine story and in his new memoir, Alternadad, Neal Pollack has positioned himself the grup poster child. Pollack has bragged about his toddler son's High Fidelity-worthy musical taste (he likes the Hives). "There's no shame, when your kid's watching a show, and you don't like it, in telling him it sucks," Pollack told Sternbergh. "If you start telling him it sucks, maybe he might develop an aesthetic."
Babble's December 12th launch included nothing, we hope, snickering or posturing or alternative like Sternbergh's stereotype. Shalom Auslander did write about hating Maisy the Mouse, but for him the goal wasn't building an aesthetic; rather he hoped to preserve his son's sense of wonder and joy in spite of his own cynicism.
Kori Gardner, of the wonderful indie band Mates of State, writes Babble's travel column "Band on the Diaper Run" about how she and her husband / band mate, Jason, take their daughter on tour. Reference is made to encounters with, yes, Death Cab for Cutie, among others. You don't get hipper than that, but there's nothing arrogant about that utterly endearing column.
Also in Babble's first days: Walter Kirn wrote about his kids' fear of death. Jennifer Baumgardner wrote about doing everything wrong as a mother. Steven Johnson wrote about how the city opens up when you have a kid. Hardly a litany of adolescent whining. But, yes, Babble does uphold the grup stereotype in one way: Sternbergh writes, "Being a grup . . . is about reimagining adulthood as a period defined by promise, rather than compromise." It is true that our generation wants to live rich adult lives and to be good parents at the same time.
Babble has been equated with Alternadad repeatedly (in USA Today, for example). It makes sense: Generation X is having kids — here's the book about it; here's the magazine. We asked author and new parent Steve Almond, who does the Babble blog "Baby Daddy," to review Alternadad. He declined, citing conflict of interest.
©2007 Ada Calhoun andNerve Media
About the Author
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Babble editor-in-chief
Ada Calhoun is also a blogger for AOL News, a consulting editor at Nerve.com, and a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review. Her writing has appeared in New York magazine, Marie Claire, Salon.com and the anthology One of the Guys. |
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by Ada Calhoun
Most of us are neither wicked nor Julia Roberts.
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by Ada Calhoun
*sniffle sniffle*
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by Ada Calhoun
Our take on the great Alternadad debate of '07.
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