Editor's Note: Exile in Grupville
Our take on the great Alternadad debate of '07.
by Ada Calhoun
January 30, 2007
We then asked Lisa Crystal Carver, the counter-culture icon, memoirist and mother of two — Wolf, twelve, and Sadie, four (together, they review DVDs for Babble) — to take a look.
Lisa read the book and, well, hated it. Last week, we ran her essay, "The Ironic Thing: Why I hate parenting memoirs like Alternadad," in which she says some harsh things about Neal Pollack, the writer and man (to be fair, he has conflated the two throughout his career), and some (we believe) profound things about our generation's efforts to write about parenting. For example:
"As a generation (X), what we know for sure is how to be sarcastic and irreverent. Parenthood is bigger than that. It inspires thankfulness, humility, rage, unfixable guilt over what we may be doing to our children, unfixable sorrow over what we now understand for sure was done to us when we were their age, wonder and a quiet sense of sacredneNeal and Lisa are like our very own Trump and Rosie.ss. These emotions are so foreign to us, it took me twelve years (that's how old my eldest is) to even realize that's what was happening. Figuring out how to translate these new feelings and outlooks into literature, and still keep it amusing and intriguing and true, will probably take me another twelve. In the meantime, how pathetic to try to use the tools of yesterday (irony, dirty words, random reference to sex and gross things) to try to tell the story of this new kind of relationship and life we find ourselves in."
The feedback board lit up, mostly with readers defending Pollack's book.
Neal, too, emailed us to express his displeasure. We said we'd be happy to offer him space to respond. He quickly crafted "The Ironic Thing II: In Defense of Alternadad." An excerpt:
"I think ironic humor is a perfectly acceptable mode of expression when it comes to describing parenthood. When the first thing you do in the morning is deal with the fact that your son has just pissed in his Barrel O'Monkeys, is there any other way to respond than with irony and humor? I'm sorry, but 'unfixable sorrow over what we now understand for sure was done to us when we were their age' doesn't apply here, and 'thankfulness' is also, certainly, out of the question. I'll give Carver a small dose of "rage," but as for a "quiet sense of sacredness," well, I've never been particularly quiet in any situation, and I don't hold very much sacred."
So there you have it: the great "alternaparent" debate of '07! Neal and Lisa are like our very own Trump and Rosie.
To play Barbara Walters for a second, I have to say, I think Lisa said something that really needed to be said: "It's not ironic to have children."
The irony label (like "grup") is dismissive and cheap. We in our twenties and thirties and forties having kids right now have plenty of issues, very few of which have to do with iTunes or Bugaboos: issues like the pressure to breastfeed, the quest for domestic happiness and the miseries of sleep-training. The rush to cry "hipster" undermines the opportunity to talk about what's thrilling and funny and lonely and scary about having kids. So let's get on that. Please leave your thoughts in feedback.
©2007 Ada Calhoun andNerve Media
About the Author
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Ada Calhoun was Babble's founding editor-in-chief. She has been a theater critic at New York magazine, an AOL News blogger and a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review. She has written for Time, Salon.com and The New York Times Arts & Leisure. Her first book, Instinctive Parenting, will be published by Simon Spotlight in 2010. Visit adacalhoun.com. |
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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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