Outsourcing parenting?

I just read a very scary article in everyone’s favorite doctor’s office read, People Magazine. The piece, by Brooke Slezak (sounds like sleazy, right!?) reports on the new phenomenon of parents outsourcing such onerous and stressful tasks as cupcake baking and potty training and dressing a child. I can understand some parents using the bike riding coach – I mean, if you are a complete and total klutz, with no bike riding skills whatsoever and may actually injure your precious pumpkin while running along next to his training wheeled Huffy, well, then, call the $60 an hour bike coach, if you have the cash to burn.

I can see how Stop and Shop’s on-line Pea Pod shopping and delivery service can be useful, sometimes with a baby, you just can't get out of the house. But what can one do if one needs someone to do the shopping, and get the dry cleaning and stop by the playground for a little quality time on the swing set with the kids? Well, you are in luck! For $15 an hour or so, Mother’s Hen Helpers can help you out, and perform these chores for you! How about helping your little girl get dressed, including a fashion and color consultation? $200 an hour gets your budding fashionista well on her way to looking like a page out of Toddler Vogue. Are your children ill mannered, messy eaters and poor conversationalists? Another $200 on hour can hire the help of an in-home etiquette specialist, guaranteed to get those elbows off the table in time for Mommy to come home from the spa, clap her French manicured hands together and say, “Oh my, Arizona Lee! You are doing so well!”

No time to make cupcakes for the class birthday party? Too ashamed to just go BUY something? Well, while Mommy and Daddy are just too busy at work/at the gym/at the spa/on vacation/meeting the Prime Minister, there are personal chefs ($80 an hour) who will do the time consuming cupcake baking for you. If you want little Whittaker the Fourth to learn how to make the cupcakes at the same time, for an extra fee, the chef will be sure to let him lick the beater blades. Just sign on the dotted line.

Ha ha, very funny, right? I was kind of horrified to see this was for real. The article also included contact numbers for experts to help you get those photos in an album, professionals to pack away out-grown clothes, coaches to wean a child from thumb sucking, a concierge to help your child with a school project, someone to sew on scout badges (!) and another to wrap gifts for parties. What the F**k? Where are the parents? What the hell are they doing with their lives? Who is too busy to wrap a gift or dress a child or go to the market and grab a box of Entenmanns’s frosted cupcakes for a school birthday party?

One of the mothers interviewed had hired the bike coach and admitted, “with a twinge of sadness, “It’s like watching her take her first step…I would have liked to be there.”” She said it with a sort of – oh, poor me, what else could I do? feeling. Well, for heaven’s sake, do what the rest of us do, lady. Do what you can during the day, do a bit more while the children sleep and then stay up late and get MORE done once your heir and spare are sleeping.

Just how much time and energy should a parent put into the active raising of your child? Well, as much as you have the time and inclination to, I think. I know there are some who must needs work two jobs and use a day care or a nanny. I also know there are those who feel the need to home school and be with their offspring as much as humanly possible. I like to think balance is the key. I am all for a bit of parental control as far as schedules and furniture arranging goes. What I mean is; I will try and keep my boys up a bit past nap time if I need to run an errand and I will give them a bath a bit early if we have a dinner out or something. I won't drag them, kicking and screaming, through a store, but I will give them a snack if it helps keep them awake when I need them to be. Their schedule is more of a routine and I have it so it fits in with what I would like to do. Like blogging and shopping and cooking and cleaning. By furniture placement, I mean I have a dining room that is used as a dining room/computer room and a bedroom for the DH and me that looks like a grown up bedroom. On the other hand, the TV room has an Ikea sorter full of toys and one bookcase with some toys and some board books for them to play with on the shelves. I don’t like to have 5 bins of things in every room; there is nothing wrong with that, if you like it and want it to be so, fine. I am a bit OCD and it would drive me mad. Thus, in my house, unless you are in the kitchen, the TV room or the boys’ bedroom, you might not know I had two children at all. Unless the 10,000 pictures give it away.

I unintentionally practice that Patient Parenting Style Preacher Mom mentioned in a comment. I will let them play with water in the kitchen sink while I cook, or just keep on eye out as they careen around the house and I check emails. My DH and I will garden for hours and let them amuse themselves with weeds and sticks. I am not ignoring them, per se; I am letting them do their own thing.

However, my DH and I are the end all and be all of our children’s lives, and we do everything for them. I take them to two playgroups, to at least one museum and out grocery shopping weekly, we have a weekly music class together and, on his own, the DH gives them a bath almost every night and does bedtime, three times a week on average. I cannot imagine hiring a professional to bathe my twinkies and get them to bed!

I wonder what kind of psycho-perfectionists we Americans are becoming to have it seem normal to hire an expert to potty train your toddler. We are at the 23-month mark, and the potty is going to be a part of our lives very soon, I feel. I am going to try and gently guide my boys when it comes to potty training time, and rely on my own non-expert knowledge of my own inexpert children. If I run into trouble, as an unprofessional potty trainer, well, we’ll wait a bit and try again. If that doesn’t work I’ll turn to the unlicensed experts I have turned to with all my other parenting questions - my sister and my friends. All are interesting, kind, full of useful information, good conversationalists, and no-one, fortunately, charges me a dime.