So I've learned a few things about kids and life in the last few weeks.
Nanny Diaries (the book and not-so-bad movie starring Scarlett Johanson and the more fabulous Alicia Keys) is kind of true. IE overqualified young women shoved into childcare positions for lack of other options and the classicism that ensues.
Sure, you're caring for someone's kid, their most precious thing in the world (which is why they put them in someone else's hands for fifty hours a week). But a six-page contract detailing the rules of the game? Being the 23-year-old solely responsible party of a two-year-old's potty training venture? Grocery shopping, enrichment lessons and planning play dates?
Moms ONLY talk about being Moms. Good god. These are very educated women talking about snack time and discipline. And am I being unfair by thinking this is dumb?
Dads are really hot. Especially when they wear turtleneck sweaters and pick up their kids from school. Additionally, why am I attracted to the strange-looking, long-haired burnout of a sole male teacher in a Finding Nemo t-shirt?
Pre-schools have changed a lot since we were there. Bathrooms for ONLY adult males exist, and adult males can't go into any bathroom with the students. There are also nut-free classrooms. This is a generation of food-phobic freaks.
Planet Earth has definitely revolutionized kids' entertainment. There will probably be a generation of kids who knows every single characteristic about all the animals that no longer exist.
Classism is alive and well. I have no idea what the other moms think of some girl in a hoodie and jeans waiting for the kids to get out, but I can tell you that it's impossible to find any common ground. Because, as mentioned before, moms only talk about their kids. I don't have any kids, I have a job. They're waiting for one kid to get out of preschool and are holding the other one in a portable car-seat. Also, when someone is a nanny, it's because they did not go to school at all, rather than the fact that they
did go to school and all they learned was that it's pointless to push paper. So instead, they get jobs working for people who push paper. I recently met a mom, a friend of my employer, who, when told I just moved out here from VT after attending UVM, said, "Oh, I went to Middlebury." She had that dumb flat haircut and those big Connecticut lacrosse teeth. It has been my experience throughout my entire life that when you meet someone who is from or has even visited anywhere near where you're from, they get very excited and suddenly treat you like an old friend. In that moment, I almost thought about hating this woman's sagging tan and Middlebury education, and then I forgot to care, because she is a lawyer and went to Middlebury and is obviously very boring and never thought about doing anything but going to law school like her parents told her she should.
After two weeks of this, I can honestly say that I have no idea why anyone ever has kids. They're loud, needy, and kind of boring. They can't really carry on a conversation about anything other than snacks, and they usually just cry when they don't get what they want. I used to think that the ego and superego were just socially constructed, unnecessary elements of adult human existence, but now it seems like we have them for a reason. If we were all just three-year ids walking around, we would all just cry when someone took away our toys. At least we've evolved passive aggressive tendencies.
However, for what it's worth, I honestly don't know why people have kids just to let someone else take care of them. It's a strange byproduct of our capitalist culture that a child learns that his parents work are more important than he is. And this claim can't just judge working moms-- what about the dads? Even in our supposedly "post-feminist" society, (today I saw a bumper sticker that said (I'll be post-feminist in a post-patriarchy-- boo -yeah!), there is little to no choice about who stays home with the kids, or who arranges the majority of care for the kids. Is it because women feel a stronger connection with the kids? Or do they just feel like they should? Or do dads really not care as much about their kids? Or do they feel like they shouldn't? I suppose it varies between parents. But I do know that I have a newfound respect for working moms.
