Park Slope Parents, that incredibly useful list-serve for parents in Park Slope, has been appropriately lauded and applauded for all the good that it does. But it’s also been lampooned and treated with snarky gloves in various magazines, blogs and newspapers.
Sure, there’s lots to make fun of: Parents obsessing over teething, tantrums and teats.
But there’s lots to love. The open way that parents share their questions, advice, resources, support and information. Indeed, it has become such a necessary part of parenting life in Park Slope, it makes you wonder how parents did it before.
Okay, so maybe they used the telephone or talked to each other in the streets and school yards.
But the Internet and PSP has made Park Slope an even more cohesive and open community than ever. And it’s a win-win for parents and children.
That’s why I was concerned when I heard that PSP, in an effort to moderate the level of discourse, decided NOT to publish one mother’s post. Okay, so that mother was Allison, who writes for Fucked in Park Slope and Babble.com. But still.
It all started with this:
Politically-Incorrect Parenting Posted by: “Allison” Thu Mar 11, 2010 9:52 am (PST)
So, I’m curious to know if I’m the only aspiring detachment parent in this neighborhood. Have you gone back to old-school ways? Because I don’t know if I can get through another 12 years of over-parenting with my sanity intact and I doubt my kids would be better off if I did. So, show my your bad parenting, please. I’ll get you started… I yell, i’m mean, i punish, i say no, i’m inconsistent, i’m tired and often lazy, i cave, i have no desire to get on the rug and play… You?
Needless to say: along with some supportive emails sent directly to Allison’s email address, a slew of mostly negative reactions showed up on Park Slope Parents. This response went to Allison’s email:
Yikes.. you do not want to get down on the floor and play with your kiddos.. you yell and are mean. Maybe you should let your kiddos come to my house. I will play and cuddle and tickle, sing and dance and treat them like children should be treated… with love and respect. Don’t get me wrong, i do discipline when needed in the form of time out or i try to divert their attention to something more constructive. But i do not yell and am not mean. I would not call what you are doing “old school”.. i call it wrong and sad and i feel sorry for you and your children. But to each their own i guess.
If you are being sarcastic with your post i do not find it funny at all. Maybe you need to see a therapist or just go to the park or museum with your children and see how wonderful they are!
Wow.. this post made me so mad i want to wake up my sweet babies from their nap and give them big hugs and kisses!!!
And so it began.
As you can imagine, Alison was itching to write a response and she did and hurried it over to PSP. But guess what happened? The powers-that-be at PSP wouldn’t let her do it. And that doesn’t seem right, especially since she’d been roasted and toasted on the site. Here’s an excerpt from Allison’s post that was rejected by PSP.
When I finally got home yesterday (after dodging attachment folks who wanted to string me up by their slings at 321 pickup), I had over two dozen emails from the gamut of park slope parents in my mailbox.I’ve been asked to form a bad mommy club (sorry, I’m not much for clubs that would have me, either), go out for drinks with a pregnant woman (after the baby’s born!), head to my nearest support group/therapist, put my “kiddos” up for adoption since I’m such a crappy mother.
I was applauded and excoriated by a roughly 3/1 margin (applause from closeted mean mamas 3, haters 1). I WISH I could show you all the emails because some were truly, if unwittingly, brilliant.
In fact, I apparently touched off some sort of culture war I didn’t even realize was going on in our bucolic almost suburb. I’m just waiting for us to be preserved in print once again in Gawker or the Times for the humorless priggish mombies they’ll no doubt be calling us by the end of the day. Has anybody trademarked “Park Slope” yet, by the way?…
…So, my original query, which I obviously didn’t articulate as earnestly as I might have but which is actually a legitimate line of inquiry, was whether all the hand-holding and tush-wiping and vigilant, ever-patient, unconditional love is actually all that good in the long run for our kids. And whether it’s sustainable for most parents.
I am kind of appalled and fascinated by the response. Why are people who are purportedly so loving and caring, responding in such a judgmental way to another point of view? Why such intensity and hostility? I mean, the whole tenor is too close for comfort to the crowd picketing Planned Parenthood. The longer I’m a parent, the less I feel like I know.
My goal as a parent is to teach my kids to ask good questions, not to think they have all the answers. It’s to help them be self-reliant, to be good citizens and friends, to have fun and play (but not necessarily exclusively with ME).
The moderators didn’t post the above after three requests citing the fact that she’s writing an article for Babble about “non-attachment parenting.”
Is that censorship or just PSP being picky about what they do and don’t want on their site. Or is that the same thing?
I get that PSP is sick and tired of being ripped off and savaged by the media (who lurk around the site and steal quotes for their snarkathons).
But it does aim to be an open, democratic community. That’s what makes it interesting, informative, fun, provocative and always a true reflection of the parenting zeitgeist of the Slope.
If it starts to become a censorship machine, it will really become a parody of itself by not allowing quirky, funny, contrary, and sometimes downright silly things hang out to dry.
Let it go, Park Slope Parents. Join the democracy that is the Internet. Things don’t need to be quite so squeaky clean all the time. Keep your sense of humor and your commitment to openness at all costs.
Everything will work out just fine.
you are all nuts – get over it
No, no, no. She was rejected, originally, bc she likened naming your kid “_____” to “borderline child abuse”. It was a personal attack on one member that sent her a snarky message.
I’ve had moderators contact me when my posts have been aggressive towards certain people, and they’ve gently urged me to change the wording, or outright denied them. Whatever. Who cares. The original post was funny….she shouldn’t have been shocked to get rabid responses. This whole victim bit that she’s written about on FIPS? Lame.
My understanding for the removal and decision not to post the response, was that it identified and maligned (in a pretty ugly way) someone who had written to Allison privately. I have my own set of morals about exposing emails that were written in the shaky naive privacy of “off-list” – and they don’t include blasting someone publicly for their opinions.
Someone who writes for FIPS should have a better sense of humor about the kind of responses she MUST have known she’d receive. The on-line responses were, in all but one case, genuine and unoffensive to the OP. The ones she cites could and should have been laughed off as slightly more foolish than pretending to post a sincere request for cohorts in politically incorrect parenting.
I’m a parent who does all the things she mentioned in her original posting. Except for the still wanting to get on the rug and play. I’ll do anything if it stalls cleaning the bathroom. However, unlike some compatriots, I don’t feel proud (or too guilty, actually) of it, nor do I think it needs to be celebrated.
Bottom line for me, Allison started out by NOT being open. To me, her post was either a) trolling for parent-hating fodder or b) a germination for an article. She got what she wanted.
The problem is that this woman posted under a false pretense. PSP is a group of parents who agree to abide by certain rules in order to join and stay a member. One of the rules (hardly a bad thing) is to be civil to one another. This woman’s feigned surprise at people being judgmental is ridiculous, given that the one post she was asked to revise was one that called someone else a “borderline child abuser.”
Another rule is that you can’t use the information for articles unless you ask permission. But she admitted that her original post was just there to generate material for her piece.
I don’t see anything wrong with a community that sets certain standards to live by, and then acts on those standards. Anyone who wants to write spiteful things can go elsewhere, there are plenty of internet sites for that!
A rewrite from FIPS. Gawker material, for sure. And so right.
I am not surprised at all that PSP would not publish Allison’s post. It is moderated with a very heavy hand. I’ve tried to post 4 or 5 times where I have taken a contrarian stand or challenged (respectfully) someone’s position. Each time the post failed to appear.