This from Neal Pollack, author of Alternadad.
Today’s bilious David Brooks column
in the New York Times may have intended to be the last word on the
"hipster parenting" trend, but I think it will have an opposite,
galvanizing effect. There are certainly some annoyng cultural
signifiers afoot, mostly having to do with clothing items and the
occasional pretentious mix tape, but deep undercurrents run through
this generation that Brooks could only begin to understand…I wonder how long it’s been since this "patio man"-praising "bobo",
who lives in a cosseted corner of Philadelphia’s Main Line, has had to
worry about drug-dealing in his neighborhood, or whether or not his
kids were going to get a good education, or if an innocent visit to the
doctor was going to send him into thousands of dollars of debt.
Probably never, I’m guessing. Every family but the most wealthy is up
against a wall in George Bush’s America. "Hipster parenting," despite
some very superficial fashion frosting, is actually a conservative
pushback calling for the return to primacy of truly traditional
American family values.I’m proud to be part of this generation of parents, which is trying
to regain cultural control of its lives from corporate entertainment
conglomerates (or at least influence certain corporate-entertainment
decisions). The entrepreneurial energy has only begun to assert itself.
I see parents remaking children’s fashion, yes, and children’s music,
but also piling tons of energy into helping save our sagging
public-education system, trying to reclaim decent childhood nutrition
from a deep Cheetos-dug hole, and generally trying to assert their
cultural identity in a world that denies them anything but beleagured
"soccer mom" or "diaper dad" labels….