A Glimpse Into the Navels of New York Parents

If you live in New York, there are two places to live: Manhattan and The Other Boroughs (”Oh, And Staten Island”). In Brooklyn, where I live, there is a neighborhood that is stereotypically filled with fussy parents, called Park Slope. (Famously, an email list discussion last year about the supposed gender of a dropped hat has solidified this reputation.)

Park Slope also happens to be where writer and parent Steven Johnson lives, who has taken umbrage with an article in the Times last Sunday that attempted to call out so-called “hipster parents,” those who dress their tykes in a tiny rock concert t-shirts and make their kids listen to “adult” music. (Those seem to be the two big hallmarks of these parents.)

Here’s why this argument is totally New York: who gives a fuck? Parents have been dressing up their kids as miniature versions of themselves for ages, with irony and without. And some of my favorite music was playing in my house when I was a toddler, not in any attempt to program good taste into me, but just because it was what was playing at the time. (That it happened to program some taste, good and bad, is incidental.) I just can’t believe that any parent would care what their kid was wearing or listening to at all. Ripped baby jeans and “Anarchy in the Pre-K” t-shirts? Whatever, fine. Twee sailor outfits and taffeta? Okey doke.