We must declare war on miserable parenting advice and boost morale with dad jokes

Ever get the impression that sometimes, just sometimes, that the kids aren’t listening? Picture: File

Parenting as a passive-aggressive ploy. Headline, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 27:

So should we confess to the kids how exhausting parenting is?

Give ’em both barrels. More SMH:

… lying by omission denies (rugrats) some important life lessons: Everyone will not love them the way their mother does; everything they do is not cute; and moms need to recharge, without the kids around.

Who is this modern Dr Spock?

Nefertiti Austin is the author of the forthcoming Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting.

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ABC opinion, Emma Jane, August 4:

I wanted to punish my daughter with a no-frills phone — but it didn’t go according to plan

Fatherly.com, August 13:

… a parenting book written by Dr Luther Emett recommended the process of “airing out children” to “renew and purify the blood”. The idea was that getting infants regular bursts of fresh air would theoretically build their immune systems and ward off common colds. In 1922, as a solution for people living in cramped apartments who still wanted to abide by airing, the baby cage was invented … it was a metal structure built into apartment windows that acted as an enclosed mini terrace of sorts. The fence-like cages resembled a chicken coop or modern-day air conditioner guard. But instead of holding a fowl or frigid-air pushing appliance they offered apartment-dwellers an area to place their babies. That’s right: Babies were placed in a cage hung out a window, above the street below, while parents attended to things in the house.

Parents and other enemies. The Guardian, August 27:

‘I wish I’d told Dad how much I hated him’ — when children ditch their parents

Miki Perkins, The Age, April 26 last year:

Victoria, you need a lesson in parenting

More Grauniad, April 19:

Single parents are three times more likely to live below the poverty line. The deterioration in circumstances is traced back to the Howard years … Juan­ita McLaren, an academic who took Australia’s treatment of single mothers to the United Nations after she was moved from the parenting payment to Newstart, sees the impact in the chatter between single parents on Facebook groups. “I think the gig economy, hustling, is increasing,” she says. “Everyone talks about missing out on food and skipping meals.”

New York magazine, Marie Lodi, July 28:

Mom Who Threw One of the First Gender-Reveal Parties Kind of Regrets It

Do tell:

In the past decade, gender-reveal parties have exploded from a mere parenting trend to becoming the new normal. But now that more of the population is rejecting the idea of gender norms, a pink or blue-themed party feels archaic. One of the trend’s trailblazers is even having second thoughts about her role in perpetuating it.