Until my eldest daughter Emily was about five years old, I was one of those parents who got nervous when I read her those dark Grimm fairy tales or she watched one of those old, scary movies, the kind in which parents abandon their kids in the woods, leaving the unsuspecting children in the hands of evil witch in a house made of candy.
"This would NEVER happen in real life," I'd say. "You know that, right?"
I didn't want my daughter exposed to the ugly reality that there are bad people who do unspeakably horrible things, even to children. But after doing some reading, I soon began to realize that I was protecting myself--not her.
Throughout the ages, kids have been drawn to Grimm fairy tales exactly because they allow them to access their darkest fears in a safe way. Bruno Bettelheim, the child psychiatrist, wrote brilliantly about this phenomenon.
From that point on, I became intolerant of the sappy children's fare--the Hollywood remakes and new books that turn the wicked, menacing characters of old classics into just annoying snobs or meanies who become "nice" once they learn to love and be loved.
So it was with great disappointment--but not surprise---that I read the New York Times review of the new Broadway staging of "Mary Poppins." The reviewer wrote that all the darkness of the original book and 1964 film had been taken out, replaced with the kind of moralizing and psychologizing you find on daytime TV these days.
As the reviewer put it, "you can’t help noticing that while [Mary Poppins] looks like Joan Crawford trying to be nice, she sounds more like Dr. Phil."
Last weekend, Emily and I went to see Great Expectations, the new off-Broadway production at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. While the play felt like a Reader's Digest version--why the producers felt the need to squeeze most of the twists and turns from the 500-page plus book into an 80-minute show is unfathomable--I still appreciated the fact that the show didn't try to sanitize the story. The play still has all of the moral ambiguities of the Dickens novel (a creepy criminal who nonetheless rescues Pip, a likeable hero who turns out to be very hurtful to some very nice, good people) which makes it a compelling story for adults--and children.


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Put another item on Congress' to-do list.

For quite a while now, there have been allegations of cronyism and corruption in the federal Reading First program. This program was supposed to implement a more effective, scientifically proven method for teaching reading to children, as literacy rates among kids--especially children of color--remain appallingly low.

Instead, an investigation found that the Reading Panel was engaging in all kinds of questionable practices, stacking panels with people who agree with them, awarding contracts to people who have major conflicts of interest, and so on.

The upshot? People who had legitimately worthwhile programs, reading curriculum that helped kids learn to read well, were shut out of the system. Let's hope more of them find their way in--and Congress takes the steps it needs to take to clean up the federal program.


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This weekend, my co-editor, Jill Smolowe, and I gave a talk at an adoption conference. One of the more provocative questions from the audience came from an adoptive mom, who had adopted through the foster care system in the US and also is a social worker. Why, she said, aren't more Americans adopting kids right here in the US, as opposed to going abroad? She was polite, but the criticism was apparent--and it hit a nerve.

Both Jill and I adopted internationally, as did many in the audience. Jill pointed out that it's almost impossible to adopt an infant through the foster care system, as it can take years to formalize an adoption. A couple of audience members also talked about how, after the pain of infertility, they didn't want to take the chance of having a birthparent surface and reclaim their child. With international adoption, there is almost no chance of that.

I was thinking that it is interesting how international adoption is such a hot button issue--even at an adoption conference. Then the next day, the New York Times ran a front page story on adoptions in Guatemala, the gist of which was that willfully "naive" Americans were adopting in a system rife with corruption, in which poor birth mothers were pressured and duped into giving up their babies.

I don't doubt that there is corruption and the process is in need of reform. I am sure that if a large number of American children were being adopted by foreigners, there would be an outcry here too. It's understandable, but rather than painting adoptive parents as these imperialist villains throwing around money to get what they want, shouldn't attention be paid to the poverty, the corruption, and discrimination, which leads so many women to give their children up for adoption?

The Times story, in fact, didn't quote a single adoptive parent (the author says in the story parents were reluctant to have their names used; yet, he uses other unnamed sources in the story.) And he makes these grand assertions and insinuations, which simply don't jive with the adoptive parents I know. His story, for instance, ends with this:

“I hope she has a nice family and lives a happy life,” said the 17-year-old mother, who would not give her name. Fidgeting as she spoke, she said she hoped that her daughter, Antonietta, would return one day to visit her and that the adoptive parents would keep the newborn’s name.

Both prospects, those involved in the process say, are unlikely."

This suggests bull-headed Americans who do not respect or attempt to preserve their children's cultural heritage.

That simply doesn't jive with what what I know about adoptive parents. Not only are many adoptive parents embracing their child's birth heritage--celebrating the Chinese New Year, sending them to culture camp, and having their kids learn the language--but I can't tell you how many parents I know have kept their adoptive child's name--either as a middle name or a first name. There also is a whole cottage industry of travel consultants who specialize in arranging "homeland" trips for adopted kids and their families. And increasingly, parents are tracking down the birth parent records and arranging for visits for their kids when they're older.

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In an essay for The New York Times, he recalls how he, at the age of 7 or 8, would answer the door in a suit and tie and greet his parents' guests, "Welcome to Merrywood." The photo looks like a Diane Arbus portrait of the sadness of wealth.
Except that Dickerson's story is mostly about how much fun he and his older brother had being on their own.

"We were raising ourselves, and the house was our fort, a fantasy world out of a children’s book like 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.' Parents absent, weaponry handy...When firecrackers weren’t available, we attacked each other with pennies and marbles and clumps of Crisco, which made brilliant greasy asterisks when you missed and hit the wall. We plotted in a two-room dry meat locker lined with horror-film hooks in the basement, and played hide-and-seek under the attic eaves in a nest of built-in cabinets that offered endless spaces where even bloodhounds would never find you....
"When our cut and thrust carried us over into the house’s most formal rooms we learned to cover our tracks. We glued together small Chinese bowls we’d smashed and scrubbed away water stains on coffee tables with mayonnaise and ashes. I spent a night putting plastic wood into the pockmarks I left in a door when I threw a fistful of pennies and my brother was quick enough to close it to protect himself.
"When we’d had enough of the house, there were abandoned outbuildings ripe for terror, discovery and puncture wounds, including a broken-down collection of pool houses, a deep, empty fountain and a musty one-room Cape Cod that had once been a dog kennel. My brother and I ventured out armed, first with bow and arrow and later with BB guns and .22 rifles."

It's the kind of freedom that most kids today don't enjoy--and most parents today would shudder at the thought of kids unsupervised for hours. How dangerous! Who knows what could happen!

I am still debating whether to let my very responsible fifth grader walk the 15 minute walk into our sleepy little suburban town with her friend. She hasn't yet gone to even a movie with a friend--except if a parent is chaperoning.

Reading Dickerson's essay reminded me of what kids are losing in all of this "supervision" and involvement by parents. Yes, they are more likely to be safe, and we, as parents, get to enjoy our kids a little bit longer. But they lose the freedom of getting lost in their imagination, which, yes, means getting some bumps and bruises sometimes.

In fact, while Dickerson clearly regrets his parents' detachment, he says he is fighting the impulse to hover over his kids and give them the space that he enjoyed.

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We keep hearing how inflation is low, but as USA Today points out in a story today, the prices of "big-ticket, middle class basics," from housing to health insurance and college tuition, keeps rising. Meanwhile, wages for most Americans are stagnant. Actual, inflation-adjusted wages are down 1% in the past four years, according to statistics compiled by USA Today.

And while the economy is said to be stronger, I'm seeing a high level of economic insecurity, even among relatively affluent couples.

There is no such thing as job security anymore, and everyone seems to understand that they could be laid off tomorrow. While so much is written about the stress in being part of a dual-income marriage, I think this is one area in which we come out ahead, because we at least have some security in knowing that if one of us lost a job, we could pay our mortgage with the other's salary.



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