The Parents Magazine Rant
“Are we going to renew our subscription to Parents Magazine?” Ellie asked me the other night. I had always assumed the answer was yes, especially since I’d already sent in the renewal card, though that was mostly out of habit. I found useful advice on childrearing in its pages, along with tips on beauty aids and pregnancy pains just in case I’m ever feeling empathetic. It has good and unique recipes, although with some of the recipes, like the stir-fry that uses ketchup, there’s a reason I hadn’t seen them before. It has great stories about the wacky things kids say, helping me to imagine what life would be like if I had a child who talked.
Ellie saw things differently. The advice is mostly for dealing with babies. More than half its content is advertising for ridiculously overpriced and unnecessary items, usually clothing. The articles are alarmist, almost to the point of parody.
I couldn’t disagree with her assessment. Most of the advice does deal with babies, and a lot of it is of the commiserating, “babies sure can be annoying sometimes” variety to help new parents feel better about that gnawing resentment they feel toward their little bundle of responsibility. I’ve moved on in my life, both in terms of not needing advice for dealing with infants, and in learning to accept that parenting isn’t always a lot of fun so deal with it. The magazine carries a lot of advertising, and heaven knows the last thing we need is reason to waste money and space on more material goods.
I could add more reasons to stop getting the magazine, such as its obvious tilt toward women. Most of its information is gender-neutral, but it also often assumes the reader belongs to a specific gender, and that gender is a mother who’s reading the magazine for tips to share with her deadbeat husband who won’t turn the game off long enough to help get the kids out of the tub.* Plus my time to read the magazine is limited, as evidenced by the fact that I just finished reading last month’s issue.
I still find enough reason to keep the subscription going, though. The advice goes up to 12-year-olds, so I can theoretically keep finding useful information for the next 11 years. Plus a subscription is cheap, about $.50 an issue thanks to the 100 pages of ads each month plus the occasional mailing from “partner companies.”
Her line about alarmist articles stuck with me, though, especially after reading the one in the September issue with the subtle title on the cover, “EXERCISE: WHY YOUR CHILD ISN’T GETTING NEARLY ENOUGH.
I’m big into a healthy lifestyle. I carve out exercise time every day. I drink skim milk. I eat tofu. I want to pass these values onto my kids and am always looking for advice on how to do so, but this “Total Guide to Raising Active Healthy Kids” was wacky. First of all, it covered 13 pages (24 if you count ads). That’s a lot of space to waste on advice that can be summed up with “consume fewer calories, burn more calories.” Most of the advice revolved around turning off the television and computer, and what to do to pass the time. To motivate you, they liberally sprinkle information about how children are getting fat, getting sick, and will die from it you horrible parent.
They could just advise you to kick the kids outside, but that would be violating their advice from an earlier issue about avoiding cancer-inducing sunshine. Instead they advocate more structured physical activities. This passage especially bugged me:
This advice is reinforced later with the featured children later in the magazine who dropped piano lessons for karate and an arts and crafts class for soccer. As a former child who took music lessons and tae kwon do concurrently, a part of me dies to hear about a child who had to make a choice between them. There’s something wrong when a child can’t fit cultural education and physical activity into his life. Everyone has their limits, though, and there comes a point when a child can’t do everything, and has to pick an activity. Seeing a magazine seemingly advocate the physical choice bothers me. Of course 50 pages later they have an article about how to encourage that slovenly activity of reading in your child, so maybe they’re just confused.
Then there are the ads within this special report. Most of these are full-page food ads. I would think that if they were serious about encouraging a healthy lifestyle, they’d be more discerning about whom they let advertise opposite their advocation. Instead the ads are for: (1) Quaker “granola and breakfast snacks,” which I guess are healthy because they contain “25% less sugar,” (2) America’s Healthy Sandwich Showdown, with a picture of two slices of apparently nutritionally devoid white bread, (3) Cheerios, which are great as long as you’re not worried about sodium, (4) a two-page ad for the Nissan Quest minivan, and Nissan couldn’t have been happy that one of those pages was opposite the advice “leave the car in the driveway,” (5) Bagel Bites, which are apparently healthy since they contain “real cheese,” have “0g trans fat/serving,” and are “baked, not fried, (6) The Coca-Cola Company, telling us how committed they are to health and nutrition right above logos for their sugary and not-so-sugary drinks, and (7) Flintstones products, including their vitamins (good choice), and their Pebbles Cereals (maybe not such a good choice, even if they are “a good source of fiber”).
I’m keeping the subscription. I get enough out of the magazine to justify it. I’ll just be sure not to take it too seriously. And if I do, I’ll just skip ahead to the baby bloopers. Kids really do say the darndest things.
* But they do have one page in every issue directed at dads, usually with a makeup ad on the opposite page, so it evens out.
Ellie saw things differently. The advice is mostly for dealing with babies. More than half its content is advertising for ridiculously overpriced and unnecessary items, usually clothing. The articles are alarmist, almost to the point of parody.
I couldn’t disagree with her assessment. Most of the advice does deal with babies, and a lot of it is of the commiserating, “babies sure can be annoying sometimes” variety to help new parents feel better about that gnawing resentment they feel toward their little bundle of responsibility. I’ve moved on in my life, both in terms of not needing advice for dealing with infants, and in learning to accept that parenting isn’t always a lot of fun so deal with it. The magazine carries a lot of advertising, and heaven knows the last thing we need is reason to waste money and space on more material goods.
I could add more reasons to stop getting the magazine, such as its obvious tilt toward women. Most of its information is gender-neutral, but it also often assumes the reader belongs to a specific gender, and that gender is a mother who’s reading the magazine for tips to share with her deadbeat husband who won’t turn the game off long enough to help get the kids out of the tub.* Plus my time to read the magazine is limited, as evidenced by the fact that I just finished reading last month’s issue.
I still find enough reason to keep the subscription going, though. The advice goes up to 12-year-olds, so I can theoretically keep finding useful information for the next 11 years. Plus a subscription is cheap, about $.50 an issue thanks to the 100 pages of ads each month plus the occasional mailing from “partner companies.”
Her line about alarmist articles stuck with me, though, especially after reading the one in the September issue with the subtle title on the cover, “EXERCISE: WHY YOUR CHILD ISN’T GETTING NEARLY ENOUGH.
I’m big into a healthy lifestyle. I carve out exercise time every day. I drink skim milk. I eat tofu. I want to pass these values onto my kids and am always looking for advice on how to do so, but this “Total Guide to Raising Active Healthy Kids” was wacky. First of all, it covered 13 pages (24 if you count ads). That’s a lot of space to waste on advice that can be summed up with “consume fewer calories, burn more calories.” Most of the advice revolved around turning off the television and computer, and what to do to pass the time. To motivate you, they liberally sprinkle information about how children are getting fat, getting sick, and will die from it you horrible parent.
They could just advise you to kick the kids outside, but that would be violating their advice from an earlier issue about avoiding cancer-inducing sunshine. Instead they advocate more structured physical activities. This passage especially bugged me:
It’s absolutely key to put more exercise right at the top of your kids’ to-do list…
Often, (schedules are) filled with after-school commitments like art and music classes, which don’t provide any physical activity. It’s great to raise a well-rounded child, of course, but overbooking her may not leave ample time to play sports and go to the playground.
This advice is reinforced later with the featured children later in the magazine who dropped piano lessons for karate and an arts and crafts class for soccer. As a former child who took music lessons and tae kwon do concurrently, a part of me dies to hear about a child who had to make a choice between them. There’s something wrong when a child can’t fit cultural education and physical activity into his life. Everyone has their limits, though, and there comes a point when a child can’t do everything, and has to pick an activity. Seeing a magazine seemingly advocate the physical choice bothers me. Of course 50 pages later they have an article about how to encourage that slovenly activity of reading in your child, so maybe they’re just confused.
Then there are the ads within this special report. Most of these are full-page food ads. I would think that if they were serious about encouraging a healthy lifestyle, they’d be more discerning about whom they let advertise opposite their advocation. Instead the ads are for: (1) Quaker “granola and breakfast snacks,” which I guess are healthy because they contain “25% less sugar,” (2) America’s Healthy Sandwich Showdown, with a picture of two slices of apparently nutritionally devoid white bread, (3) Cheerios, which are great as long as you’re not worried about sodium, (4) a two-page ad for the Nissan Quest minivan, and Nissan couldn’t have been happy that one of those pages was opposite the advice “leave the car in the driveway,” (5) Bagel Bites, which are apparently healthy since they contain “real cheese,” have “0g trans fat/serving,” and are “baked, not fried, (6) The Coca-Cola Company, telling us how committed they are to health and nutrition right above logos for their sugary and not-so-sugary drinks, and (7) Flintstones products, including their vitamins (good choice), and their Pebbles Cereals (maybe not such a good choice, even if they are “a good source of fiber”).
I’m keeping the subscription. I get enough out of the magazine to justify it. I’ll just be sure not to take it too seriously. And if I do, I’ll just skip ahead to the baby bloopers. Kids really do say the darndest things.
* But they do have one page in every issue directed at dads, usually with a makeup ad on the opposite page, so it evens out.
posted by Matt at
11:50 PM
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