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Shouts & Murmurs: “Goodnight Nanny-Cam”
Goodnight room
Goodnight recycled baby wipes with no perfume
Goodnight high-contrast black-and-white moon
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Goodnight alpha parents everywhere.
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We’d been watching the debates, and trying to decide, after each, who won. Then the kids started pulling out the measuring cups and the teaspoons and the canisters of flour and sugar. They’d all bake something, and the grownups were supposed to taste each, and vote. The balloting was fraught. How do you vote against a sugar cookie? But it got me wondering about what elections look like to first-timers. Did politics look to them like a confection, Ron Paul a lemon square, Rick Perry marzipan?
Jill Lepore on how kids vote: http://nyr.kr/U9hzXV
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"When a seven-foot yellow-feathered bird who is subject to depressions attempts to seat himself upon the letter “h” and fails, it is no longer simply an event in children’s television, or even in the media. It is part of the intellectual history of a generation, who are already in important ways the children of “Sesame Street”…. Small children from poor or middle-class families who watch “Sesame Street” do better on cognitive tests and in first grade than children who do not watch it. Children who watch it frequently do better than children who watch it rarely. Children who begin to watch it at the age of three learn more rapidly than children who begin at four…."
— From the archive, Renata Adler writes in defense of Big Bird and children’s programming in 1972: Read more -
Cartoon of the day by Carolita Johnson. For more New Yorker cartoons: http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons
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Daily Shouts from comedian Demetri Martin, “A Few Words about Elliot”:
Dear Camp Counselor,
Hello. My name is Grace Eldridge. I am Elliot’s mother. Elliot’s father and I are thrilled that he will be spending his summer with you at Camp Chautauqua. As this is Elliot’s first time at sleep-away camp, I wanted to let you know a few things about him so that you will be prepared to look after him properly.
For starters, Elliot does not like to be called “El” or “Ellie.” He prefers “Elliot.” He may insist that you to refer to him as “Claude Death” or “The Night Crawler.” Don’t. That conversation won’t end well.
Keep reading for a few more things about Elliot…http://nyr.kr/MKnssg
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Cartoon of the night. For more from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/MP0oZN
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The scene above is from Walmart in eastern Beijing. As longtime Letter readers will notice, it fits into a perplexing phenomenon, in which the nation that gave us the one-child policy now advertises a growing share of its goods and services with two-child families. I encountered this happy clan presiding over the escalator, when I sought refuge from the heat last weekend. In other cases that I’ve mentioned, one noticeable pattern is that the girls have been older than the boys, a nod, perhaps—and this is a guess—to the fact that families in some rural areas are allowed to have two kids if the first is a girl. But, in the micro-details of this evolution, it’s worth noting that the Walmart family features an older boy and a younger girl.
Evan Osnos on the perplexing phenomenon in Chinese family advertising: http://nyr.kr/LA8k0S
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Sweet Reading: Discovering the person behind the disease http://nyr.kr/LV61oo
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Richard Brody on child rearing in the age of social media: http://nyr.kr/NHw9TU
One result of social media is the mirror effect: from posting on Facebook, sharing videos and photographs, and placing thoughts in the concrete form of writing (even if just in the casual mode of texts or posts), kids see themselves from the outside as no other generation ever has. The surveillance they conduct is also on themselves, and their crafting of a persona implies a peculiarly intense self-awareness (though not an improved vocabulary in which to think it through). The forces of order are alive and well; they’ve just migrated within, and, when children come out of their shell to mingle with the family, it’s in search of a well-deserved moment of rest and relaxation.
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Why Are American Kids So Spoiled?→
With the exception of the imperial offspring of the Ming dynasty and the dauphins of pre-Revolutionary France, contemporary American kids may represent the most indulged young people in the history of the world. It’s not just that they’ve been given unprecedented amounts of stuff—clothes, toys, cameras, skis, computers, televisions, cell phones, PlayStations, iPods. (The market for Burberry Baby and other forms of kiddie “couture” has reportedly been growing by ten per cent a year.) They’ve also been granted unprecedented authority. “Parents want their kids’ approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents’ approval,” Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, both professors of psychology, have written. In many middle-class families, children have one, two, sometimes three adults at their beck and call. This is a social experiment on a grand scale, and a growing number of adults fear that it isn’t working out so well: according to one poll, commissioned by Time and CNN, two-thirds of American parents think that their children are spoiled.
Elizabeth Kolbert considers new research on American family life, and the phase of adultesence: http://nyr.kr/L9sCOG
