How people parent

By SAMANTHA CRITCHELL
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- Many parents teach their children that stereotyping is bad. It fuels divisiveness, they'll say.
That might be true -- but so might the stereotypes.
In "The Perfect Parents Handbook" (St. Martin's Griffin), Jennifer Conlin pokes fun at all the people she sees at the playground. They all fall into one of nine categories: classic, hip, power, sporty, neotraditional, bohemian, Euro, martyr and paranoid.
"I've met all these types," says Conlin, who did her research over 13 years at the playground as she watched her three children, now 13, 9 and 7, grow up.
She adds: "I didn't have to make one thing up."
The categories
As described in the book, classic parents, who take their kids to Stratton, Vt., every winter and Nantucket, Mass., every summer, worry about getting their children to behave at the country club Christmas party with the grandparents, while hybrid car-driving bohemian parents exert a lot of energy keeping their children away from anyone with an infectious disease since the haven't been vaccinated.
Paranoid parents barely let their kids out of the house, let alone their sight, and sporty parents struggle to get along with coaches, referees and fellow team parents as they do laps around the track with their Baby Jogger stroller.
"Parenthood is a lifestyle. What you push, what kind of stroller you have, is as much a statement about you as what you drive. You can walk into a home and classify what kind of parents they are by the stuff that surrounds them," Conlin says.
The kids are then trained to fall in line from a young age, she explains, it's why some children take fables and legends classes after school while others are at photography class.
There seems to be only thing that transcends most of the groups: the Gap. Classic Dad wears the khakis and Hip Dad wears the gray T-shirt; Neotrad Mom has the Cap capri pants while her daughter has the backpack. Of course, the Euro family, clad in Dior, Tod's and Jimmy Choo, wouldn't be caught dead in such gear.
Targets
Conlin says she picks mostly on the upper middle class, which has made a sport out of "perfect parenting."
(When it comes to poor or struggling families, Conlin says she sees nothing funny about parents juggling multiple jobs, trying to put food on the table.)
People tell her she's a "neotrad" parent, probably since she aspires to "do it all" but doesn't always have the means or the ways. Conlin, however, also says she can be a bit martyrish and a bit sporty, which is why she had a hard time understanding why her daughter didn't want to play field hockey.
Most of these parenting styles were cooked up by baby boomers who need to define and analyze every aspect of their lives, according to Conlin. The previous generation was too busy trying to keep up with the Joneses.
"When our parents were raising us, 'parenting' wasn't a verb," she says.
"Parenting is so much about ourselves now, and I'm asking myself, 'Are we parenting for each other rather than our kids?"'
All for love
She's not faulting modern parents, though. Mothers and fathers, whether they're neotrads sitting on the front porch of their charming-but-run-down home in Evanston, Ill., or power parents breezing in and out of their five-bedroom pad in Manhattan's Upper East Side, they're doing everything out of a basic love for their children.
Even slacker parents, who infiltrate every group, have the best intentions. "They're the ones who put nuts in the cookies," Conlin says with a laugh.
"Slackers can be in every group. They don't give time to competition but they do give time to their kids. ... If you're trying too hard, you're not enjoying parenting or your kids. Maybe slackers have the right idea. I'm happy to know the slacker moms that I do -- and their kids are great!"
The point of the handbook, Conlin explains, isn't to be cruel or critical; it's supposed to make parents laugh.
"However you are raising your children is what you think is the right way to raise your children. It's serious stuff, and you can't stop the madness, but you can take one moment to laugh at yourself and the others around you -- who are also taking themselves v-e-r-y seriously," she says.
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