That’s right - Jewish women are the latest fetish ethnicity. On a recent poll of readers of the porn blog Fleshbot, “Jewish girls” came in number two in a list of top ten kinks (edging out “girls on bikes” but falling short of the number one entry: “freckles").

Jewesses aren’t just the rage of the triple-X realm: they’re wooing goyim with their wily ways on “Mad Men” and “Glee” and giving movie geeks conniptions over reports that Darren Aronfsky’s upcoming feature “Black Swan” features choice JILF-on-JILF action between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. And what would “I’m Fucking Matt Damon” have been without the hot-smutty-incredibly-Jewy Sarah Silverman?

America, it seems, suddenly can’t get enough hot Semite tush. That’s all the more remarkable given that Jews represent a truly tiny minority (2.2% at last count) that just finished serving up a similarly overwhelming wave of their menfolk—the so-called Jew Crew of Ben Stiller, Judd Apatow and his gang of lovable zhlubs (Seth Rogan, Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Jason Segal, et al.)

Unlike their funnymen frat brothers, Jewish girls have to contend with that old stinging JAP stereotype of frigidity, whininess and big hair. But the Fran Drescher rep has given way to a more smoldering, exotic mold - think Rachel Weisz, Emmannulle Chirqui, Jennifer Connelly or Scarlett Johansson. “The dark hair, the olive skin, the dark eyes - it’s the whole physical type,” says Harry Pallenberg, a documentary filmmaker from Italian-German stock who dated a number of Jews before marrying one. “It’s not a religious thing - the more observant the Jew, the less I’m attracted.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. How else to account for “Frum porn,” dirty pictures of religious Jews getting busy that’s earned a devoted following far outside the faith from those who find something impossibly smutty and exotic watching a girl in a sheitel give a blowjob. “It’s something like the Catholic schoolgirl fetish,” says Jewish porn star James Deen. “We all want to defile that purity and wholesomeness.”

Jews are of course no strangers to porn—the Hebrew hardcore hall of fame includes Ron Jeremy, Nina Hartley and Seymore Butts. Only recently, however, have porn performers begun to actively embrace their ethnicity. “I never in a million years thought my Jewishness would be an asset,” says Joanna Angel, who grew up in a strict Orthodox family and went on to star in films with titles like “Cum on My Tattoo” and “Porny Monster.” While she’s hardly observant, she still fasts on Yom Kippur, avoids bacon and checks in with her New Jersey mother more than is strictly necessary. She often finds herself wandering around porn sets in stiletto heels and corsets asking if everyone in cast and crew has had enough to eat.

“I embody a lot of Jewish stereotypes - I have a Jewish nose and Jewish hair and I kind of talk like I’m Jewish,” she says. “I also own my own company and I feel guilty all the time.”

It’s no secret that Jews are comparatively cool about sex - from the racy Purim story of that hottie concubine Queen Esther to the masturbatory fiction of Philip Roth and Erica Jong, the Jewish tradition is a veritable orgy compared to more restrained if not repressive Christian traditions. Jews don’t talk much about “hell” or even “sin” and Rabbis hector their congregants that it’s a “double mitzvah” to get busy on shabbos. While official teaching frowns on sex outside of matrimony, the dirty jokes and astonishing number of Craigslist ads for casual encounters among hot-bodied Jews suggest a lasciviousness that many outside the tribe find irresistible. And while it’s possible that these women might question the intentions of their pursuers—and indeed, there’s something creepy about some guys’ desire to dominate a Jewish chick—most accept the attraction and the fact that that their genetics have delivered some pretty seductive traits.

Many in this Jew-loving camp find their way to dating sites like JDate, which lists 13% of its 650,000 members as religiously “unaffiliated.” Some of these so-called “goyfriends” are seeking educated, marriage-minded partners; others are simply looking to hook up with a hot Jewess. “It’s really annoying—I get emails from guys saying things like, ‘I never regretted not being Jewish so much as when I saw your profile,’” says a New York nonprofit professional who asked to remain nameless, given that her extracurricular hours are spent running a group called Kinky Jews, a social group for those who enjoy mixing religious observance with whips, spiked heels and partner swapping. Goy gatecrashers are not unheard-of at the group’s annual Kinky Seder, a Passover party in which the bondage of ancient Hebrews is honored with chocolate licorice whips and the sharing of “favorite kink items.”

Likewise, non-Jews have been unexpectedly enamored with “The Year of the Jewish Woman,” a 2009 self-published calendar in which writer-actress Jamie Sneider poses nude blowing a shofar and elsewhere covers her 32-Ds with strategically placed bagels, latkes and brisket. While she’s heard from a few Jews who find the images sacrilegious, the calendar has been a hit outside the tribe, getting distributed on a USO tour of Iraq and landing Sneider on Playboy radio. “This is about taking my power as a Jewish woman back,” says Sneider. “I can be a Jewish woman and not be uptight and in fact be really proud of my sexuality and my body.”

For her part, the porn star Angel says while she’s open to girl-on-girl, double penetration and all sorts of stuff that will never earn her the approval of her orthodox relatives, there are certain things a good Jew just won’t do. She’s rejected offers to make a holiday porn in the mold of this year’s “Dr. Suzy’s Porn & Purim DVD Bacchanal,” which mixed group sex with groggers and hamentaschen. “I’ve totally desecrated Christian traditions before,” she says. “In one video I put a cross-shaped dildo inside me, but I’d never do anything with a menorah—that’s just creepy.”

Then one day that parental pride takes a dark new turn. It happens all at once, while driving carpool to surf camp, getting your ass handed to you in a Super Mario Galaxy matchup by your nine year old, or watching your son IM with six girls simultaneously. That’s when you feel it, bubbling up from the same dark wellspring of feeling that stirs when you behold your friend’s new high-def A/V setup or hear about your boss’ trip to Tahiti: You’re jealous.

Let’s be honest: there’s plenty to begrudge. Your kids have a far sweeter setup than you have now or ever had as a kid, back in the bygone days when 16-bit drivel like Galaga ruled and the best porn you could find was in your sister’s Judy Blume. While you fret and hustle and schlep, they merrily feast on a smorgasbord of awesome social, educational and entertainment options. Not only have they got massive multiplayer online games—they’ve got the time to play them. Not only do they know the difference between sushi and sashimi—they get those cool bendy attachments that make chopsticks a cinch (plus they never have to pick up the tab). They keep getting smarter and stronger and more savvy while you wince from that torn ACL and struggle to summon a halfway clever opinion about Lady Gaga.

““It doesn’t make much sense, but yeah, there’s definitely envy,"” says Jason Avant, founder and editor of the blog Dadcentric.com and father to daughter Zoe and son Lucas, who at five has become quite the badass in karate - which is all well and good except for the fact that dad can’t quite let go of the fact that he was pretty good at martial arts himself before his training was cut short by a blown knee. ““’I’m watching him getting better and better and realizing I’ll never have that chance,”” he says. ““It sounds silly, but I’m suddenly become aware that I’ll never be in five-year-old shape again.””

That may be the most common strain of paternal envy -– just as many women resent their daughters as they begin to bloom and fill out and attract the sidelong glances they once enjoyed, dads are often peppered by pangs of jealousy when their boys drop their childish spazziness and come into their own physically.

But well beyond athletics, many dads can’t help but feel jealous of the sheer diversity of options. Whit Honea, a fellow daddy blogger and father of 6-year-old Atticus and 3-year-old Zane, recently moved to a cozy, family-friendly community near Seattle that offers juvenile instruction in yoga and glassblowing. Glassblowing! “"These kids are like little artisans with apprenticeships!"” he says. “"Here they are living a life of arts and leisure, and I’m living a life of grindstone and stress.””

Parental envy is nothing new -– it burns in all its green-eyed glory in the Grim Brother’s tale of an aging queen (later recast as wicked stepmother) ordering a hit on her far-hotter daughter Snow White. And no doubt there were a few Ozzie and Harriet-era parents who wished they’d been given a societal pass to frolic naked in the sun like their hippy progeny. But lately parental envy has reached dizzying new heights, driven by a wave of parental overindulgence and seismic upgrades in what might be called the Juvenile Enrichment Complex.

Even in our recession-addled age, the routine path through childhood begins with music and movement playgroups and deluxe indoor playgrounds and quickly advances into afterschool hip hop classes and under-21 dance clubs.

For fucksakes, they even get Ritalin.

All of which can create deep wellsprings of jealousy among the parents doing all the arranging, planning and financing. So who’s responsible for the jealousy? Go ahead and lie to yourself if you like, duck responsibility, tell yourself you’re simply giving your kids every available opportunity in a competitive world. But you know who’s to blame. You strive to be more fun, more giving, more understanding than your own authoritarian-slash-unreliable-slash-absent parents. Now you reap the reward: kids who are way more privileged and assured and worldly and hipper than you’ve ever been.

That, in the end, is what stings most of all: they’re cooler! It’s pathetic that you even care. After all, your own middle-aged parents settled into a routine of regularity and lameness without much fuss. Not you. You decided long ago not to let the kids slow your roll. You still go to shows, still rummage for bargains at the sample sales, still consider yourself reasonably in-touch. But your kids don’t even have to try. They look good in hats and t-shirts and ties together. They can actually pull off Zac Efron’s haircut. They rule Halo 3. Meanwhile you’re exhausted at nine and feeling entirely unsure whether those new A.P.C. jeans make you look more like Olivier Martinez or Gerard Depardieu.

It’s no wonder therapists like Austin Texas psychologst Carl Pickhardt, author of many books on parenting including The Connected Father, so often encounters parents with the same age-old complaint: “My kids have no idea how lucky they are.”

Few parents can identify the true source of this ungratefulness: themselves. “"Parents are entirely complicit,"” he says. ““They give to their kids what they never got and then get angry at their kids for not being appreciative. But of course the kids don’t know. All they know is this abundance and affluence. How could they ever be appreciative?””

They can’t, and resenting kids for how great their lives are can lead to dark places indeed. One need look no further than that high priestess of parental jealousy, Dina Lohan, for a scary object lesson. Surely Mama Lohan has, at some point, felt unadulterated pride at her daughter’s success, but her strenuous attempts to out-glam, out-do and out-party her own child speak to a particularly awful outcome of parental envy.

The trouble comes in overcoming what feels like an unassailable impulse: the need to provide the best for your kids. Too often, that desire can mutate into a drive to furnish your kids with all the stuff you actually want yourself. Bruce Miller, a television writer and father of three from Los Angeles, had his reckoning with while touring private schools with his son. ““These places were amazing – way better than any college I’d ever seen,”” he says. One school offered courses in Chinese and a swim team coached by an Olympic gold medalist. ““It made me want to go to middle school,"” he says. “"All I remember about middle school not being able to open my locker and fear of an ill-timed erection. And here my kid was walking into this amazing idealized version of middle school. It wasn’t fair. I wanted a do-over.””

Miller got over it once he realized that his son’s actual experience at school had very little to do with all the stuff that so captivated dad. ““He cares about skin and girls and trigonometry,”” he says. ““It might look good to me now, but middle school still sucks.””

Recalling that the actual experience of growing up is terrifying and awful in ways we conveniently forget is one of the keys to easing the envy, family therapists say. You might also try laying off the perks and think a little less about what to do for your kids and more about what to do with them. “"Switch it around,"” says Timothy Smith, a Gallup researcher in family issues, author and family coach who counsels parents in Thousand Oaks, California. ““Team up and plan stuff together—let them know about your limitations and budgets and priorities.”” Translation: if you practice Rock Band with your kid instead of sulk about his shredding, you might even be able to show him how “Through the Fire and Flames” is really done…

On a deeper and perhaps far scarier level, the trick to defusing jealousy is letting your kids off the hook for the moat of resentment that’s built up around the castle you’ve created. “In the end it’s not jealousy—it’s loss for whatever you missed that you wish you had,” says Pickhardt. “It’s sadness. Once you realize that, you don’t get angry at the kids. You can begin to appreciate that what you’re doing is providing for your kids what your parents weren’t able to give you.”

At which point you might just be able to allow them the pure pleasure of that laser tag extravaganza and settle back into a far more familiar sensation: resenting your parents for the shitty job they did raising you.

Lewis, whose previous books have dealt mainly in the business of sports, here tackles the trickier territory of fatherhood—or more specifically, what he calls “the raw deal” dealt to dads today. Drawn from diaries he published in the online magazine Slate immediately following the births of his children Quinn, Dixie and Walker, Home Game mixes cringe-worthy tales of his own failings with repeated gripes about the no-win bind fathers today face.

On the one hand, he writes, fathers are now expected to join moms shoulder-to-shoulder in the trenches of childcare, changing diapers, resolving squabbles, divvying up bottles of pumped breast milk and otherwise at least appearing to share in the grunt work that previous generations of fathers shirked with mysterious impunity. But even as they pine for the days when the only real job requirement for fatherhood was a “capacity for detached amusement,” dads today are constantly reminded of their own irrelevance, incapability and essential uselessness. While the more-involved dad of today gets some credit, they’re mostly, he says, viewed with pity: “The world looks at him schlepping and fetching and sagging and moaning beneath his new burdens and thinks: OH… YOU… POOR… BASTARD.”

Lewis is a funny, frank and engaging writer and he gets a lot of comic mileage telling tales at his expense -�his experiences in a Parisian Gymboree class and a Hawaiian hotel pool are just the sort of laugh-out-loud anecdotes that fill warts-and-all parenting memoirs like Christine’s Mellor’s “The Three Martini Playdate” or Sandra Tsing Loh’s “Mother on Fire.” The difference here, of course, is the parent laying out the laundry - of the multitude of recent books that purport to comically expose the harsh realities of family life, precious few have been penned by dads (which may have something to do with conventional wisdom in publishing circles that guys are as likely to buy a book about parenting as they are in the latest by Jody Picoult - i.e. not at all).

Home Game may very well be the book to bury that sad stereotype, peppered as it is with guy-friendly sports and financial analogies and jibes at the nurturing, accommodating, doting ideal of the modern dad. But it’s also strangely dispiriting - those well-intentioned pops who actually buck industry thinking and read the book will likely finish it feeling, if possible, even less equipped and more demoralized in their efforts to overcome the example set by dads of previous generations who rarely changed a diaper and wouldn’t know a Baby Bjorn from a Bugaboo.

Still, it’s refreshing to hear a dad describe so vividly the uglier aspects of the job. The birth of his daughter, which a mushier dad might observe with humbled awe, inspires a particularly intense bout of harrumphing. “No one actually cares how dad is doing,” he writes. “His fatigue, his worries, his tedium, his disappointment at the contents of hospital vending machines - these are better unmentioned.” As for the act of childbirth itself, which fathers now routinely watch unfold in its entirety and possibly even videotape: “it’s a hideous secret to be kept.”

His list of grievances continues outside the delivery room. Inspiring particular ire are the host of newfangled parenting products, services and safeguards now considered mandatory parental accessories. That commercial pressure, combined with the heightened expectations in housework, add up to what he calls “a Dark Age of Fatherhood.”

But it it really so bad for dads? It’s hard to work up much sympathy for Lewis at least, who views the care and feeding of small children as miserable work and seems so preoccupied with his own predicament that he takes little note of what many parents, even the most detached dads, view as the true dividend of raising small kids: wonder. Yes, little kids are messy and bossy and unreasonable. They’re also miraculous and fascinating and often really, really funny. These are of course harder qualities to describe in a comic memoir—your precious three-year-old daughter’s etherial specialness is a lot less funny than the humdinger of a story about the time she peed in the hotel pool. 

While Lewis makes some noise toward the end about how the dirty work of parenting forges indelible bonds—you know, genuine parental feeling. And when confronted with a family crisis like a nasty respiratory virus or his wife’s debilitating bout of post-partrum panic, he displays the sort of compassion and accommodation that dads from what he longingly calls “the glory days” would surely find hopelessly wimpy. But even so, he’s clearly not going out without a gripe. 

Keeping our kids safe from harm, after all, is a value that transcends the usual traditional-progressive divide. It doesn’t matter if you’re a strict disciplinarian who closely regulates your kids’ moral development or a groovy “alternaparent” who pays more attention to their iTunes downloads, you don’t skimp on safety.

Hence the preponderance of padded playgrounds and bike helmets, Internet parental controls and, in perhaps the most visible sign of our collective thinking about raising kids, the scarcity of children left unattended outside to play.

But now, at last, that single remaining shared value is crumbling. Parents are now rethinking pricy babyproofing gear and school bans on tag and other “chase games.” Many are taking their cue from bestsellers like The Dangerous Book for Boys and the Daring Book for Girls and shooing their kids off the couch to go build a campfire or cut flint heads for a bow and arrow.

A few are even forgoing the usual birthday gifts of fancy gadgets in favor of - gasp - pocket knives.

Suddenly, safety is pass�.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, our kids will be all the better for it. Children need risk, hardship and periodic jolts of pain to develop into self-reliant grown-ups. Parents who constantly remove obstacles and eliminate perceived dangers - from smearing their little hands with antibacterial gel six times a day to prohibiting them from going to the bathroom or the corner store by themselves - are doing their kids a deep disservice.

Most parents know this, of course. But it’s easy to forget in a time when threats are broadcast from every corner, from the partially hydrogenated oils in food to the “stranger danger” on the street. At a certain point, however, parents inevitably get worn down by the bombardment and must finally learn to prioritize their anxieties.

In other words, while fencing the swimming pool and insisting you know your teenager’s whereabouts are reasonable parental controls, there comes a time when it no longer makes sense to X-ray your kids’ Halloween candy, ban all Internet use for fear of cyberpredators or do your kids’ homework because they’re so stressed out.

Clinical psychologist Wendy Mogel was among the first to describe this modern strain of overprotection in her invaluable 2001 book The Blessing of a Skinned Knee. Too many modern parents, she wrote, try to “inoculate their children against the pain of life” and end up with insecure, demanding, dependent kids.

Mogel’s prescription is a mix of old-school traditionalism and a more modern strain of compassion - she advises parents to limit the time spent worrying about kids to 20 minutes a day, treat bumps and injuries matter-of-factly, and stop attempting to shield children from the ugly and unpleasant facts of life.

The same basic spirit has fueled the runaway success of the Dangerous Book for Boys, Conn and Hal Iggulden’s politically incorrect and determinedly old-fashioned manual for mini macho men. Packed with such apparently arcane tips as how to hunt and cook rabbit and make a good go-cart, the book was a mammoth bestseller in the U.K. in 2006 and was modified for an even more successful U.S. edition last year.

It has since spawned a companion book for girls (which advises girls how to change a tire, build a fire and even press flowers) and led to a TV development deal and a bidding war over movie rights.

The phenomenon proves that kids and parents are desperate, Conn Iggulden wrote in the Washinton Post, to “remember a time when danger wasn’t a dirty word. It’s safer to put a boy in front of a PlayStation for a while, but not in the long run. The irony of making boys’ lives too safe is that later they take worse risks on their own.”

With so many families now rushing to rediscover the joys of sharp objects and sticky situations, it’s easy to imagine the pendulum swinging all the way back into the sort of perilous territory where little thought was given to such legitimate dangers as car crashes and second hand smoke. But for now anyway, our kids will benefit a lot more if we stop trying to protect them from the inevitable pain of being alive.

That knocking on the back of your seat? The chewing gum smeared on your tray table? The whining and screeching and crying - the incessant, high-decibel weeping?  All my fault.

I am the airline passenger you dread most of all, more even than the religious fanatic or flatulent fat guy.

I am the passenger accompanying small children.

I’ll also take the blame for the soggy Sun Chip that landed on your cashmere sweater during beverage service and the intense little sourpuss two rows up who’s been staring at you since takeoff.

I feel your pain. I agree wholeheartedly that children and air travel don’t mix - they bring out the worst in both. With kids on board, leisurely, meditative trips become chaotic, emotional ordeals. Likewise, sweet and docile children become spastic hellions upon boarding a commercial airliner.

And it’s only getting worse. As rising fuel costs and increased competition prompt airlines to cut back on little “non-essential amenities” like legroom, food and courtesy, the kids are getting crankier.

We grown-ups may gripe and moan scrunched into a middle seat for six hours with nothing to sustain us but a Sandra Bullock movie and a bag of peanuts, but kids aren’t so easily pacified. They won’t stand for it. They act out.

And so they make everyone around them miserable. You, my fellow passengers arrive at your destination incredulous about Kids Today and the parents who let them run riot. Meanwhile we parents are exhausted and embarrassed.

Add beleaguered airline staff to the mix and nightmare scenarios ensue. Last summer on a Continental Express flight in Houston, flight attendants objected when a 19-month-old boy “started saying ‘Bye, bye plane’ over and over,” according to news reports. “You need to shut your baby up,” the flight attendant reportedly told the mother, before adding: “It’s called Benadryl.”

A big controversy followed, with critics raising a stink about the insensitive flight attendant who would dare suggest doping a child.

While the stewardess sounded tactless, I can’t say I entirely disagree with her sentiment. Let’s just say that my 2-year-old always seems badly congested just before takeoff.

Benadryl has in fact been one source of relief during an insane marathon of family travel this month, flying with three kids under the age of eight across the U.S. before taking a quick round-trip jaunt from L.A. to Denmark. At this very moment my eight-year-old son is tipping a cup of Coke dangerously close to a dozing grandmother while my two-year-old repeats the word “cookie!” again and again (and again) in hopes the next utterance will convince his mother to give him one.

And I find myself wondering, must this be so awful? After all, families represent a sizable portion of air passengers—we may be a nuisance, but we’re also a goldmine.

We shell out for family vacations, family automobiles, family restaurants - so where’s our kid-friendly airline?

Rumors have circulated for years about Disney Air or some other startup devoted specifically to families, but the closest we’ve come is Family Airlines, an upstart outfit based in Las Vegas that submitted an application to fly with the US government earlier this year.

They’re definitely on to something. Let solo travelers fly in plush recliners and Zen-like quiet - bunch us families together in mutual chaos, wherein the only people we can annoy are our own kind (i.e. those accustomed to frequent meltdowns and the more frequent spilling of beverages).

Ideally, the planes will be painted in garish SpongeBob yellow and vivid Princess pink (ancillary revenue: kid branding product placement!). On board, swashbuckling pirate pilots and plush costumed stewardesses offer passengers headsets, juice boxes and balloon animals.

It’s easy to imagine the rest: TV monitors and video games at every seat and bubble machines spurting forth at takeoff. Turbulence could be known as “wacky bumpy time,” complete with dramatic sound effects and zany music.  Passengers could do the wave up and down the cabin and bounce beach balls between rows. Little ones would be free to take a spin on the zero-gravity ride or the center-aisle zip line.

And while we’re at it, let’s steal an idea from the old movie palaces and include a “crying room.” That way bawling infants and their weary parents could huddle together and save the rest of the passengers the racket.

Sure, much of this is probably impractical. When airplane bathrooms are no bigger than a broom closet, crying rooms or zip lines are probably out of the question. But on behalf of unruly family travelers everywhere and the innocent bystanders who can’t stand them, the airline industry should get creative and stop ignoring our pain.

Instead, capitalize on it. Forget the in-flight wi-fi—where’s our in-flight bouncy castle?

The popsicles are easy enough to explain. It’s July. And as we all know, nothing soothes the soul on a scorching July afternoon like a popsicle, preferably lime.

The mud balls are more mysterious. Grapefruit-sized and as smooth and spherical as marbles, the mud balls began piling up the week my kids started summer camp.

Other kids fill their days at camp with archery or horseback riding, but for my six-year-old daughter, camp is all about the mud. She gets off the bus every afternoon coated in grime and cradling that day’s creation, which must be immediately transported to the freezer for safe keeping and preservation.

This is a far cry from what I imagined my daughter would be doing back when my wife and I went looking for something to fill the interminably long summer break.

Our kids are just entering their prime camp-going years, so it was a relief to discover that summer camp is as strong as ever - in the U.S., 10 million kids attend camp every year, according to the American Camp Association. The fad these days is for “enrichment programs” that give children an academic or creative edge over their recreating peers.

This means more kids are being lured away from campfires and canoe trips for computer camps, fitness camps, language programs and college prep courses. Kids with even narrower interests can enroll in camps specializing in cuisine, robotics or even entrepreneurship.

The appeal of such programs is clear enough. Looked at today, traditional summer camps can seem hopelessly hokey or even backward, relics of a long-lost industrial age when middle class parents sent their kids out of the pre-air-conditioned cities to learn crafts, survival skills and Native American hokum.

But in this highly competitive and anxious new millennium, it’s worth pausing to ask: is camp still worthwhile? Do we really need macrame bracelets, food fights and “Kumbaya”?

The answer, of course, is yes. We absolutely need those things and all the backwards and hokey traditions that go along with them.

This is especially true now, as more kids are coddled by parents, bombarded by pressures to achieve and isolated by new technology. In the words of American Camp Association President Nancy Gibbs, today’s kids arrive at camp “digitally aware” but “less familiar with the ideas of sharing their space, their stuff or the attention of the adults around them.”

Amidst all that, summer camp replenishes an appreciation for nature, play and getting along in a big group. The killjoys who would keep our kids “on track” 12 months a year ignore these deep and durable lessons.
I’d go so far as to argue that camp stands alongside free market democracy and public education as one of the great institutions of the modern world.

I say this as a grown-up whose own hazy recollections of camp include nasty wedgies, horrendous food and the night my cabin-mates stuck my hand in a bowl of warm water to see if I’d pee in my sleeping bag (mercifully, I didn’t). On a happier note, there were unforgettable letters from home, intense crushes and epic games of capture the flag.

Summer camp, in short, was both heaven and hell—or as authors Roger Bennett and Jules Shell write in their brilliant new book “Camp Camp,” it was “where ‘Fantasy Island’ meets ‘Lord of the Files.’”

In fact, I see no reason why kids should get all the benefits of summer camp. Which is why next week when our kids’ day camp year ends, our whole family is packing up and heading to the wilds of Vermont for a week in one of the increasing number of summer camps that caters to entire families.

So while the kids are busy with their fellow campers, my wife and I will be free to roam the camp and make some memories of our own.

Mud balls, here I come.

The pooping occurred at approximately 6 a.m. after the 2-year-old leaped into bed and suggested that he’d be most grateful if I got up, escorted him downstairs and turned on his favorite program, a quasi-educational cartoon about a bilingual girl and her pet monkey.

What he actually said was this: “Daddy, up! Dora show! Dora show now!”

On most days, “Dora the Explorer” is good for a solid half-hour of pre-breakfast calm. But not today. Today Oscar motioned to his midsection and said he “hurt.”

Woefully misunderstanding the situation, I kissed him on the head and loosened his diaper. At which point he tore off the nappy and grabbed hold of my leg.

And then he pooped on my foot.

This may or may not have been an accident. Looking up at me in the messy slow-motion moments that followed, his expression could only be described as satisfied.

I have two things to say about this. First: It is truly remarkable how tolerant of bodily waste one becomes raising small children. Before I became a dad, the news that my everyday routine would include being defecated upon would have sent me diving for a home vasectomy kit. It is some measure of how far I’ve come (or how low I’ve sunk) that Oscar’s outburst prompted little more than an exasperated moan as I backed away in search of industrial-grade cleaning supplies.

All of which is well and good—there’s no point getting overly worked up or grossed out over something so ubiquitous to family life that we parents simply call it “number two.”

The second thing I have to say is harder to reckon with. Because the truth is this mishap was entirely in keeping with the general climate of aggression, crankiness, impatience and determined messiness that has come to characterize Oscar’s personality over the last year or so. He demands. He resists. He screeches.

We’ve reached the point where I find myself seriously pondering the question: Is my kid a dick, or is he just 2?

Because you never know. As much as it goes against the current mode of progressive, project-management-style parenting, I take it for granted that some kids are trouble right out of the gate. They’re the preschool gangsters and playground terrorists, flicking boogers and insults at those they’ve identified as too weak to fight back. Just as some kids are born sweet-tempered and naturally gentle, others arrive as thuggish as HMO claims adjusters.

But heaven forbid you ever speak this basic truth among parents. Acknowledging a child’s dickishness is truly one of the last taboos of modern family life.

A child may have “behavioral issues” or “developmental challenges,” but the basic character of a kid must never be called into question. It’s always, “Cody must be tired,” or “Dakota needs a snack” and never, “Wow, Taylor’s kind of a prick.”

The trouble, of course, is that it’s exceedingly difficult to distinguish garden-variety assholery from the normal psychosis of toddlerhood.

Some naughtiness is entirely normal, I know. The pileup of parenting books on my bedside table assures me that kids between 13 and 36 months often experience “challenging developmental steps.” They’re testing limits, exploring their autonomy, learning to control their emotions.

One need look no further than the table of contents of the modern standard, “What to Expect: The Toddler Years,” to get a quick and terrifying picture of how toddlers operate. Whole sections are devoted to “antisocial behavior,” “caveperson language,” “crankiness,” “annoying habits picked up at play group,” “jealousy,” “biting,” “wall art and other destructive drawing,” “toothbrushing tantrums,” “coat combat,” “repeated ‘no’s’” and “impatience (now!)”

You’d never know it looking at him, but my son samples freely from the standard menu of misbehavior. In pictures he’s doughy and sweet with a mop of blond hair, big blue eyes and an irresistible grin. He couldn’t be cuter, really. Most of the time, especially when he’s at play, in the bath or asleep, he is by any measure the most perfect creature ever to grace the earth. Then he whacks you on the head with a spoon, laughs like a banshee and tells his mother that her new earrings are ugly and stupid.

Much of this nastiness is standard-issue obstinacy, but it mostly takes the form of an obsession with control. Control and honor. It often feels like I’m living with an embittered and incontinent samurai who must enforce his will and save face at all costs. As such, he’s ritualistic and rigid, demanding that I and not his mother unbuckle him from the minivan or that he receive one red and one purple Flintstones vitamin or that his diluted fruit juice go in the cup with the frog and not the one with the rabbit. Any deviation from the script is met with screams of protest and a flurry of little flailing fists.

We’ve tried discipline, distraction and even strict adherence to his demands, but the maddening fact is you never really know when he’s going to go ballistic. At an airport security checkpoint recently, he blew up when we removed his shoes and then found a new, more extravagant pitch of tantrum when we tried to put them on again. Later at a Chinese restaurant, he dumped his noodles on the floor and then ran among the tables, licking the tops of the Hoisin sauce containers. At a family barbecue last week, he greeted an elderly relative with a swift punch to the nuts (mercifully, he aimed left).

I wish I could say I take all this in stride, but the fact is it bothers me more than I can say. I’ve heard people without kids complain that parents have a blind spot when it comes to their own kids, that otherwise reasonable adults are only too happy to gush over the preciousness of their progeny while their little darlings run riot like English football hooligans.

I seem to have the opposite problem; instead of glossing over my son’s misdeeds (or, say, chalking them up to standard-issue tomfoolery), I latch on to them as terribly important signifiers of my kid’s true identity. Far more troubling than the chaos or general untidiness of parenthood is the ongoing agony of distinguishing passing phases from the first signs of what sort of person your child is and will forevermore be.

Never mind that his days are spent gnawing on blocks and smearing mucus across his cheek. Somehow, I can’t help feeling that he came in fully loaded, that his identity is complete and while he may get better at sharing his toys and using the potty, this is pretty much it. This is him. Behold my son, the dick.

No wonder so few parents are willing to acknowledge their own kids’ misbehavior. Doing so not only insults your offspring, it inevitably leads to reflection. For if my kid is a red-hot pig, what does that make me?

And the truth is I’m very familiar indeed with many of the despicable aspects of my 2-year-old. I too am often overwhelmed by a desire to kick and scream and punch creepy old strangers in the nuts. Like my son, I’m often irrational, hate being told what to do and cranky when sleep-deprived. But, really, who isn’t? Aren’t we all, on some deep and rarely acknowledged level, temperamental toddlers? We’re just better at hiding and managing it, thanks to helpful crutches like cocktails, reality TV and cardio boxing classes.

For now all I can hope is that my son finds some crutches sooner rather than later. He just turned 3, actually, graduating out of “terrible twos” and into a period rumored to be less traumatic and tumultuous. My two oldest kids are 6 and 8, and I like to think they’ve never been anything less than the sweet and mostly respectful darlings they are today. If I’m being entirely honest, however, I’m pretty sure I could recall a horror story or three.

None of which lessens today’s trauma. Developmental misbehavior may be a normal part of growing up, but pooping on your dad? That’s just wrong.