Slate Magazine - Sandbox

Parenting memoirs from Ayelet Waldman and others.

Ann Hulbert — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:48:55 EST

Now that my children are on the brink of adulthood, I have a fantasy of writing a 21st-century bildungsroman about a daughter, or maybe a son, whose coming-of-age story is a variation on The Truman Show. As she's leaving for college, my character will suddenly discover that ever since gestation her existence has been chronicled in public, beginning with an in utero baby blog narrated by a rapt parent-to-be. Then follows an exhaustive new parent blog. By preschool, the mode has shifted to irreverently indiscreet columns—full of family chaos—written for a thriving online magazine with a big audience. Finally, the voluminous output gets shaped into one of the "bad parent" memoirs that have lately become so popular.

[more ...]

Juno and the culture wars.

Ann Hulbert — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:31:19 EST

I braced for a skirmish in the culture wars when reviews of Juno appeared the very same week that newspaper headlines announced a rise in the teenage birth rate—the first uptick in a decade and a half. "Not many [movies] are so daring in their treatment of teenage pregnancy, which this film flirts with presenting not just as bearable but attractive," wrote the New York Times' A.O. Scott, who added a wry homily: "Kids, please! Heed the cautionary whale." If the critic at liberal-media headquarters was mildly clucking, it was only a matter of time before anti-Hollywood moralizers would be up in arms about the corruption of youth (at the hands of a former-stripper-turned-screenwriter, Diablo Cody, no less). But among Juno's distinctive charms is that it seems to have disarmed both sides of the family values debate. And the feat gets pulled off in the wry style of the eponymous hero: The film doesn't offer up a formulaic or fervent call for family harmony. Instead, it takes idiosyncratic aim at everybody's pieties.

[more ...]

New studies of children's behavioral development.

Ann Hulbert — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:12:19 EST

Last week brought welcome news for young hellions and their stressed-out parents. "Studies on Students Say Bad Behavior Is Not Dooming" announced the front-page headline of a New York Times article about two recent scientific investigations into children's behavioral development. One of the studies found that "kindergartners who are identified as troubled do as well academically as their peers in elementary school," according to the Times; in an accompanying online podcast, the reporter concluded it was time for parents to relax. The other study, which compared brain images of kids with and without attention deficit disorder, found that the prefrontal cortex in children with ADHD matures normally, just more slowly. "Hyperactive kids catch up with peers," was the Los Angeles Times' heartening headline.

[more ...]

The irresistible appeal and pathos of Michael Apted's Up series.

Ann Hulbert — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:28:13 EST

Michael Apted's Up series—the seventh installment of which, 49 Up, was shown on PBS this week—was born in 1964. Produced by Granada Television's "World in Action" documentary team, the first episode, Seven Up, was irresistible, as were its stars: a socially diverse group of 20 British 7-year-olds, the cohort from which the "executive and shop steward of 2000" would be drawn, the narrator explained. The children, won over by a kindly off-camera questioner who didn't condescend, shared their views and a bit of their souls. They spoke about their hopes: The earnest Bruce, from a private boarding school in Surrey, confessed his desire to "go into Africa to teach people who are not civilized to be, more or less, good." They revealed their philosophies of life: "Is it important to fight?" asked irrepressible Tony from the East End of London. "Yes!" They offered their opinions of the rich ("They're nuts"—Tony again—"You just have to punch them") and the poor ("I don't think much of their accents," sniffed upper-crust John, adding that he didn't mind the people). With especially bright eyes, they described their plans for the future: "When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut," volunteered Neil from Liverpool, the most adorable live wire of them all. "But if I can't be an astronaut, I think I'll be a coach driver."

[more ...]

In the trenches with U.S. educators.

Ann Hulbert — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 17:25:06 EST

It's back-to-school season, and students aren't alone in suffering from a case of nerves. Linda Perlstein, a former Washington Post reporter who spent 2005-06 embedded in Tyler Heights Elementary School in Annapolis, Md., opens Tested: One American School Struggles To Make the Grade with a snapshot of its anxiety-ridden principal.* "You could not tell by looking that Tina McKnight was in pain," Perlstein writes of the woman desperate to make her all-minority school a success in the No Child Left Behind era. "Her back throbbed, sore from hours of bending over the toilet, possibly from food poisoning but more likely from stress." At the opposite end of the spectrum, Alec Klein spent the 2006 spring term in New York City's most selective public high school, Stuyvesant. In A Class Apart: Prodigies, Pressure, and Passion Inside One of America's Best High Schools, he introduces a principal equally wracked with tension. "Shaggy-haired, bearded, emaciated, and incredibly tired," Stanley Teitel "buries his head in his hands, uttering, 'God, I'm not going to get through these weeks.' "

[more ...]