A parenting riddle, parenting by way of appearances

Scanned from the New Yorker magazine.

Saw the above cartoon in the New Yorker last week and had to chuckle. But it got me thinking about what it says about our parenting society and values.

I started asking myself questions…how many parents make parenting choices based solely on appearances or rather, how many parents give the illusion of their parenting ideology based solely on appearances?

Think about it. How many parents have run out for milk in the middle of the night when their baby was sound asleep because they knew nobody would ever notice? How many mothers say they supplement their baby with formula once in a blue moon or only when they’re traveling, yet only nurse once a day if even at all? Who has let their youngster ride their bike without a helmet and then saw a neighbor and yelled, “Hey, you forgot to put on your helmet,” or driven a block out of laziness and didn’t bother buckling their kid in, and decided if caught, they would say, “Oh, my gosh. I can’t believe I’m so sleep deprived I forgot to buckle little Johnny in his carseat!” How many parents buy organic cookies for their delicate flowers and then make sure they work  into almost every parenting conversation how they ONLY give their baby snowflakes organic everything?…Look at me! I give my children 100% pure wheat grass juice for breakfast!

Well, if they’re the type of parent in the comic above, we may never know because they’ll never tell. They’d never admit to being an imperfect parent because appearances are everything.

Apparent is the comic’s audience though of those parents who can laugh at themselves and not take themselves too seriously. Guess those are the parents reading ‘The New Yorker’, eh?