Just Can't Win: The Story of the Ultimate Curmudgeon

I enjoy read Slate.com, so much so that it holds a prized position in my Google Reader, and one of my favorite columns to read is Thursday's "Dear Prudence." In one of Prudie's (as her regular readers fondly call her) responses, she references Joseph Epstein's article "The Kindergarchy" in The Weekly Standard.

Curious to the applicability of Epstein's article to Prudie's response I navigated my wee little self on over to the article itself. Yes, yes...this means I actually READ part of TWS. I know. The gist of this guy's article is that recent years have demonstrated a shift in family attitudes to have familial life completely centered around kids, and a bit of nostalgia about how Epstein himself was raised. Whereas I think Epstein has some good points regarding the excess parents can shower upon kids, he criticizes current parents to comical proportions that even the curmudgeoniest curmudgeon you know would be proud of. This is, of course, after writing over half his article about how wondrous his own childhood was...the irony of which instead of being guilty about raving and obsessing over his children's upbringing, he raves and obsesses about his own.

From his article: "The names Mackenzie and Gideon are a reminder of how important the naming of children has become under the Kindergarchy. No more Edward, Robert, David, when you can have Luc, Guthrie, and Colby; no more Jane, Barbara, Lois, when Lindsay, Courtney, and Kelsey are available. Sometimes, in the naming of children, there is a dip back to the deliberately out-of-date--Jake and Max, Emily and Becky--but such names are tainted by an historical falsity..."

So....apparently you are supposed to refer to your child as "hey you, kid!" lest you become too trendy or too falsely modest in naming your child.

In all honestly, I can't say I read the article to the end....the boring self-righteous nature out-weighed the irony.