DADWAGON

This week, my colleague Jennifer Senior at New York magazine published a spectacular cover story that falls deep into Dadwagon territory. Headlined “I Love My Children. I Hate My Life,” it’s a complex piece of reporting about something parents don’t easily admit: that, in study after study, they are noticeably less happy than their childless neighbors. And on behalf of Dadwagon, I was also able to arrange our very own IM interview with Jennifer Senior, wrangled through the complex technique of going over to her desk and asking her.

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4:40 p.m.: Christopher Bonanos:

So, Ms. S.: Congratulations, first off. BIG score this week. Are you getting much hate mail along with all the love?

4:42 p.m.: Jennifer Senior

Not sent directly to me, thank God. (Except in one instance.) But there are more than a few ad hominem comments on our website now, all of them basically saying I must be a miserable person and they pity me.

4:43 p.m.: Christopher Bonanos:

Which brings us to the question everyone’s wondering about: Do you think you, personally, are unhappier since your son arrived?

4:46 p.m.: Jennifer Senior

Well, I think I’m a good example of exactly the distinction I make at the end of the piece. I know I’m having less fun. But I also know I’m much, MUCH less depressed. Before I had a kid, I remembered thinking to myself: Is this what my life is going to be? About going out to dinner? It’d be one thing if I’d been using all of my child-free years really imaginatively or altruistically–covering wars, living in unusual places, working for NGOs, whatever. But I wasn’t. I was right here, writing, day in and day out. The fact that I wasn’t making sacrifices for someone else really embarrassed me, at a certain point. And depressed me. Though the irony, of course, is that I had to create the person for whom I’d be making the sacrifices–so it all started with a very selfish act.

4:49 p.m.: Christopher Bonanos:

Interesting! I would’ve said “well, I’m not any MORE depressed.” Which is a considerably less ringing endorsement, but not bad either.

4:49 p.m.: Jennifer Senior

I just did a spit-take, reading that.

Maybe it’s because I, as the woman, do more work than you, as the guy?

Keeping busy eases depression a lot, as you know. Especially if you have no choice.

4:50 p.m.: Christopher Bonanos:

That makes sense. I probably am the slacker in our house.

Though the urbanite-careerist aspect of what you say is interesting… does the phenomenon you describe have a class aspect? That is, are two-income professional couples likelier to find themselves depressed when they have kids?

4:52 p.m.: Jennifer Senior

Yes. In fact, I think it’s one of the ‘s better critiques of my piece–that this is really a story about the self-invented misery of the middle class. The thing is:

1. Just because there’s a class basis to it doesn’t make it any less of a problem, just a slightly more rarefied one, and

2. This is a problem that is certainly trickling down: There are lots of dual-earner families out there don’t make much money but feel intense pressures to aggressively cultivate their children in their spare time, though they don’t have much of it.

But to just circle back to your original point: I think the longer you wait to have children–which the middle class is more apt to do–the more startled you are by the contrast between the before and the after. And the contrast is fine, of course. But expectations have to be adjusted. You can’t think that children are going to be an extension of your old life. You’re raising them because it’s your duty, and you want THEM to be happy.  I think about my mother: For her, having a child at 22 was an act of independence. (She had no money, btw.) But by the time I had my kid (at 38, with more means), I thought I’d lost a good deal of independence.

5:00 p.m.: Christopher Bonanos:

That’s completely plausible. Because, in the end, it’s largely an economic issue, isn’t it? To live an urbanite’s life these days, you need two largish incomes. To do that, you have to work like a mule. And to do THAT and have children, you are essentially committing to a decade and a half of constant crazed busyness.

5:01 p.m.: Jennifer Senior

Right. And don’t forget that more than half the globe now lives in cities. This is the lot of many, many, many people.

5:03 p.m.: Christopher Bonanos:

Plus, as you say in the story, Americans always overdo it, because we want our kids to have every possible leg up. So (for example) we can’t just feed them whatever is in the freezer–it has to be the best. Which means organic-local-sustainable free-range cruelty-free radishes that can be got only from one farmer at the Greenmarket on alternate Tuesdays, necessitating a special errand. That’s two hours that could’ve been spent zoning out.

5:05 p.m.: Jennifer Senior

Totally. I have a friend who I would have assumed was totally immune to that kind of thing, but she got very upset at the first sign of sleep trouble with her child, and called in a sleep consultant. And I was like, Whoa, that exists? A sleep consultant? You have a BABY. By definition, isn’t a baby’s sleep a little hinky?

5:07 p.m.: Christopher Bonanos:

Everything has to be high-performance.

5:07 p.m.: Jennifer Senior

Which is sort of crazy. Because let’s face it: Babies are pretty low-performance.

5:07 p.m.: Christopher Bonanos:

So is there a solution to this? Anything parents can do to minimize their misery? Even if it’s just a matter of gaming their expectations?

5:10 p.m.: Jennifer Senior

Well, I’d say ignore most of the books and gear, for starters. I remember trying to make it through Weissbluth’s book about sleep, and halfway through, I decided to toss it, and I was a much happier person, not least because my kid isn’t a generic kid, but a particular one, and seemed in no way to demonstrate a single tendency this man seemed to be discussing. I also indulged in buying him a fancy toy–one of these big bead mazes made from recycled wood, blah blah blah–and his favorite game, it turns out, is filling cups in the sink. So, you know. Improvising has its virtues. And more generally speaking, thinking of your children as people who fit in, rather than run the show, will help everyone. It’s jut a sense I have. I say this as much as a step-parent to older kids as I do as a biological parent of a younger one. Letting a child know that the world’s bigger than him- or herself is a good thing.

5:12 p.m.: Christopher Bonanos:

That sounds extremely sane. By the way, did your stepkids have anything to say about this?

5:18 p.m.: Jennifer Senior

Ha. Nope. Neither’s in New York at the moment. But if someone calls their attention to it. I’m guessing they’ll be fine. If they’re not, I can always point out that they’re free to freeze me out once they start paying their own rent.

5:19 p.m.: Christopher Bonanos:

And what do you think your son will have to say, when he eventually grows up and reads this? (Or the book that this could very well become.)

5:20 p.m.: Jennifer Senior

If I write a book? That he was the rare 21st century child who MADE his parents money.

5:21 p.m.: Christopher Bonanos:

I think that’s a nice place to end this. Thanks again.

When I arrived in Vienna, Austria, the other day, I had a horrible surprise at the airport: My suitcase, which had started the journey with two wheels, now had only one, courtesy of the fine baggage handlers at British Airways. Luckily, the airline rep inside Customs told me they’d replace it—that is, let me spend up to 300 euros on a new one. Right away, I bought a fancy new ultralight Samsonite.

And a few hours later, I totally regretted the purchase. That’s because I saw this:

For those of you who can’t be bothered to watch the video, it’s a series of suitcases designed by Agent for traveling dads like me. There’s the SURFN, with a fold-down plank for toddlers to coast on; the RIDN, with a soft seat-like top you can rest on; and the STROLLN, which has a built-in stroller-esque seat for babies.

Unfortunately, these seem to be more concepts than actual products. But just in case Agent is wondering about demand, or is looking for investors/manufacturers, let me just say that I would probably buy one as it became available, and not just because, since I’m a travel writer and dadblogger, it’s tax-deductible. As I said in the headline: Want!

According to Ad Age, Coca-Cola has decided to find “digital influencers” in South Korea to help sell their carbonated beverages. Digital influencer, I should point out, means in this case–Mommy blogger.

Now I don’t know what kind of Mommy bloggers they have over in South Korea, but here in the USA, I’d say that the man blogger is just as digitally influential. Actually, what I should say is that the daddy bloggers are just as digitally non-influential as the mommy bloggers. In fact, if I were a giant corporate behemoth hawking unhealthy sodas and a smile, why would I want to be associated in the minds of the buying public with either group?

Who knows. But if Coca-cola is looking to waste its money on parent blogs, I think a bit of the corporate largesse should come the DadWagon way. Fair is fair. And I think we’re pretty big in Japan.

The Daily Beast has posted a roundup of cockamamie-yet-entirely-believable studies that purport to tell us whether we’re predisposed to divorce. Risk factors include some obvious things (marriage before age 18; couples where one person wants kids much more than the other) and some not so obvious but plausible ones (women in the military; travel + stress = frayed marriages, I guess). But then there’s this:

7. If you didn’t smile for photographs early in life, your marriage is five times more likely to end in divorce than if you smiled intensely in early photographs. Two tests, the first involving college yearbook photos and the second involving miscellaneous photos taken during participants’ youths, yielded this finding. “People who are optimistic— and that’s what smiles tend to show in childhood—find it easier to get along with people,” including the people they’re married to, asserts Coontz, who is also the author of Marriage: A History. Optimistic types “also find it easier to put up with periods in life that might be difficult.” Nonetheless, she warns: “Optimism is certainly not going to protect you from everything, so it’s no guarantee.”

FIVE TIMES MORE LIKELY? My wife and I both routinely grimace in front of the lens. Does that mean, in the aggregate, that our risk of divorce is ten times what it might be? A full order of magnitude? C’mon now.

On the other hand, we’re both fatalists, so maybe our own pessimism inoculates each of us against the other’s similarly dark outlook. That is, neither of us ever expects anything to go right, and we are rarely disappointed–which means we get along uncommonly well.