Baby Jail
The phone rings. I take my 11 month old daughter from my hip and set her on the kitchen floor to answer. It is my friend Nate asking if I am available to come by and help him out with a project. “Sure.” I say, “But I’ll have to bring Hadley so would that work?” “Oh!” my friend exclaims, “why don’t you just put her in baby jail?” My friend is, of course, lovingly suggesting I bring along a playpen. Hadley could safely play in her “cell” while we got some work done. I laugh, and pause. “Do you have one of those?” he asks. “Yeah” I reply, “but it won’t work anyway. She won’t stay in there peacefully. Plus, we only use ours for sleeping. No one uses those to play anymore!” Nate’s own children are now 17 and 14 years old. Half a generation away from my own, it really feels like the idea of good parenting is changing fast. Like the amazing growth of technology, the acceleration of changes to the idea of a responsible parent has exploded. Perhaps it is ...
