The Perfect Baby Blog

Perfect babies, perfect parents, and FAILure

Friday, August 7th, 2009

“My child must succeed! I will give her every opportunity to succeed! She will learn to write tricky words like ‘constitution’ in a lovely, calligraphic hand, but her vocabulary will never include ‘failure’!” It was such modest claims that inspired me to satirize competitive parenting in The Perfect Baby Handbook. Now, it turns out, that […]

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New York Times food critic comes out as a “baby bulimic”

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Or, more precisely, a “toddler bulimic.” In this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, esteemed restaurant critic Frank Bruni confesses, extensively and juicily that, from an early age, he was an insanely motivated eater. And a violently needy one. By Bruni’s account, adapted from his forthcoming memoir Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater, […]

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How the New York Times envisions the “end of over-parenting”

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

Tensions are running high at Perfect Baby Handbook Worldwide Headquarters on Montague Street. It seems our services are no longer needed! At least according to this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, in which Lisa Belkin proclaims that the days of “helicoptering, smothering mothering…overly enmeshed parenting” or “get-them-into-Harvard-or-bust parenting” are numbered. It seems as though the […]

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Newsflash: Mozart was average, just practiced a lot!

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

Kids of America, beware! The New York Times has just given your parents the okay to ruin your lives. Op-ed writer/sadist David Brooks, summarizing recent research into the genesis of genius, dismisses Mozart’s innate talent and credits his dad, Mr. Mozart Sr., for whipping the lame young composer into a superhuman: What Mozart had, we […]

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