A Post In Which I Review Dollhouse's "Instinct"

So. I think that Firefly is Joss Whedon's most structurally perfect show. Each episode could (theoretically, as I've never tried it) work as a stand alone. Each episode of the 14 that were made also worked within the overarching story lines and themes. Buffy the Vampire Slayer never really caught to the "stand alone episodes working within a dominant theme" thing. Certain seasons were better at it than others (season 5, for instance, did a pretty good job, whereas season 4 was a mish mosh of absolutely brilliant stand alones that existed along side episodes that dealt primarily with the season-long arc). Angel, which I'm significantly less well versed in, especially once we go beyond seasons 1 and 2, also never could quite master the balancing act Firefly achieved so seemingly effortlessly, though they tended to go too far in the "focusing on the dominant theme to the detriment of the individual episode" thing. Buffy is still my absolute favorite thing ever, but I can give Firefly props for doing a hard thing in a genius fashion.

Why start off this post with that? Because Dollhouse doesn't have it. Dollhouse doesn't have it in a couple of different ways, but I'll start off with this one: simply due to the overarching theme and structure of the series' main plot, stand alone (or even stand alone-ish) episodes are significantly weaker than what Dollhouse is about. This episode, Instinct, was better than most stand alone(ish) season 1 episodes in terms of making the Imprint an actual character with an actual persona and an actual, workable story. This episode, Instinct, was better than most of the stand alone(ish) season 1 episodes in terms of taking a trope and twisting it on its ear. How many horror films are made like this one? I don't watch a lot of horror, but the scene with Echo coming back from the "dead" to reclaim her child and take out her captor/killer is fairly recognizable stuff. And that? Was done well. It's just that, unlike Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, the stand alone episode falls far short of the interesting contained in the mystery of the Dollhouse itself. In Buffy, we could take an episode out to deal with Joyce's death. We could take an episode out to mind wipe everyone and have a bit of fun. We could take an episode out to turn a swim team into a bunch of fish (okay, maybe I'm one of the only people around appreciative of that last one). On Angel, we could take an episode to turn Angel into a puppet. We could take an episode to go to the ballet. We could take some time out to deal with Doyle's ex-wife. And I'm not entirely sure what Dollhouse is missing that makes the unbalance it contains less palatable than the wonder that was the unbalance Buffy and Angel struck - but I think it comes down to this: the nature of Buffy and Angel as shows was that we were seeing people we'd grown to love do sometimes crazy things, and we cared because their individual lives were just as important- if not oftentimes more - than that thing that made this season a separate journey from the one that preceded it and the one that would come after. Not only was what they were dealing with generally interesting, but they themselves were a familiar sort of interesting as well.

Dollhouse, if its stand alone episodes were about Topher or Adelle or Boyd, may be slightly more in that vein. As it is now, Dollhouse's stand alones are primarily about the trials and tribulations and wants of people we don't know and don't care about, and the Personas the Actives take on in order to fit into those people's individual worlds.

Take, for instance, this episode. "Instinct". Nate Jordan seems like a pretty okay guy dealing with some pretty traumatic events and who had enough money to make a custom wife and mother for himself and his child while he processed his grief. And I empathize with that plight, even as I consider this episode the bookend to Joel Myner recreating that magic moment he never got to have with his wife in "Man on the Street". But, even though I empathize with Nate Jordan, I don't particularly care about Nate Jordan or his life, even if he does have one of the more adorable infants ever on TV. In order to succeed, and even with the dire news emerging I truly hope Dollhouse does, Whedon is going to have to figure out how to do what he's never done before - make a show not so much about the characters but about the message. Or, he's going to have to focus almost all of his attentions on the Dollhouse, because regular people's lives and what they want Actives for are about as interesting as you'd imagine. Which is to say, even with the money to buy an Active for any length of time, not very interesting at all. Certainly nothing compared to governments turning teenage girls into killing machines, Vampire Slayers dealing with apocalypses on an almost yearly basis, vampires fighting for redemption and dealing with the scurvy demon underbelly of L.A., or a powerful corporation turning people into zombies who can be programmed and reprogrammed. The ethics behind that are far more interesting than what the people are actually programmed to be.

So, now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's get on to this episode. And how it actually is pretty good, once all the above is taken into consideration. Let's talk, first, about that Man in the Street comparison. Because I think it's an apt one. Refresher: Joel Myner is a bit of a dick. Electric Peeps has more on this, and it should be read, but the gist is this:

Whatever motivated Joel to do things the way he did, it wasn’t love. His desire to be a hero in his wife’s eyes turns him into something of a villain, a man responsible for the death of his wife. His engagement with the Dollhouse is an extension of his self-deception, both his chance to play the hero and the proof that he is not.

Nate Jordan? I'm not sure if he is a dick. He's a man in mourning. He's a man who has done a dickish thing. But, unlike Joel, he gets that what he's done was not the best thing in the world to do. He is also a widower, but instead of recreating his wife so he could have her, he was recreating his wife so someone could love their child, until he could do it himself. He is more in line with what Pointy anticipated the first time around:

I think that hearing one’s sainted wife’s words and seeing her gestures in an entirely different body would end up being kind of traumatic, an especially cruel reminder that the one you love was gone. I thought it would be heartbreaking to watch the widower growing more upset, and watching Echo/Departed’s resulting confusion and distress at the realization that she was upsetting someone she thinks she loves.

Nate, as "Emily" explains, "just... went away, you know? It's like the person I knew isn't there any more. It's like he's been replaced by a stranger". And that? Is because "Emily" is the stranger, replacing a beloved wife. What stops this from being a reprise of Joel is the fact Nate won't be going back to the Dollhouse for replacement Karens until the end of time, and also because he recognizes what he's done to Echo:

I'm sorry. This is my fault. I put you through hell.

And that makes his story different. It doesn't make his initial turning to the Dollhouse better; but it makes Nate better.

Now, to what I didn't like about the assignment: "The maternal instinct is the purest". Blech. Bleckity Blech. Once more, for good measure. Blech! My problem is not that Echo flipped the hell out and punched Topher in the nose. My problem is that this particular imprint was so powerful, because it was connected to motherhood, that Echo would punch out Topher and go looking for her child. In the episode before, she could tell that she was all the imprints, but none of them were her. Why not now? I can't really even form my utter gahness at such a development into words, so I'll just crib from EW:

But I just keep coming back to the idea that what turned Echo into a homicidal crazy person was the glandular change that allowed her to nurse. Her girl parts. Couch it in whatever science-y mumbo jumbo you’d like, that’s what sends her off the deep end: Chicks are crazy because they’re chicks. They just get…hysterical. For a dude like Joss Whedon, who’s made a career of writing strong female characters, for a writing staff with its fair share of ladies on it, for an episode that was WRITTEN BY TWO WOMEN…that’s kind of inexcusable.

Yeah, that's it. Right there. That, and the fact that motherhood has a tendency to be portrayed as such a sainted thing, that any mother - even one suffering from technologically induced personality removal - would be able and willing to go to any lengths to get their child back. Because that's just 'natural'. You can't protect your kid, always and forever? Bad mother. This is why Marlin in Finding Nemo is considered an incredible father; but if Marlin were Marla, it would just be another Jodie Foster film.

I agree with EW on one other turn, and that is Eliza Dushku gave her best acting performance to date here. Yes, there were times when she reverted to her stash of acting quirks (she tends to do this squinty thing with her eyes - for every single emotion and for every single character); but for the most part, she did a very good job becoming the character(s). Her line as Echo to Nate:

I'm not real. Do you know who's real?

Was like whoa. I'd put it up there with some of Summer Glau's moments. The difference is, of course, that Summer Glau is continually brilliant and heartachingly wonderful. And Eliza Dushku is still hit and miss.

This is already really long, but I forgot to mention him last week, so here's Wesley! Or, rather, Daniel Perrin. It is exceedingly odd to hear Alexis Denisof's real - American - accent. It's slightly surreal. Also, a little nasally. What I see so far, I like. And what I see so far is a guy who isn't Ballard; that is, a guy who isn't really interested in playing the White Knight so much as he is in righting a wrong that hit him too close to home. His vendetta isn't specifically to save the girl. It is to avenge his dying mother, and maybe do some good along the way. Right away, though, Perrin comes off as less of a creeper than Ballard ever did. And I speak as someone who doesn't dislike Ballard.

I also have to say that I love his wife, Cindy. Her "What about the man with the tin foil hat? Didn't he say Rossum mailed his liver to Saturn?" combined with, "Focus. You are Foil Hat Man's only hope" quickly made her a favorite. Plus, they seem so supportive of each other in the five minutes we've gotten to see them.

Also of note? Adelle arranging for Madeline to come back to the Dollhouse. I'm sure there were actual diagnostic tests that could - and should - be run. But it seems so... interesting that the week after she's told Ballard she got his number in regard to Mellie versus Echo that she gets Madeline back into the Dollhouse.

Other random things: Madeline correcting Ballard when he asks her if she's happy, telling him, "I'm not sad" versus Echo choosing to remain fully in contact with her emotions, because "I'm awake now. I don't want to go back to sleep". In Whedon's world, generally, pain is necessary. Pain is the flip side of the passion for the fight. Pain is what allows us to know of pleasure. Pain is not a side effect of existence but a necessary part. To not feel pain is not the preferred option. The preferred option is to feel pain, to know what goes bump in the night, and to face it with all the knowledge you could amass. What the Dollhouse offers, if Whedon's prior works are any indication (and I think they are) is a false sort of existence - it is the ability to sleep walk through life. And awake, for Whedon, is always better.

Grade: B-

Quote of the Episode: The human mind is like Van Halen. If you just pull out one piece and keep replacing it, it just degenerates.

Unplanned Children & Guilt

"My doctor told me there is nothing you will ever regret about having the baby, but he was like, 'You may regret not having the baby.'"

I am the product of an unplanned, unexpected, and - in the beginning - unwanted pregnancy.

I've known this for, oh, more or less forever. I've also had the suspicion, though not confirmed, that an abortion talk happened somewhere in that early period when my mother was still freaking out and desperately wanting her sporty two door convertible. My parents are both ardently pro-choice, so it would be strange if there weren't the barest minimum of a conversation about it.

This hasn't had much of an impact on my life. At least, not the negative kind. Because even though I am the product of an unplanned, unexpected, and initially unwanted pregnancy, I was (and am) a beloved child. I am also a wanted child, and it has always been easy for me to recognize that the two issues - unwanted pregnancy versus wanted and valued child - are separate and very different.

That doesn't mean, however, that my parents don't have regrets, regrets directly relating to me, and my being born. My mother, for instance, still can't get over her loss of the sporty two door. My impending birth was also the reason she missed the funeral of her favorite aunt, and then I didn't even have the common decency to be born that day. No, I waited until my due date, because I'm generally punctual but not excessively early. I'm pretty sure they regretted having me that time I got a D in English and then burned my report card in an effort to destroy the evidence. I'm also fairly certain the time I didn't come home or call was another one of those "regret ever having her" times in my parents' lives. There were other moments of regret. Trips they couldn't take, money they didn't have, time they no longer had to work on their relationship. And although I know I'm not the center of the universe and that my parents would have in all probability found other things to fight passionately about if I didn't exist, I'm sure there were many times when they were fighting about me one or both of them wondered if their lives - their (potentially not legal) marriage - would have been better off if instead of having sex they just watched some television that fateful night.

This isn't to say that my parents don't take a certain amount of pleasure in being parents. They do. They revel in it. And because my parents weren't ready to be parents, our relationship has a weird, slightly dysfunctional, side to it where we are and have been friends as much as I'm their daughter for most of my life. As a side note, this whole side to my relationship with them is one of the reasons I never rebelled.

So, even though I have a ridiculously good - if dysfunctional - relationship with my parents, even though (Ds in English aside), I have (generally) been a rather low stress venture for both of my parents in terms of parenting, even though my parents love me and respect me and, almost more importantly, really like me, they have still had regrets. Some big, and some small. Some more long term, and some that were more like flashes. Because part of life is regretting the path(s) not taken.

This is why I find the response Kourtney Kardashian recounted her doctor as saying, the one at the top of the post, as being so entirely disingenuous. Because it simplifies life. It makes it seems as though children never cause regret, and as though abortion always does. That isn't true. Children, even wanted, planned for children, come with frustrations and pains and - yes - regret. As much as children bring light and life and joy and love and wonderment and fulfillment, they bring a lot of the negative stuff as well.

More than pushing birth, though, claiming that going through a pregnancy will result in no regrets is harmful because it creates an environment where the women who do experience regret are shamed for that completely natural feeling. It creates an environment where women keep those feelings bottled up, don't talk about it because it is so unnatural, because to talk about it is to be a bad mother. And that is the last thing a doctor should be pressing upon any woman. Because it contributes to a view that motherhood is an inherently pleasurable act, an act all women gain fulfillment from and enjoy doing. An act that in no way at times makes them want to rip their hair out or wonder when they get to go shopping for their own clothing, when they get to take care of themselves and get their two door in the midst of bottles and surly teenagers and mini vans.

We need to recognize that most decisions carry with them a bittersweet realization of the path unchosen. And if that bittersweetness comes when we order a chocolate-mint chocolate chip ice cream cone and then lust after the vanilla-mint chocolate chip ice cream in a cup, then it comes in conjunction with more important decisions. We need to fully recognize the effects of parenthood. We need to talk about them, air out those particular facets of life, and still remain positive that for a lot of people - most people - children are well worth any of the regret they bring. That is an adult conversation. The other one is stuff of fairy tales.

The American Family, Kate & Allie, and Co-Parenting

I recently bought my father the first season of Kate & Allie, a show he (inexplicably) loves and that focuses on two divorcees raising their children together in New York City. It was a present for Father's Day or my parents' anniversary or something of that sort, and rewatching it - along with the reruns of Kate & Allie that are forever playing on the WE Channel - while reading Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life by Dolores Hayden seems to have left some subliminal messages in my head.

Because when I was listening to yesterday's Talk of the Nation today (via podcast) about Geoffrey Canada's organization Harlem Children's Zone, something clicked. The thing that clicked is this: Canada said,

I was raised by a single mom, and it is so hard to raise children by yourself. There are so many obstacles, and yet we have this crisis in the country. There are lots of families that there's only one adult raising a child and they're trying to work and take care of the child at the same time. And the country has not made the kind of investment to help families who really have no other support. You know, when I grew up, my grandmother lived three or four blocks away, so we could stay with her and still be in sort of the loving confines of a structured family environment. Many families don't have this today, and so one of the real challenges is to make sure that we encourage fathers to stay with their children, support their children, stay with their spouses; and mothers to really make sure that you're forming relationships that will last for this child. So that these young people come up with two parents.

What clicked is that we as a culture are so focused on the ideal nuclear family, and that may not always be the absolute best possibility. I was with Canada up and through "encourage fathers to stay with their children, support their children". But I don't think that fathers (or mothers) have to stay with a spouse in order to continue to support the children, and that in many cases, there is a valid reason why the romantic (or sexual) relationship responsible for creating the child in question ended. Canada goes on to say,

It doesn't matter what the family looks like; there just needs to be two adults always focused on this child to maximize the chances.

And I agree with him.

I was raised in a two parent home, but I wasn't raised by two parents. More specifically, I was raised by a lot more people than just my two parents. My father has three best friends, two of whom have wives and one of whom who has an extremely doting mother. My mother has one best friend. My father has a sister, and had his parents - along with a fairly large extended family. I was the first child born in my generation, and for a long time I was one of the centers (or close to it) of almost all of these people's lives. They were frequently present, to the point where one of my uncles came on vacations with us and had his own room in our condo. My birthday is used for pin numbers and passwords, both for the people I'm related to and the people I'm not. I had (and have) a structured family environment, even though I'm not biologically related to a great deal of that support system.

Which brings me to Redesigning the American Dream, a book about architecture and community planning, and how America's development boom after World War II both reinforced gender norms and our isolated society. In it, Hayden explores why Levittown became the American Dream, as well as other, more innovative and diverse, housing projects in America and around the world. Some of the ideas in the book seemed alien while I was reading and after I had finished reading, like the Danish housing project Tynngarden, where "each family gave up 10 percent of its allocated interior square footage to create a shared neighborhood center for ten to fifteen families" and whose courtyard " contained mailboxes, the washing machines and dryers, a community kitchen, and a large two-level space for activities planned by residents". Seemed alien, until I started thinking about housing, how expensive it is, how expensive electricity is, and how expensive and time-consuming maintaining the ability to afford a residence is, especially when there are children.

Canada's program does an awesome job for low-income children, but I started wondering, sitting bored in my little cubicle, if his organization and countless other communities could be helped if we started rethinking our vision of housing and our idea of what constitutes a family, and what it means to be a community. Which is where this circles back to Kate & Allie. Kate and Allie had it slightly easier. They were childhood friends. But in today's world of internet access and social networking sites, there could be some sort of Harmony or Match.com for single parents (or even singles, low-income or otherwise) that could match up similar parenting philosophies or needs. There could be apartments buildings constructed with these kinds of created families, this kind of structured family unit, in mind. Apartment buildings that had adequate - if not huge - living spaces, that could support two co-mingling, co-parenting groups, or three, or more. If we stop thinking about the romantic couple in the nuclear family as the absolute most solid support system for a family, if we start accepting that mothers (and fathers) can form other types of relationships, platonic relationships that will last and be good for the child, then other ways to mitigate poverty and inadequate child care/supervision could develop, as another way to make a parent's and partner's absence less devastating.

This is in no way an attempt to prove fathers useless. I think fathers are important. My father is one of my favorite people, and I am who I am because of him. He has been my greatest cheerleader, my favorite sparring partner, my book buddy, my best friend, my confidante, my history teacher, my ethics teacher, and when I was younger, also my playmate and my song and story man all in one 6'2" package. I think Canada is right, other organizations are right, to push for fathers to remain in their children's lives even if they are no longer in their children's mothers' lives. But that doesn't change the fact that fathers do disappear, and working to make it less acceptable for them to do so is only half the battle. The other half is providing for those children and partners left behind.

Saturday Sesame Street

A friend of mine has a truly awesome library in her town, so in the couple of hours before Dollhouse last night, we went there to peruse the music section. And lo, we came away with some classically good finds; like, German Drinking Songs, and The Music of Russia, and Puccini's La Boheme (I don't know if there is any other La Boheme, but I like saying "Puccini"). Also, some Sam Phillips, Led Zeppelin, and The Shirelles. And also, Buffy Sainte-Marie. Buffy Sainte-Marie is a pretty awe-inspiring person, and her appearances on Sesame Street were great as well. Here's a short one, about breastfeeding:

I'm going to go listen to my borrowed CD!

A Weird Balancing Act

Here's the thing: I think political families should be off-limits when it comes to political campaigns. Cindy McCain's past problems, McCain's adopted daughter, Palin's 5 children -one pregnant, one with Down's Syndrome- Obama's children, none of those things should matter. We shouldn't scoff at Palin or utilize her daughter for political points. We shouldn't point and laugh at how the woman with an abstinence only agenda has a pregnant teenage daughter. Why? Because of Ron Reagan Jr. Seriously. Ronald Reagan Jr. is my reasoning. The first time I saw Ron Reagan, he was scoffing at conservative policies in the 1980s in regards to the AIDs epidemic. It was one of VH1's specials, one of their Behind the Musics; one of the year ones. Here was a man who derided Ronald Reagan Sr.'s policies, deriding the policies of the day that didn't work to save druggies and homosexuals because those were not Republican voting blocks. I thought, "Man, this guy really hates the Reagans". But that guy was a Reagan. He just happened to also be liberal. The chances of Bristol being liberal are probably slim, but that doesn't mean that she should be held up as political fodder. And that is partially because we don't know what happened, not exactly. We know the result. We know that she is pregnant. But we don't know if she used protection or if she was truly a victim of abstinence only education. We don't know if she was a student of abstinence only education. What's more, we don't have the right to know; we don't have the right to violate her privacy in order to score some cheap political point against her mother. And more than that, her decisions are not her mother's.

So Sarah Palin's viewpoints about abstinence only education, about teaching creationism in schools, her ideas about the environment, her anti-choice rhetoric, should be attacked. The weaknesses should be present (and are present) in Sarah Palin's own arguments. We can point out the flaws in abstinence only education through studies and statistics; we should be doing that anyway, and often. We can argue that creationism isn't simply a divergent view of how the planet and life got started but a religious one; and how if we grant that creationism should be taught in classrooms as an alternative theory, than every other religion's creationist tale should also be taught because Christianity doesn't get to corner the market on religious rights. We should argue that, and we should argue against the dismissive phrase that evolution is "just" a theory, because most things we accept as scientific truths are theories. It is part of the language of science. We should argue against creationism based on the fact that it is no more or less true than the Iroquois' creation myths. But we shouldn't use her family as a battering ram against her. But the truth is, it shouldn't go the other way either, with conservatives using her family in order to score some ideological point.

A lot of reports I've seen have talked about Trig, her child with Down Syndrome, as a kind of political checkmate. "Sarah Palin is so pro-life, she carried her child to term even knowing that he had Down Syndrome" seems to be the overwhelming viewpoint. And first and foremost, that is an incredibly ableist mindset, the idea that Sarah Palin and her family is so noble and self-sacrificing for "burdening" themselves with a special needs child; that a pro-choicer would have obviously made a different choice. Phyllis Schlafly made that exact argument, that a Democrat would have chosen to abort. The truth is, special needs children come with their own joys and challenges. The truth is, I know many liberal-minded people who have special needs children. The truth is, using Trig as a political point in the choice wars, no matter who is doing it, is quite frankly appalling. He should not be some kind of political football. He is a baby, and he is one who is loved and whose mother (hopefully) carried him to term because she loved and wanted him no matter what; a mother who didn't carry him to term because she felt morally obligated to once she learned of his condition but because she wanted to without that even being a consideration. Because looking at Trig like a political point maker devalues special needs people and children in society.

That isn't to say that people don't abort children if and when they learn that the child is disabled in some way. I'm not even saying that they are wrong to; I think there are numerous situations where it is completely understandable, in terms of knowing that as a parent you do not have the resources to care for this child in the way he or she will need you to; that you do not have the money to support them; that you have other children who have needs that will not be met if you have this child. It must be a terrible situation to find oneself in, to be carrying a child you wanted -maybe desperately- but cannot, for whatever the reason, carry to term. It must be a terrible feeling to not have the privilege Sarah Palin does in even being able to have five children and care for them all adequately. But for those who abort a special needs baby because that child isn't one who will be perfectly healthy and of average intelligence, I think the decision is a bit foolhardy. Because humans are fragile creatures. Helen Keller was a perfectly healthy baby. I worked with a woman whose daughter was involved in a horrible car accident, and who suffered some brain damage because of that. She was married at the time of the crash.  She's not any more, and she now cannot live alone. She was a healthy baby. 90% of fetuses who are diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted. And one of the reasons is because we look at people with special needs with a certain type of prejudice. We call their families angels for having them; we call them angels too. We look at them with pity; we look at them with contempt. We look at ourselves and thank our lucky stars that we have healthy children with no developmental problems. And until that changes, until we stop devaluing them and seeing them as "less", then we will continue to see praise like the kind given to Sarah Palin for being so pro-life as to keep her son, a son she may have kept anyway -because she loves him.

Parenting, Experts, and Advice

Let me make it clear: I don't really believe in parenting books. In baby books. In DVDs, CDs, consultants, or coaches. Children are different creatures. I was different from my sisters, who are in turn -even though they are twins- incredibly different from each other. My parents give every new parent "the instructions", or Dr. Spock's baby book, but that is more in reference to the Cohen Bros' Raising Arizona than the belief that those instructions are sacrosanct. My problem with the baby expert culture is that it is one in which there are vastly conflicting data over things as simple as picking up a crying baby; and people who have no problem dismissing expert opinions on things like global warming place all of their faith in this set of instructions and are made to feel as if they've failed if the baby doesn't respond accordingly -or if they come across someone who scoffs at that advice.

Some advice is good: the newest studies about how to prevent SIDS by placing babies to sleep on their backs is definitely a necessary. The research that has come afterward about making sure your baby gets "tummy time" in order to build up neck and arm muscles that have been neglected due to Baby sleeping on his or her back are also a good. But it doesn't surprise me in the least that even by doing everything ostensibly "right", children don't always react in the ways we have been conditioned to believe they would. That there are "outlier" children who won't learn by falling down and failing. That the gentle touch that works so well with one child doesn't begin to influence the other.

What I find especially interesting is that in a culture that tends to frown on specialized knowledge bases, in a culture that tends to disregard expert advice as relating to their field as being just another opinion on par with everyone else's, we are so quick to hand over the keys to our most individual and personalized of arenas -childcare. "American parents are desperate for direction", and they are going to the experts in greater and greater numbers. Which is confusing to me. Obviously, there are going to be people who need more help than others, but parenting seems to be an amalgam of different factors -the child's personality, the beliefs and ideals of the parents, the surrounding influencers- than most other things, and that amalgam would almost have to dictate a more personalized attempt than just a cookie-cutter fix-it. On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joyce Summers outs herself as being hopelessly over her head and out of touch when she first says, "I've read all about the dangers of overnurturing" and later comments, "The tapes all say I should get used to saying [no]". Willow's mother is held up for derision when she tells her daughter, "I have consulted with some of my colleagues, and they agree that this is a cry for disipline". At a certain point in time, parenting has to stem from what feels natural for the individual (or partners) and the child in question.

As strange as it seems, I think that the parenting book phenomenon is due in part to a passive parenting style. In a time when televisions are being used as babysitters and parents are reportedly more into being their child's friends than disciplinarians, it makes sense that parents would want to look to someone else to be the bad guy and to take some of the pressure off of developing an individualized style of parenting. "If it works for X-amount of parents, it should work for us", I suspect the thinking goes. And on the other side of the spectrum are people like Sheila Rosenberg -Willow's mom- in that they over think it. And that's alright. But I strongly believe that parenting shouldn't be something we look to in books but on our own decisions about what is important and what isn't.

My parents decided that it was important I not be dressed in pink or be given Barbie dolls on every holiday. They decided that it was more important to have a family dinner than a set time to eat. They decided to limit the amount of time I spent in front of the television and they decided what kind of television they would permit me to watch. And they were proactive in my life. We played together. They read to me. And they focused on what they could do to make me into the best person I could be. And they screwed me up too, as all parents do. Our parents screw up; they aren't perfect. And the sooner parents (and their kids) can accept that parents are people, that there is no such thing as the perfect parenting style, and that everyone's family is dysfunctional in some way or another, I think the sooner it will be that we can stop relying so heavily on parenting books as being the ultimate instructions on how to raise a happy, healthy,well-adjusted kid.