Inappropriate Content: Dead Poets Society

Catilin Flanagan gets loquacious in the Atlantic on Wifely Duties:

My children are still very small, but it has been made abundantly clear to me by friends and acquaintances that I had better get in the market for an SUV or a minivan, because I am soon enough going to be shuttling the children and their friends to a bewildering series of soccer games, soccer parties, soccer tournaments... Mothering, which used to be a rather private affair (requiring, principally, a playpen, a back yard, a television set, and a coffeepot), has now adopted a very public dimension. Why, of course Sarah So-and-So is a good mother: little Andrew is at Gymboree, Music Rhapsody, Bright Child, and Fit for Kids every week! All of domestic life now turns on the entertainment and happiness not of the adults but of the children. At vacation time my husband and I don't drag our little boys through the Louvre, as I was dragged at a tender age (because my parents wanted to see it, and it would never have occurred to them to consult their children about where to go on holiday).

Matthew Yglesias agrees:

For a parent to participate in some amusement they don't really care for because the kids like it is totally normal. To demand that the kids put up with something the adults want to do is unthinkable. People inconvenience themselves by moving further and further toward the fringes of urban areas in order to be able to afford houses and yards that are, by world standards, simply enormous and huge swathes of these massive spaces are given over to the children. Sentiments like "children are to be seen and not heard" couldn't be be more dead. In essence, couples are expected to more-or-less give up on their lives for a couple of decades in order to raise their kids. To do anything less -- to inconvenience or annoy your children or deprive them of something they might want to do or to have for the sake of something you want -- would be abhorrent and neglectful.

I wonder how much the children appreciate all this quality time with their parents. Or if anyone has had the guts to ask.