The Good Enough Baby
By Andy Borowitz
As new parents, we hold ourselves to impossibly high standards. We settle for second or third best when we buy a house or a car, and, when it comes to choosing a spouse, ninth best will often do. And yet, for some reason, we throw this time-tested principle out the window when we have a baby. We try to be "perfect" parents and raise the "perfect" baby, even if that means taking care of the baby "all the time."
In reality, trying to raise a perfect baby is futile, because, behavior-wise, babies are pretty craptastic. Howling, vomiting, projectile-shitting-kind of hard to shoot for perfection when you're doing appalling things like these around the clock. Despite all the media hype about babies, they're loud, dumb, and grimy to the touch, just one rung on the evolutionary ladder above a common marmoset. I'm speaking from my experience not only as a parent but as a pediatrician.
But, while raising a perfect baby is impossible, raising a "good enough baby" is surprisingly easy. That's the message of my new book, "The Good Enough Baby: Settling for Lillie Miss Adequate." Let's begin with what I call the Good Enough Baby Checklist:
1: Is My Baby Clean Enough?
Conventional wisdom says that a baby should be clean enough to eat off of. That's absurd, unless you actually intend to eat off of your baby, which I don't recommend. Babies tend to writhe spasmodically and shoot geysers of half-digested food from their mouths, making them a less than ideal dining surface.
There are many misconceptions about babies and baths. The old saying "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" implies that the baby is something amazing that you'd want to keep, while the bathwater is something disgusting that you're right to throw out. Well, who made the bathwater disgusting? That's right, the baby. The bathwater was probably drinkable before the baby, caked with the remains of meals (and worse), polluted it. A better, less contradictory saying would be "Don't give your baby a bath."
It's easy to keep a baby "clean enough" without actually bathing her. Let's say you've been invited to a house party. En route, quickly run the baby through a lawn sprinkler, then let her dry in the sun. When you get to the party, if people recoil as if they've just walked past a chicken-processing plant, run her through a sprinkler again. Fortunately, keeping your baby clean enough is not very time-consuming, because, as a new parent, you will find yourself invited to very few parties.
2. Is My Baby Well Fed Enough? There's an old wives' tale that says babies cry when they're hungry. Some parenting books buy this whopper, hook, line, and sinker, suggesting that a baby be fed "on demand." This is hardly a good way to prepare a baby for the real world, where the only things available "on demand" are cable movies, usually dumbass shit like "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" There are plenty of other reasons that a baby cries besides hunger. She might be sad about something that happened to her recently, such as that nasty business with the sprinkler. Even more likely, she is trying to tell you something, for example, that she is tired of seeing you so much. This might be your cue to have dinner out or catch a basketball game.
3. Is My Baby Stimulated Enough? During the past few decades, early-development "experts" have stressed the importance of so-called "enrichment activities": reading to babies, singing to them, even talking to them. We are now finding that these activities, in addition to being excruciating for the parent, may actually be harmful to the baby, lengthening her attention span to the point where she wil, be unable to enjoy most popular entertainment. Fortunately, there's a simple way to reverse this damage, using a system I call FIT (Facebook, iPhone, TV). By exposing your baby to these three thigns for as many hours as possible. You'll insure that she'll be well equiped for a lifetime of pointless multitasking. Quick test: Put your hands in front of your eyes and play peekaboo with your baby, If she ignores you and picks up your phone, reward her with her favorite app.
And that's the Good Enough Baby Checklist, Actually, there are seven more items on the list, but let's not be slave drivers about this.
One final caveat. Some parents may be under the impression that I wrote 'The Good Enough Baby" in order to provide a shortcut for people who don't take the job of parenting seriously. Nothing could be further from my intention. As a pediatrician, I always remind parents: When you have a baby, you are bringing a human being into this world, and you are responsible for that human being for the next five or six years.
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 27, 2010
