Picket Fence Post

By Meredith O’Brien

We all do it to some degree, treat our kids like mini-me’s, extensions of our personal brands that tell the world more about us as parents than anything about our children. For fashion-conscious parents, it’s about clothing. For home decorating nuts, it’s the way the kids’ rooms look. For edgy aficionados it’s about the “right” tunes. To politicos it’s just as much about the correct ideological leanings, as rooting for the correct teams is to sports fans.

We’ve each got our pet things or causes we want our kids to love too, only some of us make more of a fetish out of using our kids as reflections of what kind of people we are, than others. Some think we should be able to influence our children’s tastes, but it doesn’t always work out the way we envisioned.

For the fashion conscious parent, the message their kids deliver about the family starts with clothing. A whole segment of the Internet is devoted to chronicling the wardrobes of celebrities’ offspring. Parents who want their kids to be as cool as the Hollywood stars’ spawn attempt to boost their tots’ hip quotient by finding out what brand of leather shoes Nicole Richie’s baby has, where they can purchase the dress Suri Cruise was recently photographed wearing and where Maddox Jolie Pitt’s alt rocker T-shirts are for sale. To these moms and dads, it’s important to their cred as the fashion-forward to outfit their children in duds that complement their style, making the kids killer parental accessories.

A derivative of the fashionable parenting trend can be found with hipster parents, who see themselves as countercultural types, eschewing mainstream parenthood and seeking ways to mold their kids’ pop culture leanings to reflect their own, ditching Elmo and Disney in favor of punk rock and lullabies by Tool. (Think Lorelai Gilmore.)

Then there’s the obsession some have with kids’ bedrooms, fueled by Pottery Barn Kids catalogs which offer those who want their home decorating preferences reflected in their children’s boudoirs tasteful options ranging from floral/blossom designs to classic sporty lad and surfer dude decor. Parents who spend time and money putting together the perfect child’s bedroom see it as a testament to their impeccable taste.

 Attempts to influence kid preferences extend to politics as well, even with the baby/toddler set. During this presidential election, parents with strong viewpoints used their children as human bumper stickers, outfitting them in clothing proclaiming support for Barack Obama or John McCain, or even antipathy for President George W. Bush, labeled “President Poopyhead” on a onesie featured on a number of parenting blogs.

\And we can’t forget about sports parents who see their kids as another way to express devotion to a sport or team. There have always been parents who’ve pushed their children into playing sports that they themselves used to play, but some take their sports enthusiasm further by clothing their children in all manner of gear bearing a team’s logo starting in infancy and festooning nurseries with team banners.

I’m not immune to this mini-me syndrome. For example, I’ve been trying to drum Red Sox fandom and the love of baseball into my three children’s souls since they were born. My husband and I have bought them Sox hats, clothing, banners and player bobblehead figures. Family scrapbooks prominently contain photos from games we’ve attended.

 I also plead guilty to trying to brainwash my kids into loving newspapers (using the comics and sports sections to entice them) as I daily extol the virtues of keeping up with current events. I routinely play the NBC Nightly News during dinner and, much to their chagrin, often use it as a launching pad to discuss issues.

However, now that my kids are ages 7, 10 and 10, it’s painfully obvious that, regardless of my or my husband’s preferences, our kids have their own, unique inclinations, something the politicos outfitting their babies in political onesies have yet to realize . . . or maybe they have and want to take advantage their kids-as-political-statements until the children grow up and object.

My kids have rebuffed many attempts to shove my tastes down their throats. Quite unexpectedly one year, my oldest son tentatively declared himself a Yankees fan and started wearing a Yankee hat. This was before he told me he didn’t like newspapers because they kill trees and “ruin the environment,” and said he didn’t want to play my favorite sport – baseball – anymore.

Two out of the three of my kids’ bedrooms that I thoughtfully decorated now resemble disaster areas. My daughter’s room looks as though Tiger Beat magazines exploded with all things Jonas Brothers, High School Musical and Miley Cyrus. (The “Vote for Women” button and black and white image of a female pitcher I put on her bulletin board are now covered.) My youngest son won’t wear any nice clothing he owns, strenuously preferring to instead don sweatpants. The kids convinced me to take them to see Paul Blart: Mall Cop over the February vacation.

 But I’ve come to terms with this. I no longer feel responsible for my kids’ pop culture, clothing and sports preferences. My children are their own people; they’re not me. And for that, they’re probably eternally grateful. That Yankee fandom flirtation and the 87 minutes of Mall Cop hell, definitely not me. It’s all them.

Meredith O’Brien, author of A Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum, blogs about parenthood at the Picket Fence Post and writes about pop culture at Suburban Mom.