When Parents Are Too Lame For Their Cool Kids

The job of a parent is to nurture their kids without spoiling them. Or at least, that was the old job description. The new goal of parenthood is to create a kid so cool, they notice just how lame you really are.

A child never forgets the day she looks up at her Dad and realises that he does not have super powers — he’s just a man. Traditionally that shock has come on the threshold of adolescence, but now children are growing up faster and realising that they are being raised by dweebs before they even learn how to read.

The latest advertising trend taps into our desire to be accepted — by our own kids. Suddenly parenting is a popularity contest.

The kid with the rocker hair and bomber jacket says: “I don’t tolerate dorkiness very well. Yet my parents still cart me around in a car that says, “Hi, we’re the geek family.”… Just because you’re a parent doesn’t mean you have to be lame.”

The first time I saw the ad I was filled with questions: Who would want to raise a brat like that? Why wasn’t he washing the car? Why was he flirting with Mrs J?

I thought it was a crazy one-off, and then came dinner time. Corporations have always implied that their food equals love, so mothers who don’t buy that product for their kids must not really love them. This is a very different approach.

Unless you feed your kid mac ‘n cheese, she’ll secretly despise you. The poor mother has made a casserole from scratch, cooked beans and heated rolls — yet she can’t hold a candle to artificial cheese flavouring.

These ads attempt to use our love for our kids against us. They think that in our quest to fulfill that impulse we’ll spend ridiculous amounts of money on things we don’t need. But we know better.

Children are biologically programmed to love their parents (and make them daily art projects). In addition to being completely dependent on their mother and father to provide food, housing, clothing and transportation, these tiny people are also obsessed with their families. They love us unconditionally.

So go hawk your products to desperate singles and terrified old people. Convince men their masculinity must be 52″ and mounted on a wall. Warn women that their faces will literally fall off without your expensive jar of muck. You’ll never be able to sell parenthood.

We are not as hip as we once were, but in their eyes we are the coolest people in the world.

(Until they are teenagers).

Contact the author here: mick@morningquickie.com