My Top 10 Parenting Pet Peeves

How Society and Institutions Work Against The Needs of Parents

I never fully grasped Hillary Clinton’s mantra that it takes a village to raise a child until I became a father myself. I had my first child at age 40 and am more than blessed to now have two happy, healthy daughters and one son, who range in age from infancy to kindergartner. Moreover, I have a wife who not only holds a PhD from MIT in Organic Chemistry, but she seems to have picked up a PhD in parenting in her spare time as well. 

With all of these fortunes, it nevertheless has been a learning curve in understanding just how many hurdles parents must face just to keep the family organized and the kids well nurtured. This is where the “village” comes into play. We all need a hand here and there. In our case, my mother-in-law moved in with us shortly after our first child was born. Yet, so many families struggle just to keep up and fight through the obstacles that get placed in front of us as parents and guardians. To that end, I present here my top ten pet peeves of parenting a preschooler. Perhaps five to ten years from now, I will follow this up with my pet peeves of parenting grade schoolers. For now, here are my biggest gripes in the newborn to preschool phase:

1. The price for being born. Let’s just start with how expensive it is to bring a life into the world in the first place. While society broadly accepts that creating human life is a good thing, it sure doesn’t seem that way from how much money must be spent by a parent just to have a child. My wife and I recently had our third baby, and without any special interventions or complications, the total invoice amount was over $30,000! After insurance, it was still multiple thousand dollars out of pocket. Not everyone has the good fortune that we do of having a “quality” insurance plan… or even any insurance plan at all. Let alone having a nest egg to tap into to afford large irregular expenses. We haven’t even mentioned the OB visits, ultrasounds, genetic testing, and doula consultations (if applicable), let alone the cost of transportation and taking time off from work for these visits. None of this even addresses families that face reproductive health challenges, and/or for one reason or another, utilize IVF or other extremely costly fertility treatments.

2. Barriers for working parents, especially nursing moms.While there certainly are progressive workplaces out there, and more and more employers are gradually catching up, the roadblocks for working parents can be insurmountable for far too many. Parents who are primary caregivers and desire to spend quality time with their little ones in the early weeks and months of life must make significant compromises if they are also trying to hold on to their career. Parents need more leave time, without giving up all of their income. This is an enormous driver of inequality when parents who do not have enough savings to simply give up their work in order to raise a child. Realistically, the cost of allowing more paid employer-sponsored leave time can be quite burdensome to small businesses in particular. It is therefore a matter of public policy and society’s will to ensure that parents have the time and resources to care for newborns. Moreover, nursing moms need more resources in the workforce. Startup companies such as Work & Mother, a portfolio company of Alumni Ventures, are working with property managers and employers to provide more and improved access to the needs of nursing moms. However, the surface has barely been scratched, and much more needs to be done in public locations such as airports and shopping malls as well.

3. Exorbitant cost of childcare and preschool. Further exacerbating the challenges of working parents is the cost and accessibility of childcare and preschool. Society has determined that a child can receive free education and daytime care (excluding summers) starting only between the ages of 5 and 6, when Kindergarten begins. However, the first five years are arguably the most formative in a child’s early development. It is unfathomable how this gap exists and is a matter for the public to decide that it is time to make a change. Many families cannot afford the cost of childcare, which can be upwards of $30,000 per year. The city of Cambridge, Massachusetts has just initiated universal pre-K for its residents. However, this accounts for just one year and it is coming from one city that is arguably one of the most politically progressive in the country. Much more attention needs to be given to addressing this challenge and the US is falling far behind other advanced democracies in providing care and removing the expense burden for rearing a future generation while also maintaining a fully productive workforce.

4. Obstacles to healthy eating and nutrition. Good lord does the food industrial complex in the US work against the best interests of parents and children. Everywhere one looks from the supermarket aisle to ads to TV, people are being fed the notion that we should be buying attractive looking ultra-processed and highly sweetened packaged foods. Is there any wonder why we have an epidemic of childhood obesity and Type 2 diabetes? Here is a shocking statement: children will learn to love the foods you feed them, even if they are not super sweet, super salty, and packaged in colorful boxes with popular cartoon characters on them. In reality, it can be extremely difficult for parents to divert kids’ attention away from such temptations. I realize that we aren’t living in a nirvana where kids only want to eat broccoli. However, some balance and moderation is a reasonable expectation. I hope that the clever food marketers out there will find a way to make the “good for you” stuff just as palatable and desirable for little ones as those who peddle sugary cereals and juices and ultra processed sweet and salty snacks.

5. Lack of restrooms and nursing facilities at playgrounds. I am gobsmacked at how few playgrounds and recreational areas have restrooms, or even porta potties on premises. Ditto facilities for nursing mothers. Do these communities believe the laws of nature do not apply in public settings? Absolutely shameful and irresponsible.

6. Lax parental monitoring of playground behavior. OK, one gripe here about certain fellow parents. This represents a small minority, but I have been shocked by parents who do not monitor the behavior of their rambunctious kiddos. Kids will be kids and sometimes bully or push other kids out of the way on jungle gyms and generally behave wildly. However, it’s up to parents to reinforce the right behaviors. So many parents will allow their kids to trample over others on the playground. It seems like certain parents need some basic training before allowing their little ones out to be unsupervised in the world…

7. Businesses that charge admission to adults for children’s activities. Maybe I’m alone in this, but I am constantly irked by how many children’s activities require adults to pay a fee. I’m not talking about charging an adult to watch a kid’s movie in a theater. It makes sense because adults take up a seat where there is a finite amount of capacity. One example that really set me off was at one particular carousel ride where adults were required to pay just to accompany their kid on the ride. I mean, carousels exist for kids. That being said, having recently taken my 5 and 3 year old daughters to Universal Studios in Orlando, I was quite shocked not merely by how many grown adults visit these parks without children in tow, but how many of these adults were actually taking rides that are clearly built for the little kiddies. I digress… the point is, why do adults have to pay to merely escort a child who needs some assistance?

8. Traveling with car seats… and so much gear. When traveling with little ones involves flying, it is never easy. It seems like there is no end to the amount of gear that kids need to keep them clothed, fed, clean, safe, and entertained. My biggest hassle has been with child car seats. Sometimes it is not conducive to renting a car while bringing a car seat on a trip can be overly burdensome from a luggage volume standpoint. Sometimes all a family needs is a taxi or Uber, but seldom, if ever, are child car seats or booster seats made available. Something here needs to change. I have come across services like Kidmoto that aim to address this, at least with airport transfers, but the prices they charge seem to be a staggering multiple of normal Uber prices. It makes one wonder why no one is addressing this hassle in a fair and meaningful way, like a simple airport-based car seat rental service or more drivers who are willing to bring these seats along for use when needed. 

9. Dearth of proper activity planning tools. For years now, I have struggled to find an app or portal that provides a full selection of local activities and events for children. There needs to be a tool that allows families to easily search for “things to do” by age, gender, geography, type of activity, and includes both ongoing and special events. There are sites that provide some level of idea inspiration such as Mommy Poppins, but nothing I have found is remotely comprehensive and stays current with new events and is very easily searchable across multiple criteria. Note to aspiring founders in search of a good idea to pursue… here you go. You’re welcome :)

10. Teacher pay. Perhaps nothing is more important to me as a parent, after knowing that my children are  healthy, is being satisfied that they are receiving the best education possible. I revere teachers and the teaching profession. Where would our future be without them? Despite being of such importance to society, teachers remain depressingly underpaid for the work that they put in, with salaries that are often compatible with low-skill professions that require far less training and are significantly less personally taxing. Teaching out to be a “prestige” profession that the top university graduates aspire to. However, when compared to jobs on Wall Street or many corporate professions, it is hard to compete from a compensation perspective. Nordic countries such as Finland have made it a national priority to change this and the results speak for themselves in producing among the most highly educated young people on the planet. 

When I lived in the Netherlands, I was struck by the state-sponsored custom of providing an assistant to come and live-in with parents of newborns. This person would serve three primary purposes: help the baby adjust with eating, sleeping, and generally transitioning to life outside the womb, help the parents with ensuring that they know what they’re doing, while also getting enough sleep and mental sanity, and thirdly, keeping a watchful eye to make sure that there is no abuse or neglect happening at the baby’s expense. 

Parental education should not be taken lightly and even basic information that is typically shared by medical providers can be incomplete or misleading. Take, for example, understanding baby sleep. Going into this as first time parents, my wife and I just assumed that the baby will happily and peacefully fall asleep when she is tired. WRONG! It baffles us how none of the hospital child care courses or OB leaflets that we were provided mention that when a baby is tired and wants to sleep, they are going to scream bloody murder and must be aided to sleep until they learn to do so independently. What happens in between baby crying and baby falling asleep is a black box that the stressed out, sleep-deprived parents need to research on their own through social media until they land on a silver bullet.

In any event, the practice of having a “stranger” come to the home in the early weeks of a child’s life can seem rather invasive to outsiders. However, this practice is actually profound in many ways and begs the question of why more societies don’t provide more assistance to people during one of the most transformative periods in their lives. Raising a child well is very difficult work. While it’s a personal choice to make the sacrifice to reap the eventual rewards, the job of parenting can be made so much smoother if governments, societies, and neighbors all consider the importance of the greater good. The notion of “it takes a village” is not a statement of “socialism,” as some wish to portray. It is a statement of humanity.