Many parents teach their children that stereotyping is bad. It fuels divisiveness, they say.
That might be true – but so might the stereotypes.
In "The Perfect Parents Handbook" (St. Martin's Griffin), Jennifer Conlin pokes fun at all the people she sees at the playground. They all fall into one of nine categories: classic, hip, power, sporty, neotraditional, Bohemian, Euro, martyr and paranoid.
"I've met all these types," says Conlin, who did her research at the playground as she watched her children, now 13, 9 and 7, grow up.
As described in the book, classic parents, who take their kids to Stratton, Vt., every winter and Nantucket, Mass., every summer, worry about getting their children to behave at the country club Christmas party with the grandparents, while hybrid car-driving Bohemian parents exert a lot of energy keeping their children away from anyone with an infectious disease, because the kids haven't been vaccinated.
Paranoid parents barely let their kids out of the house, and sporty parents struggle to get along with coaches, referees and fellow team parents as they do laps around the track with their Baby Jogger stroller.
"Parenthood is a lifestyle. What you push, what kind of stroller you have, is as much a statement about you as what you drive. You can walk into a home and classify what kind of parents they are by the stuff that surrounds them," she says.
Conlin says she picks mostly on the upper middle class, which has made a sport out of "perfect parenting."
People tell her she's a "neotrad" parent, probably since she aspires to "do it all" but doesn't always have the means or the ways. Conlin, however, also says she can be a bit martyrish and a bit sporty.
The handbook, Conlin explains, is supposed to make parents laugh. "However you are raising your children in what you think is the right way to raise your children. It's serious stuff, and you can't stop the madness, but you can take one moment to laugh at yourself and the others around you – who are also taking themselves v-e-r-y seriously," she says.
