Babble.com bills itself as being “for a new generation of parents.” So why, I wonder, are they offering an asinine photo contest that celebrates messy eaters? Are Mickey Mouse bibs really moving that slowly?
Some backstory …
When Seve was a few months old, I did some research into baby-led weaning. It did, and does, make a lot of sense to me: you let a child’s first experiences with solid food be exploratory and self-directed, you offer a variety of healthy foods in a format that makes it both safe and possible for the child to self-feed, and you accept the ensuing mess as a trade-off for introducing food in a gentle way that respects the child’s autonomy. Sounds great, right?
Problem: P wasn’t on-board with it. Specifically, the mess angle. I don’t — as a matter of principle or personality — typically concede easily. This was no exception. I was hemmed in by circumstance: we were going to be introducing solids while visiting his family in Spain and while I might be able to take a “bless this mess” approach to mashed carrot on my own ceiling, it was a lot to ask of someone else(‘s house), plus we didn’t have a high chair there, etc., etc. I knew that by the time we got home, Seve was already going to be “trained” to eat from a spoon and so the BLW-train left the station.
It’s not that P opposes mess in any circumstance — he was just very insistent that from the earliest experiences, eating is something that would should do together as a family (I agree) and that should be done in a manner that affords a child the same dignity with which we would eventually expect them to comport themselves; in other words, why train a child that it’s okay to have pureed peas in their hair, if you’re going to have to “untrain” that behaviour later?
Turns out that we lucked into a kid who hates to be messy. Win! That was a genuine gift because I could continue to feed Seve, respecting his own wishes — baby-led, in other words — without having to run laundry every minute of the galdarned day. The kids still wear bibs if we’re going to be eating something supermessy or likely to stain (tomato sauce) but for the most part I don’t even bother. I don’t have to. They are naturally neat eaters, a nature that has been nurtured by P and me.
So what’s my beef about the contest? Listen, if your kid is just a really messy eater, and you’re doing your best to try to manage that tsunami of slop, I applaud you. It’s hard work. But if you’re celebrating, fetishizing the mess? That I don’t get. From the contest page:
Submit an impossibly cute photo of your baby or kid (age 0-5) to match our “Messy Eater” theme. We want to see your kids covered in spaghetti or with a face full of cake!
I can only ask: why? Why would you want to see that? I believe — and believe me, I have maaaany mama friends who disagree with me on this point — that to take a photo of your child in this state, and certainly to submit it to an online contest where the image will live on in perpetuity — is an act of profound disrespect toward your child. There are many who will say it is cute. I disagree. It is exposing a vulnerable child in the process of learning a new behaviour to the scrutiny and laughter of others. It uses your child as a punchline. It’s an unkind act.
Is that the kind of new generation of parents we wish to be?
Disclosure: We do, of course, have a few messy food pics of each of the kids, which you will never see here, for all the reasons outlined above. So let’s be clear — it’s not the photos I have a problem with as much as the contest, which is hardly the first and will not be the last of its kind. If you want photographic evidence of what went down that time you decided to unload the dishwasher instead of supervise lunch, snap away. But let that be your own private, funny memory. Don’t share it with the world. Or at least wait until your kid gets married to break it out, so that you can be sure s/he is old enough to tell you to knock it off, already.
Joy and Woe 
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAamen. I really don’t like fetishized messy baby photos, and was starting to feel like a childless Scrooge who couldn’t appreciate/didn’t understand “cute”. Don’t get me wrong; one of my fondest memories was being at my friend’s one year old’s birthday party and watching the kiddo go face-first into his ridiculously enormous piece of cake. He was covered in chocolate and blue, it was adorable. I’m an aunt and a friend and I’m well acquainted with babies, eating, and messiness, so I’m not some freakish messophobe. And I’m sure that my friends all have their own messy foody baby photos. But glorifying the Spaghetti-O in the ear seems a little much for me, and I’m with you and P in the “eat with dignity” thing. Why let bad behavior take root? Doesn’t that make things even harder in the long run?
I read something the other day that was a bit of an a-ha moment for me. Because it’s (rightly) seen as obnoxious to constantly trumpet your child’s brilliance, there is a counter-movement, in which a child’s “shortcomings” are celebrated. We’ve all seen it on Facebook: “She’s nearly two and she just WON’T sleep through the night!” or “I can’t believe he still isn’t walking!” or “Potty training is an absolute disaster!” The desire to have one’s child seen as exceptional is understandable, but it’s getting crazy. “Frannabelle is just the MESSIEST eater!” is just another variation on the same theme, I think.
Je totally agree!
Merci a lot! :-)
I also didn’t realise until recently that you just live on the other side of town! Small blogging world, this.
I rarely pipe up in this type of conversation since I’m not a “real” parent and don’t feel qualified to comment (stepfather for 6 years to a now-14-year-old whose life I’ve been a part of since he was born, previous foster parent to an 11-year-old boy and current foster parent to a 7-month-old boy since he was two days old). I’ll start out by agreeing with your bringing up the issue of how public we should make photos of our minor children before they have the legal competence to decide whether or not to be “out there”. It’s a legitimate and complex debate and one in which I’m frankly glad to have no stake (aside from the convenience of a nice clear-cut Children’s Aid Society policy) and therefore no *need* of a position.
I’m not given to brevity and could cite several rambling aspects of how I take issue with the notion of forced non-messy eating by young children, but for the sake of the readers I’ll stick with fine motor control and the timeline of learning, with respect to “dignity”.
Our baby lacks the fine motor control to avoid punching me in the face when I’m trying to console him when he’s tired, and when he’s up on his hands and knees he sometimes sways back and forth and bonks his head into a chair leg or anything else nearby. When eating, his movements are more deliberate and definitely improving but similarly unpredictable. Obviously we need to introduce him to solid foods somewhere between his birth and him becoming a steady-handed neurosurgeon, and the wisdom of the day seems to suggest around 6 months of age. He enjoys sitting in his high chair with us at meal times, and has enjoyed learning to eat solid food with our assistance over the past month. I’m not a fan of there being food scattered everywhere, and (full disclosure) I don’t do the actual solid food feeding, but part of my post-meal routine now includes wiping up the tray and floor and table, while my wife wipes off the baby. It takes about 3 minutes. An admitted seasonal advantage is that he eats wearing nothing but a diaper so there’s no issue with stained clothes, just an occasionally stained baby. I can’t imagine strapping his arms down and maybe putting his head in a restraint while we carefully spoon feed him, (the only way I can possibly imagine him not having food on his face when finished). Seeing the enjoyment he gets from learning to hold the spoon and trying to feed himself the way we do with him, I can’t imagine wanting to keep him from that.
Now, by the time a kid is 3 years old, stripping them down to a diaper for mealtimes isn’t desirable, but conveniently, their fine motor control and language comprehension have vastly improved and they could finish a meal without their entire face smeared with food and understand your explanations of the finer points of eating in mixed company. There would still be some crumbs and smears on the edge of the table and maybe the odd smear on the face, but I’m also guilty of that sometimes. Skills have been learned through years of learning and practice coupled with natural developmental improvements. Holding young children to standards to which their skills and current capabilities cannot possibly keep up strikes me as unfair.
I appreciate you bringing up the discussion. It would be more efficient to pursue it in person, which I’d be happy to do if I’ve offended you or lit a spark in any other way.
Let’s get what is, to me, an obvious point out of the way: you’re a real parent and you are as qualified — by virtue of your real, direct parenting experience — as any other “real” mom or dad to weigh in on this issue.
And nothing you said was at all offensive, though I do need to clarify how mealtime typically goes down in our house. There is definitely no arm strapping, no head restraining, no forced non-messy eating of any kind. Those scenarios represent the limits of your own imagination but not our reality — I am being 100% honest when I say that I have really neat eaters.
Admittedly, there is an element of chicken-and-egg … are they “naturally” neat eaters, or is that something we have fostered? No way of knowing for sure, but my maternal suspicion is the former based on how they react to other messy situations like finger painting (total no go).
They both went through a few weeks of “swatting” at the spoon when they were very new to the whole solid food thing, but deft movement on our part avoided spills (for the most part). Every spoon that goes is is accompanied by a swift spoon-directed “clean up” of mouth and chin as needed (but there’s little that escapes their hungry maws). Seve obviously feeds himself entirely at this point — Juno eats about 80% of her meals by hand and is spoon-fed messy/drippy food as needed. She doesn’t use a spoon yet, at least not with any efficiency. We’re working on it.
The only point where I think our views are possibly divergent is this: “Holding young children to standards to which their skills and current capabilities cannot possibly keep up strikes me as unfair.” Well, if there is certainty that a child cannot possibly keep up, I would agree. But there’s a difference between, for the sake of argument, expecting an 11-month-old to climb a step ladder (likely impossible) and expecting a very young child to eat without excessive mess (unlikely, but not impossible). Children rise to our expectations — assuming those expectations are reasonably set, clearly articulated and demonstrated consistently — and for our family, eating tidily is an expectation that our children can meet.
Of course, one’s definition of “excessive mess” will always vary, and that’s my beef with these kinds of photo contests — the kid with a Cheerio on his chin is unlikely to garner the lion’s share of the votes, not if there’s a kid who just dumped an entire salad on his lap, which is the kind of deliberate recklessness that ends up being encouraged (I think) when parents laugh and reach for the camera. That attention is a powerful reward for a small person. I’d rather devote it to wiping a wee chin.
(And thank YOU for forcing me to reflect further on this!)
One of my pet peeves are the tv commercials where babies and toddlers are throwing food at walls and spilling horrible liquids all over carpeting. These are designed to sell cleaning supplies but it seems to say that isn’t this cute – don’t sweat because it is easily cleaned. I did my share of cleaning up after three kids but I never thought messiness was cute.
That being said, my favorite table story. We had been married about 3 years and were having lunch with Mike in the high chair sitting at the table – must have been about two. We were having a quiet fight, but things were still tense and we weren’t paying any attention to Mike. I looked at Mike, who was eating spaghettios with meat balls and he has put a meatball in each eye with the sauce running down his cheeks. Bickering was over.
Agreed on the ads, which invariably feature a work-out mom (she does all the work!) and a slacker dad (he’s so clueless!). Love the meatball story! Kids are geniuses at diffusing stressful situations, almost as good as they are at creating them.
“You know what’s cute? Dignity.”
– How could I know?!? I have no dignity :D
No, seriously. Nice post.
You know what I find totally disgusting? Eating contests. We don’t have them here, but sometimes I see them on some TV show or something from the US. It’s fucking revolting.
The way I see it, if an adult wants to get up on a stage, eat like an animal and make a fool of her/himself, that’s her/his business. But the price of admission should be something that reflects the true cost of that kind of show — like you have to donate your weight in non-perishables to the local food bank. Let some goodness come from the grossness.
“Let some goodness come from the grossness.”
Agreed.