"She has taken charge of her career, and she has a job that accommodates her doing what she's good at, and her making time to take care of kids. She's an homage to the fertility mess Gen X has found itself in. She an homage to the fact that Gen X — not Gen Y — is the first generation to manage their children's online identities, and she's handling the issues with flair. And Kate is the quintessential Gen X mom getting post-baby plastic surgery. I love that she has a husband who is fun and cute and not a demon but yet, the marriage still isn’t working out, because that's what life is like. It's not good and bad. It's messy, and Kate's figuring things out. Gen X is great with messy."
Presented here not with approval but for discussion. The author, Penelope Trunk, is particularly enthusiastic about keeping the children in one house that the divorced parents taking turns living in.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
34 comments:
I wish Penelope knew what it's like to sweep up pubic hairs of other women from the bed every time she comes back from her very important book tours because she would know who is a demon and who is not cute and fun with his wife.
There is no way that you can raise eight children that close in age. People used to have big families but they had them one or at most two at a time so when there was 8, the oldest ones were old enough to help raise the youngest ones.
If you don't believe in abortion, you have no business taking fertility treatments. It is irresponsible and unfair to your kids to have a litter of children.
Worse still, it is wrong to whore your kids out to TV to make a living. Who ever asked those kids if they wanted their entire childhoods broadcasted to the world so their parents could get rich?
Kate Gosselin is a freak and a media whore of the worst sort. I am really sorry that I sadly have to know who she is.
straight people have lost interest in marriage. give the parents book deals and give the kids to a nice lesbian couple.
"straight people have lost interest in marriage. give the parents book deals and give the kids to a nice lesbian couple."
Or maybe a nice gay couple like this one.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529184,00.html?mrp
Yeah the media whore part just takes away any chance there was to admire her. If she's an anthem to Gen X women, its a sorry state, but I doubt that's close to being true.
Of course compared to the sluts who slept with her goofy husband, in spite of the fact he was a married father of 8, she comes out pretty well.
"Of course compared to the sluts who slept with her goofy husband, in spite of the fact he was a married father of 8, she comes out pretty well."
Some women will sleep with anything as long as its on TV.
From everything I've read...Kate was a royal pain. She essentially had a contract that said her husband could see other women on the side, as long as it was quite and didn't effect their meal ticket - the show. Her parents and former babysitter do not have kind words about her either.
I don't have issue with her going off and leaving him, while she was on a book tour, because if it was reverse, there wouldn't be an issue.
I also think having kids is not a solution to helping marriage...not sure if their marriage was hurting back then, but that many kids can't help but hurt the marriage.
Am I supposed to know who that is?
These two people -- I don't watch their show -- have lives so far removed from mine, that it's hard to comment. But I'll try.
I think her crumbling marriage -- their crumbling marriage -- would have a better chance of survival if they weren't on TV every week. The marriage isn't working out because that's what life is like. The marriage isn't working out because the TV cameras are there all the time.
Divorce and Child Custody from an Economic Analysis Perspective:
One party gets the kids; the other party goes the hell away. Forever.
Saves money: no drawn out custody proceedings; no returning to court every time one party wants to [insert lifestyle choice unobjectionable by a rational person].
Saves sanity: both parents are spared the insanity brought about by the children playing one parent against the other.
Increases liberty: without adverse parties, there can be no court proceedings; without court proceedings (that is, without a meddling court of equity judge bent on imposing his own deranged view of the home) both parties are free to live their lives and parent in the way they see fit.
--
But of course no one will go for this because it's unthinkable that anyone would apply economic (i.e., rational) thought to her relationship with her children.
..and why no celebritney tag?
Agreed. It's hard enough to raise kids, let alone 8, let alone in a fish bowl.
As for keeping the kids in one house with the parents taking turns - I like the idea. We've go friends that did that and all thing considered, it was the best for everyone.
The last people protected in a Divorce today are the children. Apparently children do not vote enough to get any respect. Every selfish thing the two parents do is "for the children" in words only. Really, divorce is always to please the adults.The custody sharing arrangements now in vogue are a torture of the kids, but nobody cares at all.
My wife and I tried to watch a couple of episodes of the show, but we had to turn it off. What came through the screen was:
a) Kate loves her celebrity life, and she's willing to climb over a pile of dead bodies to get in front of a camera.
b) Jon is extremely disengaged from the family who would rather be left alone than be on the show.
c) The children have no semblance of a "normal" life, and that they're being shamelessly used as an income for their parents.
On top of that, it's been made public that:
a) Jon and Kate actually split up some time ago. They kept it quiet to have a ratings bonanza for a season premiere.
b) The accusations of Jon straying are unfounded. The split occurred long ago: his "crime" was being seen acting like it before it was made public. Kate has done the same with her "bodyguard."
c) The state child services are looking into whether they have broken child labor laws by filming the children non-stop for hours on end each day.
Am I supposed to know who that is?
I only know who that is thanks to Joel McHale on "The Soup" running with the 'Jon Minus Nine' joke nearly a year ago.
I will grant that there's a selectivity bias to my knowledge of the show (clips that make one of them look bad = schadenfreude)....but I'm amazed anyone could stay with Kate long enough to have 8 kids, much less a reality show. It doesn't condone either of them breaking marriage vows, and it does amaze me that both of them would agree to make a show that makes them both look that horrible.
"a) Kate loves her celebrity life, and she's willing to climb over a pile of dead bodies to get in front of a camera."
Dead bodies or live defensless children.
traditionalguy -
"The custody sharing arrangements now in vogue are a torture of the kids, but nobody cares at all."
I'm in favor of the parents having to pay for a court-appointed child advocate in all divorce proceedings. That way the children would have a voice at the table, and there would be someone legally responsible for making sure that their interests were protected.
"That way the children would have a voice at the table, and there would be someone legally responsible for making sure that their interests were protected."
Isn't that the judge? If the parents care more about themselves than they do their kids, no amount of advocacy is going to change much. Divorce is not something to be encouraged. At the same time, however, I know plenty of children of divorced parents (who were mature and cared about their kids) who had better childhoods than kids whose parents stayed together but were unhappy and at war with each other.
For the record, Penolope Trunk is damned cute.
I only know who that is thanks to Joel McHale on "The Soup" running with the 'Jon Minus Nine' joke nearly a year ago.
Oh, that Kate! I like Joel McHale as well, I just never caught the ladies last name.
Based on the Soup, it was obvious that Jon was uninterested back when they showed (many times) a clip of him looking completely annoyed and bored during a confessional type segment.
Still don't know who Penelope is.
@ horace--
thankfully, the courts have, thus far, refused to embrace the "best interest of the economy" test for custody cases ...
Why this is outrageous. Outrageous, I tell you!
Wait. Who is "Kate Gosselin?"
No, scratch that. Don't tell me. Ignorance is bliss.
"Wait. Who is "Kate Gosselin?"
No, scratch that. Don't tell me. Ignorance is bliss."
Even though i can't stand your political views, I am just too nice of a guy to break your ignorance. Run man run. No one's brain should have any of its memory wasted on such a person.
One time-shared house is the answer for cats.
I watched it a couple of times. All accounts -- and Kate herself -- say she's pretty much like what the show portrays.
I can't tell if I feel sorry for Jon or not.
I grew up with 12 siblings. We were never on TV. My parents stayed married.
We one were on the front page of the small town newspaper where we had just moved. It was sort of a Freaks Move to Town!! article.
If there had been cameras all around us day and night, the result would likely have been cannibalism, arson, and toddlers smoking cigarettes.
So a divorce seems like they got off kinda light.
If Kate Gosselin is an anthem to Gen X women, the lyrics are probably, "I am woman, here me bore."
2 comments:
Horace: my mother forced such an arrangement on my dad when they divorced. And all I got to show for it was therapy at 35. No thanks.
Kate Gosselin is some kind of Gen X super hero? My childbearing-enlarged a** she is! The vast majority of 30-something moms who don't get divorced, don't whore their children, stay home, work overtime - do all those things that need to be done, in other words - are the heroes. I agree with Ms. Trunk that Gen X women seem to be balancing work, marriage and kids in pretty unique and successful ways (from my own observation this seems to be true, anyway) but I don't think that is true of a media Hoover like Kate Gosselin.
I used to watch the show. In the earlier years, the episodes I saw were sort of interesting in a "whoa, how do these people manage to raise all these kids" kind of way. And it was clear that in the first couple of years, they weren't living high on the hog. The husband still went to work, she was talking about budgeting, saving money, etc. My son watched it last year and the episodes I saw were very different from the earlier years. Suddenly they were going on trips and the themes seemed to be, "watch as Kate and Jon manage to corral 8 kids while _____-ing!" Fill in the blank - skiing, beachcombing, traversing Disney World, etc. All the stuff they could only afford because the tv people were picking up the tab.
I think young women should watch that show and learn a lesson - don't treat your husband like a hired hand. Don't demean him in the middle of a store, order him around, and act as though he's just another one of the kids. And men, don't allow yourselves to be treated that way! There's nothing Gen X about that lesson. That's more of a Greatest Generation lesson.
I have friends who tried the three-house method of divorce -- that is, the kids stay in the marital home while Mom and Dad take turns moving in and out. It was well-intentioned but it didn't last long. There was the problem of affording three homes on an income that had recently covered only one, and also, there was the problem of neither adult knowing where "home" was. Before too long, they got sick of it and shifted the problem to their kids by going to week-to-week shared custody.
Ugh. I've never heard anything about these people being "Gen X". Trumpeting one's own generation as embodying some quality or other is such a Boomer thing to do. How vulgar.
I just wanted to say (brag, really) that it took me a very long time to figure out just who is Kate Gosselin.
I didn't know.
And I feel very good about myself just now. ;-)
Lots of people use IVF without implanting 6 or 8 embryos. Generally three is the max for responsible people, and that can often result in twins, which is not a big deal.
The first time I saw the family was years ago on a different show including a variety of multiples. My immmediate response was that the two of them didn't seem to like each other much and none of the commercials I have seen have changed my mind on that score.
Post a Comment