Writes Kathryn Jezer-Morton, in "Why Are Parents Fixated on Core Memories?" (NY Magazine).
January 23, 2024
"... I’ve watched a trend on parenting TikTok and Instagram in which parents claim to be 'making core memories' for their kids."
"These captions typically accompany vacation or holiday content, or pictures and videos of kids playing in nature. The core-memories narrative is a roundabout way for parents to congratulate themselves for giving their children happy childhoods. This trend has held my attention because it strikes me as both openly corny and subtly malignant.... Today’s parents are famous for their instincts to control and engineer outcomes for their children, but it’s supremely hubristic to assume that you can stage-manage the content of your children’s memories.... Kids are mysterious, which is part of what makes them cool. What’s important to them is not what’s important to us. (I highly doubt either of my parents noticed the apple jelly that transfixed me in New Orleans.)..."
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From our Era of Fraudulence.
This trend, if it does exist, has much in common with the political quest for "legacy." Which I remember as originating with Clinton.
It's all fake garbage. History will decide your legacy, should you be fortunate enough to leave one, just as circumstances will determine childhood memories. "Remember when Mom and Dad made us take all those stupid pictures?"
Tick tick for the unknown outcomes?
Parenthood as a metaphor for JournoLism.
This seems silly, “Kids are mysterious”. Children are cool because they represent a future. What interests them at the moment may be different than what interests us at the moment. But if they were so mysterious, then we would never understand their motivation. Yet we do.
As for the “making core memories”, it seems no different than the hubris of parents that recorded their children on 8mm thinking their adult children would want to watch the videos later in life. At its core is the same reason people take photos of a place for later recall rather than experiencing the place and retaining that memory. It probably has more with the elder person concerned about retaining memories than it really does the child.
It's all fear, isn't it? It masquerades as pride (and even as pride it comes across as foolish, misplaced, and as the pull quote says, hubristic), but it comes down to parents' being so so scared that they're doing it wrong. Everyone is watching and judging, they know that their own parents screwed up royally (because whose didn't, in some way?), and they know their kids are going to look back on their childhoods with the same mixture of nostalgia and exasperation with which they look back on theirs, so they'd better maximize the nostalgia lest their children consider them as lame as they consider their parents.
My parents were utterly convinced that spanking us with a wooden spoon "sent a message" that it wasn't they but the spoon doing the punishing. My mother told me that this was their take. Dr. Spock or someone said so. It didn't work; the anger on my mom's face when she came at us with the spoon made it very clear that she was wielding it - it wasn't just flying at us like the brooms in Fantasia. They used the cry-it-out method of getting us to sleep, and I can count on one hand the nights in my life in which I haven't awakened until morning.
I was a big proponent of attachment parenting, where you carry your baby around in a sling until they can walk and let them sleep in a crib that's missing one wall, butted up against your own bed; it was supposed to make babies feel more secure and get them to sleep better. It didn't work, or at least not 100%; one of my kids still suffers from anxiety, and all three were and are restless sleepers, as I am. But I'd do it again because it was cheap (no babysitters if your child goes everywhere with you, and no $1000 stroller) and I was lazy at bedtime (and figured and still figure it wouldn't hurt to not interrupt my own sleep any more than necessary to deal with my also-insomniac children).
When everybody had kids and parenting wasn't even a word, everyone just did what their parents and grandparents had done. But now (and since at least the 1800s), every generation has its innovations - and no one trusts that they'll work, but everyone seems to believe they'll be better than what they themselves experienced.
Why is Kathryn Jezer-Morton so fixated on "Why Are Parents Fixated on Core Memories?"
The only difference now is that everything goes on social media; but core memories often come from shared experience. Not everything revolves around apple jelly.
My best memories are from family trips back to South Dakota and Minnesota to visit grandparents and cousins. I always felt more at home in the Midwest than in California. Even here in PA it still feels to be like the Midwest.
Leftie parents are obsessed with this. ‘Brainwashing’ they used to call it. It was evil then…
…so last night I was watching the Bruins game (that’s hockey). There have been ads for a new women’s hockey league running for a few months and apparently the ‘premiere’ is today. The first intermission was devoted to promoting the new league but also congratulating the network for hiring so many fabu women!!! Yay! (though they really really emphasized the hot one from Canada they hired for front of the camera work. One of the other women however is the director of the new…league or team, whatever…so she was on to create a ‘core memory’ for hockey fans by emphasizing how historic this new league is!!! This is not a moment, this is a MOVEMENT! apparently, with dramatic pause for effect. You know, this is about fans but NOT just female fans- at home I have THREE boys…
…God bless them. I wish them well…
I was four when my mother forgot eggs boiling on the stove and briefly caught the kitchen on fire. The blackened cupboards, the light coming in from the window over the sink -- I have a flash memory of a moment.
Children remember shock. Please don't make TikToks that document this.
TikTok, Chinese spyware used by trendy Moms to cosplay how great their lives are.
Facebook is so last year.
My favorite memories are at my granddad's farm, like walking through the cow lot with my sister holding our noses when he says: "So you want to taste it instead of smell it?"
Beat that Tik of the Tok
I always felt more at home in the Midwest than in California.
Does anyone feel "at home" in California?
JK; my husband is from there, and he doesn't feel at home anywhere else. More's the pity.
Second generation helicopter parenting? Third generation of dressing up very small children as bikers or rock stars in lieu of a playing with dolls?
In the words of Styx: "Too much time on my hands."
Back in the day of 4, 5, or 8 kids in a house, the parents didn't have the time to worry. The children learned politics, diplomacy, problem solving, and more from each other. They had a lot of fun playing with sticks and kitchen pots and pans. Children don't know what they don't know.
Because their readership are dumbasses.
Sounds like the old nonsense about "quality time"--a concept invented to make busy parents feel better about not spending enough time with their kids. The most important moments ("core memories"[ha!]) to most kids aren't being dragged through the Louvre or up a mountain, they're sitting in the comfy chair with a bowl of popcorn watching a fun movie or sitting on the floor playing a board game.
I've asked my youngest what their earliest memory was. Walking down the sidewalk with his grandmother.
I agree with what Enigma wrote: Too much time on my hands for those TikTok parents who, undoubtedly, complain of being too busy.
Good for these people for having children and caring about them. More please.
I would have been deliriously happy to remain in my hometown with kids my age to play with.
But my parent said hometown was "depressing" so it was just me.
One of the other women however is the director of the new…league or team, whatever…so she was on to create a ‘core memory’ for hockey fans by emphasizing how historic this new league is!!! This is not a moment, this is a MOVEMENT! apparently, with dramatic pause for effect. You know, this is about fans but NOT just female fans- at home I have THREE boys…
How long before they are bitching that they don't get paid as much as the men and/or start demanding charitable payments from the NHL to bolster their pay?
The Best Way, to make a "core memory" for your kids, is to beat them and torture them..
Trust me.. They'll NEVER forget it!
ps.
just got a call from my cousin; who is my lawyer and he says i NEED to say that i am sarcastically joking
More kids are better. Free-range kids, to a certain extent, is a very good idea. The biggest gift a parent can provide is an endless buffet of opportunities for a child to dine on, without too much direction. But some direction is absolutely mandatory, as are limits. A child has to know limits - good ones, and bad ones.
Parents--at least middle class parents--have always tried to "make good memories" for their children. Though I wouldn't be surprised if parents who read New York Magazine overdo it.
As any foole kno it's a bad, bad mistake to take seriously parenting advice from dubious persons or experts from doubtful websites on the internet. Just saying.
Bored women chasing clout and acceptance from other bored women. Pathetic.
It's a good thing that birth rates are down. Unfit parents are on the rise.
Without those early memories--cornered and cringing from the belt--I wouldn't be the man I am today. Of course, that was the '60s and by today's wimpy standards my father and a lot of others would have criminal records.
That said, I deserved every lick I got.
Now we're denigrating parents who are trying to enrich the lives of their children?
We went on several road trips to east coast locations when I was a child. D.C., Boston, Williamsburg, Gettysburg,… My mother was a history nut. A lot of good memories from the trips.
This is a prime example -- prime of gaping-maw journalism. As in, "Dear God -- or Satan, anyone who might be listening -- what am I going to throw into the gaping maw of the worthless publication I work for today?".
Lately this tends to become a recycling effort. What is thrown into the gaping maw appears upon the carefully curated web page, ready to become grist for another gaping maw. It's an ecosystem.
I think we'd all be better off without tik tok, instagram, and facebook.
Core memories are random and there's not much parents can do to lay them down. My earliest memories are of a dead bird on our street, and the time my little sister threw my favorite toy car out the car window on a busy freeway, to be lost forever, for which I am still cross at her nearly 60 years later.
I vaguely recall going to France with Mom & Dad at 8 or 9, but I scarcely remember the Eiffel Tower, and don't recall any of the museums and artworks and castles and fancy meals about which they would later reminisce. My most vivid memories of the trip were a beach that was almost entirely covered with stinking seaweed, and a water pump in our VW camper van that made a comical chirping sound.
Hahahahaha! Sorry but I am actually chuckling at the idea that you can create and curate memories for your kids. Has no one here either been a kid, or had kids themselves?
I made it a point to show my kids wondrous and fascinating things as they went through life; I hoped they would notice the joy and the sacredness of life that I felt as a child, and still do feel. Maybe some of it worked; not much evidence that specific memories became etched on their brains. The only tangible memories that they have mentioned relate to some of the silly made-up songs I used to sing to them.
Few memories of childhood remain; but I do remember my mother asking me what it was I did all day. "You know...mess around." (What else would you call it?) what do you mean, "mess around?" You know...we go out and do things..and kind of mess around.
The memories of messing around are with me yet. And what a great time we had, me and Dennis and Jim B. Lighting our farts? Of course! Inking out the punchlines in the Sunday papers we delivered? We did that too. Just messing around. What a glorious time.
A lot of times the stuff they remember isn't what we think they might remember. Stuff that might seem inconsequential to us might have huge meaning for them. Don't force it.
All I can say is "thank G-d I grew up in the 40's & 50's"!
I can’t imagine trying to “create” memories. We took our kids with us on vacations that we enjoyed and knew the kids would like too (mostly beach trips). We took two vacations to Disneyland explicitly for the kids when they were little. Do they remember any of it? If they remember how much we loved them, that’s enough.
Don't like getting older, but I'm glad I grew up poor at the time that I did...
Just do things with your kids and they'll decide what's "core".
My daughter's "core memories" revolve around growing up in a stunt group that performed at Ren festivals. As such, she's said that many times when talking about childhood with acquaintances she's found herself being stared at in bewilderment. "Sometimes I don't remember not everyone grew up performing."
I guess her's are out of the norm.
When I was four I heard my friend’s Dad say someone was an f-ing a-hole several times. When I asked Mom what a f-ing a-hole was she kicked me to the floor and proceeded to beat me with a sandal while screaming at me to never say those words again. It was a significant emotional event for me. When, as an adult, I asked her about it, she had no memory of it and questioned my memory of it. At the time of the event she was a single mother of three and probably had a lot going on so it wasn’t a significant event to her. My Mom changed when she married a good man and I love and miss her deeply. I cursed during my youth but stopped when I had children of my own. I don’t curse to this day.
When I was a kid, my uncle told me he used to take his children to the park every Sunday. When they grew up the told him, “Why did we always have to go to that stupid park every week?” Their bad experience turned into my happy childhood memory.
Our family has a "memory" tree. The first ornaments are from events before kids. After that, as a family we would purchase an ornament on every major trip. We have ornaments for pets. Ornaments that represent grandparents - and sometimes it was years before the "perfect" ornament was found. There are a couple that represent family hobbies (kayaks, etc).
This didn't just happen organically - it was intentional.
My kids are grown, but they help put that tree up every year and reminisce about a few of them. My son and DIL have been married 5 years and they have already purchased a couple of meaningful ornaments for their eventual "memory tree".
Most of my best memories from when I was young do not involve any adults. They're things like sitting in the backyard eating wild grapes that grew on the fence or catching crawdads in the creek. We went on vacations, but if you asked me about the memories I have of enjoyable moments, the vacations would be way down the list. Except for that one time in Florida when a crab got into the room. That was cool.
"At its core is the same reason people take photos of a place for later recall rather than experiencing the place and retaining that memory."
I used to do a fair amount of nature photography. For me, the time and effort I put into choosing a location and making the images I did had a greater impact on my ability to recall a place than just experiencing it. YMMV, of course.
"Does anyone feel "at home" in California?"
I grew up in SoCal, felt like home then. Today? Not so much. Another thing the Democrats can be thanked for.
One of my favorite memories from when I was a kid was going camping in the Sierras. We went every summer for a week, same place every year. I asked my mom about why we did that for vacation instead of something else one time when I was older, she said that it's because camping was free and my dad and her didn't have the money to do stuff like go to Hawaii or Europe even Disneyland.
My parents have been gone for years now but my brother, sister and I still get together now and then in the little town near where we used to camp. I seriously doubt my parents considered those trips to be anything remotely like "making core memories", but that's what they ended up being. You just never know.
"Does anyone feel "at home" in California?"
As a CA native, I will feel more at home once I have mastered Spanish.
"The Best Way, to make a "core memory" for your kids, is to beat them and torture them.."
This is what democrat political donors love doing to black children. But they usually kill them afterward so not so much on the memory side.
Ask Adam Schiff about his buddy...
Good for these people for having children and caring about them. More please.
Well, of course! But parents - good parents - have always cared about their children. This emphasis on making sure your kids think well of you when they grow up is what's new(ish).
This crisis of confidence among young(ish) parents (which I felt, myself) - I can't help seeing it as a reflection of the crisis of confidence of our whole society.
Good for these people for having children and caring about them. More please.
Well, of course! But parents - good parents - have always cared about their children. This emphasis on making sure your kids think well of you when they grow up is what's new(ish).
This crisis of confidence among young(ish) parents (which I felt, myself) - I can't help seeing it as a reflection of the crisis of confidence of our whole society.
You have to be Lazer focused on being present in the moment if in you want to create meaningful memories with kids. Running a janky homemade forge and beating orange hot junkyard leaf springs into knives on an anvil with a couple of adolescent boys doesn't allow for quiet reflection. Even though it was an unforgettable summer, it's the bonds and respect earned by all that really counts as you keep moving forward.
Having raised 2, and now doing the heavy lifting as grandparents of 6, we know that it is the least of of events that make leave the deepest meaning. We used to go up to the park on a tall bluff, overlooking the Mississippi River, at Lansing. We would grill, brats, and burgers, stare at the River, and the sky. Play frisbee, take a short hike.
Today, our 40 something kids, talk about those Sunday afternoons, less then a half hour from our home.
While we wanted to "make" memories, mostly we treated the Children like adults, and did thing we enjoyed. Because we were happy, the children were also.
A married couple centering their entire lives around the kids, is no way rear children.
...it was really the friends we made along the way that were important. Or some such twaddle.
The Jesuits might disagree with hyphen lady.
Core Memory was from some animated film with the young girl's emotiona anthropomorphized in her head.
Thing is, I doubt these uber-parental-achievers understand that the child makes the "core memory" and not them.
Here is one: coming home from my uncle's to the cottage, dark, the pines going by, all the stars, the green glow from the dash, slightly sleepy, wanting that feeling of relaxing dozieness to go on and on.
My parents were just trying to get back, the rest was me.
Original Mike at 10:15
No, we are mocking the hubris that the parent can dictate what the child will remember as important. Example:
Parent- We went to Italy and saw the Colosseum.
Child- The cars there look funny.
This behavior is most likely not as widespread as the media claims. "Trends" are always overblown by out of touch journalists. But the women who exploit their children for clout are as cringe as the redditards that force their kids to play the old video games they grew up with and post about it as if its a important milestone.
None of my "core memories" involved anything my parents planned.
My earliest was of seeing gouts of fire at night. Turns out, my mother took me on a night train to Midland, Texas when I was about six months old.
Oil country, with natural gas being flared off near our train route.
***********
I've had a very rich life, starting at an early age.
My wife and kids have begged me to write down "the stories"---they're nothing quite on the level of, "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion"---but they're still pretty damn good.
I pity the kids I see today, who have never climbed a tall tree, played "crack the whip", or had to dig a matchstick out of the ground with their teeth after losing at mumblety-peg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumblety-peg
Of course, kids had pocketknives in those days...............
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