Against the Helicopter Parent

Plus: where COVID disinformation thrives; how Tumblr became popular again; and an animated film on the Oscar shortlist. View in browser | Update your preferences Friday, January 14, 2022 In today’s newsletter: • The case against the helicopter parent • Where COVID disinformation thrives • How Tumblr became popular again Janet Lansbury’s Gospel of Less Anxious Parenting Should we treat infants more like adults? Illustration by Linda Merad What is the right way to parent? Dozens of styles abound: authoritative parenting, permissive parenting, helicopter parenting, and kangaroo parenting are just a few approaches that have been popularized in today’s multibillion-dollar industry of parenting books, Web sites, classes, and more. Then there’s RIE. As Ariel Levy writes, with RIE, which stands for ​​Resources for Infant Educarers, “you acknowledge everything your child wants, even if you are doing none of it.” It’s a program that the educator Magda Gerber pioneered in the mid-twentieth century, and which has since become the doctrine of Janet Lansbury, a parenting evangelist with a blog, two books, and nearly a million listeners to her podcast, “Unruffled.” Central to Lansbury and Gerber’s philosophy is the notion that parents should allow children to make their own decisions—and to be “a ‘stable base’ that children leave and return to.” If your child cries? Let her. If your child throws a tantrum and bangs his head against the floor? Put a blanket down so he won’t hurt himself, Lansbury suggests. Children have the right to object, as Lansbury sees it—“It’s so healthy for them!” The profile takes us along Lansbury’s colorful path to becoming a parenting Martha Stewart: stints as a model, as an actress, and in rehab; flings with Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson; and her experience becoming a mother and fearing failure—all before discovering RIE. “The good news is that there are no bad kids,” Levy writes, of this ideology. “The bad news is that there are plenty of bad parents.” Read “Against the Helicopter Parent.” —Jessie Li, newsletter editor Editor’s Picks Daily Comment The Latinx Community and COVID-Disinformation Campaigns Researchers debate how best to counter false narratives—and racial stereotypes. By Graciela Mochkofsky Infinite Scroll How Tumblr Became Popular for Being Obsolete The social-media platform’s status as a relic of the Internet has attracted prodigal users as well as new ones. By Kyle Chayka Culture Desk A Motherhood Time Warp During the pandemic, time has moved differently. By Whit Taylor Video Dept. Screening Room An Animated Portrait of Life with the Ghosts of Children In “Step Into the River,” two young girls deal with their own haunting stories. This is one of six New Yorker films that have been short-listed for the ninety-fourth Academy Awards. Film by Weijia Ma Text by Han Zhang Culture Dept. The Front Row A Celebration of Miklós Jancsó’s Challenging Political Cinema The director was radically original and daring, yet even his greatest films are extreme rarities in the U.S. By Richard Brody Tables for Two Family Recipes at the Michelin-Starred Casa Enrique At his Long Island City restaurant, the chef Cosme Aguilar pays homage to his late mother with dishes such as albondigas and a twenty-four-ingredient mole. By David Kortava Sketchpad Monuments to Trump’s Lost Cause January 6th reënactors, take note! The Colossus of Mar-a-Lago and the Petrified Skin Tag of Steve Bannon won’t let you down! By Bruce Handy From the Archive Taste Technologies The Ketchup Conundrum From 2004: Mustard now comes in dozens of varieties. Why has ketchup stayed the same? By Malcolm Gladwell Fun & Games Dept. Name Drop Play Today’s Quiz Can you guess the notable person in six clues or fewer? By Liz Maynes-Aminzade Daily Cartoon Friday, January 14th By Colin Tom Daily Shouts A Guide to Filming Your First Commercial It should include a man and likely a woman. The man should wear a button-down shirt that conveys the gravitas of the Lincoln Memorial. By Grace Henes Daily Shouts Early Signs That Your Infant May Be a Byronic Hero Is your baby secretive and standoffish? Prone to fits of rage as the sun begins to wane? By Kate Gavino P.S. Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca” premièred in Rome on this day in 1900. The opera reached the stage in the U.S. a year later, and has since been performed nearly a thousand times at the Met. But not every rendition has been greeted with open arms. A new staging, in 2009, by the director Luc Bondy, elicited “boos resounding from the orchestra seats, the upper galleries, and even the plaza outside, where people had watched on a screen for free.” As Alex Ross wrote, in a striking review titled “Fiasco,” “By all means, then, let’s have a new ‘Tosca.’ But it needs to be good. And this is not.” Today’s newsletter was written by Jessie Li. Thanks for reading. Let us know your thoughts about today’s edition. Plus, browse more newsletters and invite a friend to sign up for The Daily. You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for The Daily from The New Yorker. Manage your preferences | View our Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2022. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.