Hahahahaha!
By Mitch Berg
Double-Income, No Kids Power Couples are the first people in history to discover that children will mess up your perfect designer house!
WHEN Jacqueline Brown and her husband, Gavin Friedman, were in their early 30s, they lived in a condominium in Santa Monica, Calif., with a black leather Ikea couch Mr. Friedman had bought for law school, a few modest pieces from Pier 1 Imports and assorted hand-me-down furnishings. Within a few years, though, having acquired professional and financial stability — both were litigation associates at prominent law firms — they bought a house in Cheviot Hills, an affluent neighborhood in West Los Angeles, and began remodeling and decorating.
During two renovations, each costing more than $100,000, they built a two-sided fireplace to separate the living and dining rooms, put in a wine cellar and installed a sleek maple and granite kitchen. They bought molded-wood chairs in the Arne Jacobsen style, Murano glass pendant lamps and a custom walnut entertainment unit. Ms. Brown, who had become obsessed with interior design in law school, poured heart and soul into the projects.
But just as Ms. Brown and Mr. Friedman were establishing their first truly grown-up residence — she was 38, he 37 — Ms. Brown gave birth to their first child, Harrison, a boy who turned out as bouncing as most.
Suddenly they were confronted with a question that had never before occurred to them: given the way baby gear and toys take over households, the uncivilized habits of toddlers and the dangers posed by sharp-edged contemporary furniture, could Ms. Brown and Mr. Friedman continue to live their high-design dream?
Hahahahahahahaha you can’t, yuppie slapnutzes! hahahahahahahaha!
…when the investment has been not in cribs or other nursery furniture but in the classic “double income, no kids” fantasy of a pristine, high-style home for grown-ups, the transition can be hardMs. Brown and Mr. Friedman — who of course were thrilled to have a child, like all the later-in-life parents interviewed for this article — were also determined not to let Harrison “take control of the house,”
Bwahahahaha! “Determined”, were we? Oh, you slay me.
OTHERS, like Debra Cherney, 49, and Hartley Bernstein, 56, were more resigned to giving up control…the couple realized that they would need to create a designated play space in their prewar Park Avenue apartment. Still, the room they sacrificed — the formal dining room — was tough.
“I’m pretty sensitive aesthetically, and it does something for me when I look at a pretty room,” Ms. Cherney said. “Looking at what the room used to be was the visual equivalent of listening to Bach or Mozart. Now it’s the visual equivalent of listening to Barney.
Well, Dammit all to hell!
She felt the full impact when she and Mr. Bernstein put their 18th-century mahogany dining table and chair set in storage. “When I bought the table I was envisioning these beautiful, lovely dinners with fine china,” she said. “Once you have kids and once you give up those things, it was like, ‘Who was I kidding?’ I remember thinking this room will look nice again — in about 18 years.”
Well, Deb and Hartley, that’s what boarding school is for, now, isn’t it?
The issue of safety, too, can pose vexing choices for parents in thrall to design. Even before Kipp Cheng and his partner of 15 years, Mark Jarecke, arrived home with their son, Beckett, last March, they could see that many of the furnishings in their Maplewood, N.J., colonial house, including a set of four Barcelona chairs and a glass-top Noguchi coffee table, were accidents waiting to happen. But they weren’t eager to act.
“We are both small-town guys who lived in the city and tried to establish an aesthetic point of view that was largely modernist and minimalist,” said Mr. Cheng, 40, a playwright and a publicist for the American Association of Advertising Agencies. “But when you become parents, you kind of have to throw that out the window.”
Or raise a modernist, minimalist kid. Y’know.
As for the coffee table, they avoided doing anything until Beckett gave them no choice: while learning to walk last summer, he used it as his main training prop. “He’d cruise and trip and hit his face on the table’s edge,” Mr. Cheng recalled.
Mr. Jarecke initially refused to discuss parting with or altering the table in any way, but they eventually compromised and decided to wrap the edge of the top in foam. “As I’m taping it,” Mr. Cheng said, “I’m saying, ‘I’m taping over what makes the difference between this being a Noguchi table and a Kmart table.’ ” Mr. Jarecke was even more distraught. “It transformed this beautiful modernist piece of furniture into a piece you’d find in a ’70s rec room,” he said.
Simply ghastly! The Horror!
THE HOR-ROR!
FOR some design-minded parents, certain compromises are too much.
In 2004, Bob Stratton, a design technologist who specializes in home automation, and his wife, Sandra McLean, 50, a food activist and writer, bought a former tool and die factory in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and set about turning it into a two-story, 4,000-square-foot loftlike home appropriate for themselves and their son, Vin, and daughter, Fia, then 2 and 5….“They can play with a toy in the main living area, but it has to go away when they’re done,” Ms. McLean said. “I’m very concerned with what’s in my visual space.
Just as a matter of principle, I think people who refer to their “crap” as their “visual space” need to be beaten with sticks.
She also refused to babyproof furniture when the children were younger. She was “never one of those mothers” who put safety corners on coffee tables, she said. “That stuff is just gross, and I don’t feel you have to sacrifice living space to that degree.” And she decided not to install wire railings on the open side of the floating walnut staircase Mr. Stratton designed to connect the first- and second-floor living spaces.
“We couldn’t bear it,” she said. “It was too ugly. So basically what we did was we trained the kids to hold onto the handrail, and it’s worked. No one’s ever fallen off.”
I’d love to interview those kids in twenty years.
“What’s it like, growing up feeling like a museum piece?”
February 15th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
There have always been people who put themselves before their children. It only in the liberal media and liberal mindset that they’re celebrated and touted as models.
Interviewing them in twenty years: “What’s is like being raised by a petulant, self indulgent, childish couple?”
February 15th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
I wonder why these people had kids? They don’t sound like the parenting type. Ah well. They’ll probably contract out much of the actual child-handling and what-not.
February 15th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
When they reach about 15, these will be the kids having huge drunken/drug parties when their parents are vacationing in Europe.
February 15th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Ya know, my parents weren’t yuppies. My dad installed auto galss and my mom stayed home to raise use for the first few years and then went back to work in realestate. Now with that out of the way, my parents did’t “childproof” our house one wit, and isn’t it amazing I survived? I mean sharp table edges, esposed wall outlits, unsecured cleaning supplies, and GASP no baby gates at the stairs! I should be DEAD! DEAD I TELL YOU! In fact, I rode around with my parents with no seatbelt or booster seat. I rode my bike without a helmet. My father…. i know… this is cruel, he actually smoked and drank beer in my presence. *sob* I’m just so glad to be alive… *sob*
February 15th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I’m not sure I have any words… that’s either absolutely horrifying or absolutely hillarious. I can’t make my mind up which one.
February 15th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I forgot to ask… What in the flamming hootie-hoo is a Food Activist?
February 15th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Someone who wasn’t capable of figuring out how to be PRODUCTIVE in life. She is compelled to indirectly tell you what to eat. She knows better, dammit.
She is woman. Hear her roar….about unhealthy food.
February 15th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I am acquainted with a guy who lives in NYC, and he and his wife take great pride, joy and effort to raise their daughter in just about every non-traditional way they can. Elimination Communication (no diapers, teach the kid to use the toilet from the time they can crawl), attachment parenting (carry the kid in a cloth bundle you sling over your shoulder, not a stroller – try to maintain almost uninterrupted physical contact the entire day), extended breast feeding (with membership in the La-Leche League, otherwise known as the “nursing nazis”), co-sleeping (kid still sleeps with mom and dad after almost 2 years), no TV, no electronic or branded toys (Dora, Barney, Disney, etc).
I tremble to think what an incompetent, codependent wallowing bucket of poi that child will grow up to be. Makes Dr Spock almost seem rational.
Of course, the free live-in babysitting they get from his mother-in-law helps as well. Did I mention they live in a 2BR apartment in Brooklyn?
Yeah, exactly.
February 15th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Did I mention they live in a 2BR apartment in Brooklyn?
third world lifestyle on a first world income – what a fortunate child!
February 15th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
I’m fine with not safty-proofing our house… the boy does well. Sometimes he gets bumped or bruised, and he learns to be more careful next time.
He also leaves Daddy’s collection of DVDs alone. No touching at all, in spite of the fact they are right there in front of him.
February 15th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
third world lifestyle on a first world income – what a fortunate child!
Yweah, he’s not doing too shabby. He’s an IT security guy, and I think he’s pulling down low 6 figures. Of course, they’re paying like $2100/mo rent for 1100 sq ft. But his uber liberal wife refuses to move out of the city to the NJ suburbs where they could afford a house with a yard and such.
Oh, and their one proclamation that causes me never ending chuckles: they don’t own a “TV” but they let the daughter occasionally watch movies on the HD projector!
February 15th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Contrast the angst of these self absorbed examples of the American dream with the modest arrangements one would find at the AssClown compound.
When Mrs. AC informs Mr. AC that another AC is on the way, Mr. just throws out a fresh layer of sawdust and they’re good to go.
February 15th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
These people are morons. You can have stylist furniture and not have your home look like a museum. You just have to pick the right style.
We have hand made oriental rugs and antique chairs and tables and our house is much tougher than many homes furnished with things from HOM. Old furniture from the right periods can be tough as nails.
Of course, if your kid bangs into a Mission style coffee table, the kid is going to feel it, but how else will they learn?
February 15th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Ah, For the Old Days!
Children were kept in a separate wing of the house & cared for by a wet nurse & nanny from the lower, uneducated classes.
Seriously, unless I’ve been misled by Dickens, the job of the middle-class “woman of the house” of a century or two ago was to manage the servants, who were mostly drunken thieves.
Lower class parents could not afford wet nurses and nannys. Parents let there children run wild until puberty, when they were put “in service” so that they could become drunken thieves.
February 15th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Funny posts! How come none of these married (I assume) cuples have the same name? Not one. These couples all sound extremely pretentious and self-centered (what else is new).
See, it pays to do it the way we did. Come from lower-middle class, get pregnant, get married, have nothing and work your way up in life while you grow up as the kids do. Then, when you can afford to have it nicer, they are gone. You start out life in earnest and have no time or money for being picky about your “visual space”. I didn’t baby-proof our home either. They learned, by God, to leave my stuff alone. I put cleaners and such out of reach, but nothing else was done. We burn wood in the living room (cast iron stove) and neither of our kids ever got burnt. I burnt the back of my leg once-standing too close after getting out of the shower-but that was it. They just knew from the start. Like kids who grow up with stairs…they’re usually fine. It’s the kids who come to visit that have the grown-ups leaping up in terror if they go anywhere near the stairs.
jshandorf, this was funny:
“I mean sharp table edges, esposed wall outlits, unsecured cleaning supplies, and GASP no baby gates at the stairs! I should be DEAD! DEAD I TELL YOU! In fact, I rode around with my parents with no seatbelt or booster seat. I rode my bike without a helmet. My father…. i know… this is cruel, he actually smoked and drank beer in my presence. *sob* I’m just so glad to be alive… *sob*”
Join the club. We grew up the same way. How any kids born in the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s or 60’s ever lived, we’ll never know.
February 16th, 2008 at 7:59 am
sharp table edges, esposed wall outlits, unsecured cleaning supplies, and GASP no baby gates …We burn wood in the living room (cast iron stove)
Hah. Dad was a freelance chemist specializing in insecticides; we had open vats of bug poison and precursor chemicals lying about the place, some of them unstable at room temperature, so they’d occasionally flash into steam or blow up if they got jarred. We learned bright and early, don’t touch the vats and bottles and beakers, or BOOM, the whole house could explode, or we could inhale fumes that’d scar our lungs and cause renal and liver failure on contact.
And mom was a bomb-disposal technician and teacher. We had live grenades, det cord and fuses everywhere. It only took one mistake to teach you THAT lesson.
But we did have outlet plugs.
February 16th, 2008 at 10:07 am
I fell down the basement stairs (with a little help from my older sister) and broke my arm when I was three. I somehow survived, and there was no police report no visit from Child Protective Services.
February 16th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Now that I think about it, I kind of grew up in a museum/artsy house. Most of our furniture was from circa 1960-1965. Formica table. Long, low profile two-section couch. End table with weird angles. Yeah, the stuff a couple of vintage furniture stores in St Paul sell for big dollars today. Only thing was the parents didn’t have it for style. It was bought new and just kept. And it was all rather worn and chipped so no problems there.