The official reason I took a four-month break from filing this column was so I could spend some quality time taking care of my third son, who was born in July.
The more pressing reason was so I could potty train my oldest one in time for the start of preschool.
At the time of my departure, I would have considered such an admission to be too private for public consumption, one of those boundary-crossing columns that could send a kid into therapy, not to mention a possible abuse of the provisions of the Family Medical Leave Act. I’ve since learned that there are few topics that permeate parenting culture quite like poop.
“Is he still Number 2-ing in a diaper?” a stranger asked me in a Target aisle last spring, nodding to my oldest child as we checked out with an economy pack of size 5s.
For his sake, I feigned hearing trouble, but she was undeterred.
“Mine didn’t do it until he was 4,” she said, indicating the brown-eyed boy beside her. “And even now he’s got a rubber sheet and a pull-up at night. Boys are the worst. …”
I was taken aback by the casual way she discussed such an intimate developmental milestone. But over these last months, as I immersed myself, Margaret Mead-style, in minivan culture, with daily trips to the park, the zoo, the library, the drive-thru and anywhere else one is at very high risk for oral-fecal bacterial contamination, I have learned that this is simply how parents of young children greet each other.
For instance, when a little girl at Camp Snoopy begins shrieking “Home, Daddy! Home, Daddy!” her father helpfully explains to all present that she is unable to perform except on her home porcelain.
A checkout clerk at my supermarket tells me, unprovoked, that calling in sick for a week and stripping her boys naked was her preferred method of potty-training, passed down from a grandmother from the old country.
A dad at the park who travels for business gathers a crowd by claiming he’s seen children in China relieve themselves on the streets, by means of a well-placed seam in their nappies. This becomes a topic of conversation for days.
The most e-mailed story in my inbox this season was the recent New York Times front-pager detailing a potty training plan that starts before babies are even eating solid foods. For weeks, the parenting blogs have exploded with satisfied testimonials, and charges of child abuse. In fact, during the whole of my maternity leave, I do not believe I had a single conversation with another parent that did not include or allude in some way to someone’s bathroom habits. While other parenting issues — bottle or breast, stay-at-home or work, Dora or Diego — may be fraught with politics, potty training seems to be everyone’s pain. It cuts across socioeconomic strata, educational gaps and ideological divides faster than you can count to … well … No. 2.
I bring this up now as I return to a profession that has fretted for years and convened focus groups to find out why people my age, particularly parents, aren’t reading the newspaper like they used to. I think the answer is clear: There just aren’t enough stories about potty training.
I’m not suggesting that every story has to be about potty training per se, but rather that readership among parents might improve if all stories were filtered through the potty-training prism. For instance, there were many reports of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ son’s jitterbugging antics in front of the cameras, but none explained that the child was exhibiting all the classic symptoms of a kid who really has to go. Hurricane coverage has been a journalistic tour de force all season, and yet, nowhere have I seen a helpful sidebar about the best way to loot diapers in a natural disaster.
I’m not the one to lead this movement. In fact, now that I’ve relieved myself of what I’ve learned, I’d rather not write about it again. Still, it’s helpful to take a break from the newsroom to find out what real people are actually concerned about.
It turns out, White House leaks aren’t nearly as pressing as those much closer to home.
Originally appeared in Pioneer Press, October 2005
