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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Wild Thing
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[08/20/99]

Wild Thing
Wake up, Sleeping Beauty!
Classic fairy tales get a feminist makeover for parents who don't like their princesses tricked out, locked up or comatose. But were the old ones really that bad?
By Margot Mifflin
[08/20/99]

There goes my baby
Once, I thought my daughter would win the Nobel Prize. Now that she's started college, I just hope she keeps her phone, her power, her housing -- and remembers to wake up for class.
By Stephen J. Lyons
[08/19/99]

First crush
When you're a girl, a grown man's attention can make a woman out of you.
By Maurine Shores
[08/18/99]

Hot Flash
take my tv
The American Academy of Pediatrics says children under 2 should not watch TV. Why would any parent disagree?
By Jacques Leslie
[08/17/99]

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The deception complete, we walked into the Grand Floridian lobby, dominated by a Christmas tree that could've fit into a Cold War missile silo. At intervals in the vast room there were alcoves, each consisting of several chairs turned to face a television -- Jiminy Cricket on this screen, Bambi on that one, glassy-eyed children sitting in rapt obedience. I wished for a plague of attention-deficit disorder.

Five minutes later, when we stepped off the monorail and pushed through the turnstiles into the Magic Kingdom, the first thing I noticed was an automatic-teller machine. Beyond it, before reaching a single ride, we were funneled up "Main Street, U.S.A." Despite the turn-of-the-century architecture and quaint signs for "Emporium" and "Confectionary," this byway peddled nothing but Disney products, especially those tied to the new Disney film at the time, "A Bug's Life."

Running the gauntlet, we aimed for the safety of a carousel ride. From every direction beckoned another toy, another doll, another sweat shirt. I surrendered the cash for one magic wand, two mouse-eared hats, and four rain slickers with a Mickey logo. It was 10:30 in the morning of our first day and already Sarah was quaking, her circuits overwhelmed. Aaron was dashing around madly, stopping just long enough to say of his Mouse hat, "I think they put hyper lotion in here."

At last we boarded the carousel for the soothing canter of wooden horses. I recognized the calliope's tune. It was a song called "Feed the Birds" from a Disney movie of my own youth, "Mary Poppins," and its words promised a very different sort of childhood than the one that, as I was discovering with each passing minute, the Disney corporation these days conspires to create.

"Mary Poppins" was in its way a rather subversive film. The two children at its center, Jane and Michael Banks, feel emotionally abandoned by their financier father. He finds it especially outrageous that, instead of depositing their allowance in his bank, they give it to the beggar woman who sings, "Feed the Birds." It is working-class Mary, a nanny with a Cockney boyfriend and a single carpetbag of possessions, who provides the children with the love and attention they crave. In a remake, I thought to myself, Jane and Michael would blow off the bird lady and spend those tuppence on action figures.

By 12:30, Sarah had dissolved into yawns and whimpers. I drove her back to the hotel while Cynthia stayed with Aaron for a promised dinner in the Snow White castle. With Sarah napping, I opened that morning's edition of USA Today. In the bottom corner of the front-page was a chart showing how often parents purchased items -- including visits to theme parks -- at the behest of their young children. The headline said, "Nagging can work." I was in no position to disagree.

The next morning, Sarah bounded into the sofa-bed Cynthia and I shared at precisely 4:53. Desperate to keep her quiet while Aaron still dozed, we flipped on the television. Sure enough, the Disney channel had some cartoon with squirrels or ferrets. "Rescue rangers, Chip and Chip and Dale," she was soon chanting in the dim light of the screen. "Rescue rangers, Chip and Chip and Dale."

Cynthia and I decided to try Epcot. We had the notion it would be educational, less like an amusement park and more like the New York World's Fair. How well I remembered seeing the Pieta in the Vatican pavilion, wandering the narrow streets of Biblical Jerusalem in the Israel exhibit, even hearing about the Sukarno dictatorship and the CIA when my father explained why Indonesia had withdrawn from the exposition. Those illusions vanished the moment we parked our car in a lot with each section named for a Disney character. Pluto, Row 24. Gotta write that down so I don't forget.

Next page | There was no escaping the merchandising, even at Epcot