Children of the Corn

Newsletter 2020-10-11

Anytime I write a newsletter about taking my kids out in public to do something, you can assume I didn't learn my lesson from all of the newsletters that came before it. This weekend was no exception. Ignoring years of evidence to the contrary, I thought it was a good idea to take my children to a corn maze. It’s not like I could have resisted the siren call of seasonal fun, even if I wanted to. It’s called fall because, if you’re a parent, it’s when your life falls apart. Every autumn, there’s an insane amount of pressure for moms and dads to do performative family activities and then post about it for all their frenemies on Facebook. If you don't get a picture of your kids picking apples that cost five times as much as the ones at the grocery store, do you even love your children? Not according to Susan from high school. The orchard/pumpkin patch racket acts like it’s selling you good old fashioned family fun, but really it’s just exploiting deep-seated parental guilt. The fact that…