Babies on Every Side

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Detail from the graphic chart, Upstanding Citizens



Baby Expo
A Child Grows in Brooklyn has organized an action-packed day for new parents and parents to be this Sunday, 11 am to 4 pm, at their first-ever Brooklyn Baby Expo held at the Toren condos downtown. You’ll find furniture, gear, clothes and a ton of great info. Seminars and demos throughout the day touch upon establishing good sleeping patterns, school zoning, making baby food, baby yoga, CPR, installing a car seat, cloth diapering–basically most of the skills you’d end up learning anyway, but here you’ll get a supportive head start. Attendees will also have plenty of chances to score serious baby booty through multiple raffles of products from UPPABaby, Boon and more. Tickets are $35 in advance ($45 at the door), $60 per couple and include parking and a free subscription to Time Out New York Kids. Register at achildgrows.com/expo.

Baby on the Safe Side
It is impossible to read the collection of poems, Baby on the Safe Side, and not laugh. Written collaboratively by two women, Sarah Bartlett and Emily Kendal Frey, the poems touch upon that magical transformation that happens to some of us post-kids, when Facebook becomes a vehicle for sharing every photo of your baby and none of you, and the not-so-subtle differences between you and childless friends begin to appear. (“Me not having a baby/ doesn’t mean you’re allowed/ to make comments/ about my age./ You don’t hear me/ making comments/ about your vagina.”) As Bartlett and Frey explain, “We have no beef with babies or children. We offer to babysit for friends. If there’s a baby in a room, we’re the ones bogarting the baby. That being said, we think the precious, pretentious attitude of certain families can get pretty tired. It’s also the blatant ‘baby-as-product’ mentality that is a little disturbing, coupled with the attitude that those who don’t have babies are lacking and inadequate. We just wanted to poke at that a little. We didn’t set out to intentionally satirize that type of parent, though that certainly ended up happening. We simply laughed a lot when we wrote the poems, so we kept writing them.” You can download the chapbook here.

Upstanding Citizens
Graphic designer Elizabeth Carey Smith recently unveiled an eye-popping chart documenting the number of times commuters offered her a seat on the subway in the last four months of her pregnancy. Overall she was offered one 81% of the time, and more men than women offered her a seat, but only by a small margin. Also of note: G train riders were the rudest during her commute. I asked if she thought there was some correlation there (childless hipsters=inconsiderate of pregnant women) but Smith wouldn’t make gross generalizations. “With the E, I could almost understand it because on those newer trains, it’s harder to see people getting off and on when the train is super packed. But the G has both forward-facing and wall seating, so people could definitely see me. When I asked one guy on the G if he could please move over a bit so I could fit into a seat, (his legs were spread wide and all akimbo) he barked at me, “all the seats are the same size!” So I stood the rest of the trip.” Ah, New Yorkers.

The Year You Were Born…
For 2011 babies born in Park Slope, New York, Chicago, L.A., Portland, S.F. and London, there’s an easy way to commemorate their birth without committing to filling out an entire baby book. Designer Barbara Buenz of Double Bravo Designs created “The Year You Were Born” cards last year as a way to capture the joyous occasion and place it in the context of your baby’s birth city. On the 5×7 letterpress card for New York, you can fill out remembrances of things past like “A Ride on the Subway Cost” and “Hourly Babysitting Rate.” She’s also working on a poster-size, 16” x 24” version by May, and can customize a card for your particular neighborhood, if you want to get hyperlocal. The new standard cards will be on sale on her Etsy shop by the end of the month; 2010 cards are available now.

One Response

  1. jb -

    LOVE the infographic Upstanding Citizens. Buses are the worst though. Nobody gets up. I’ve been doing my own social study in these last months of my pregnancy – young white men get up the least.

    Reply

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