I rarely agree with the crux of a “Guest Essay” in The New York Times. It’s not this occasional circumstance that compels me to maintain a print and digital subscription to the daily: it’s a lifelong habit, an attempt to stay informed about the left-liberal politics I abhor, access to the paper’s excellent archives (I’ll sometimes read old columns from Russell Baker, Red Smith, William Safire and James Reston) and dutifully pleasing my wife, who prefers completing the Crossword Puzzle with a pencil on newsprint.
Nevertheless, I appreciated the spirit of JoAnna Novak’s article last week, under the surprisingly (for the Times) devil-may-care headline “Just Let Your Kids Watch TV Already.” Novak lets on how, after initial hesitation and enough guilt to keep her in the confessional for a month, she allowed her six-year-old son to watch, often with her by his side, the long-running show Paw Patrol. She dug it: not particularly Paw Patrol, but letting her son choose their activity. It wasn’t easy. She writes: “I struggled to keep my mind on the show… I itched to reach for a magazine from that stack of New Yorker's teetering on the coffee table. [That strikes a false note, since today it’d take over 100 thin-as-meticulously-sliced-salami copies of the going, going, gone weekly, betraying the joke from the William Shawn era.] My phone and all my unanswered mails beckoned. Dinner needed to be prepped or at least ordered. Yet I stayed glued next to my son as he stayed glue to the TV.”
Novak’s an author, newsletter editor and creative writing professor, so I imagine—but could be wrong—that this essay wasn’t one she expected to write a few years ago; plus she likely was upbraided by her social circle in Chicago. That rates a 76 percent Bravo!, a gentlewoman’s C.
At the Smith household in the 1990s and early-2000s the kids had free rein when it came to TV. No half-hour a day restrictions and few checks on the violence-meter. My sons did well at school—as one might hope in the early-grades—loved going to the movies and also started reading books at a reasonable age (Nicky picked up reading from the Nintendo videogame The Legend of Zelda, initially yelling for me to help him with the words). As tots, both were transfixed by the then-ubiquitous Barney, which allowed me to drink coffee and read the New York Post and Times. A de facto babysitter for 30 minutes or so, and there’s no shame in that. They also watched Rugrats, The Simpsons, Dr. Seuss videos, Goosebumps, Arthur, Blue’s Clues (I found the show’s host Steve really creepy, likely unwarranted), Doug and Teletubbies. A partial list. Nicky and Booker are now in their early-30s, and if there was any deleterious result of their TV time, I’ve yet to discern it.
In the 1960s, before “helicopter” parenting was invented—in its stead was common sense—my own parents were also lax about tube time (although mom didn’t like me watching re-runs on sunny summer mornings. “Go on, Rusty, scram!) especially in the evenings after homework. On Long Island, we received the seven NYC stations—far better than most cities—and there was usually something on. On Sunday nights, we’d watch Ed Sullivan (for pop/rock acts and making fun of Topo Gigio), and at nine the latest episode of Bonanza. If the cards were in our favor, my brother Gary and I watched in our bedroom, with slices from Village Pizza and glasses of cold milk in front of us. Or Swanson’s turkey TV dinners, which were pretty good too, except for the vegetables.
As a pre-adolescent I’d look forward to The Twilight Zone, Mr. Ed, My Three Sons, I Dream of Jeannie, Hazel, I Love Lucy re-runs, Uncle Tonoose on Make Room For Daddy, The Defenders, Ben Casey (so-so), Dragnet, Get Smart, The Man From U.N.C.L.E and The Dick Van Dyke Show. And the Mets on channel 9 and Yankees on channel 11, though a lot of those afternoon games were missed because of school.
Novak also writes: “All my preparenting programming taught me that TV equals bad. When I was a kid, my mom taped an article with the headline ‘TV Kills Brain Cells’ to the inside of a kitchen cabinet as a message to us all.” That’s some very rude shit. My wife and I adhered to some of the p.c. pregnancy rituals (but never said, “we’re pregnant”), most notably attending eight weeks of Lamaze sessions on the Upper East Side. They were useless in 1992, when Nicky was born (18 hours of labor and then a c-section) and we skipped them for Booker.
The accompanying picture with Nicky (center) and Booker (right) is in a Malibu bedroom—a trip from NYC to see the in-laws—and it looks like they’re watching and playing a videogame, the name of which I’ve no idea.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Northern Ireland Assembly is suspended; UK deports Augusto Pinochet to Chile; an Enigma machine is stolen from the Bletchley Park Museum; Billy Elliot and Snatch are released; Q TV is launched; Bobby Witt Jr. is born and Bob Lemon dies; Datapoint files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; The Texas Seven escapes from prison; Robert B. Parker’s Hugger Mugger and Martin Amis’ Experience are published and Jhumpa Lahiri wins the Fiction Pulitizer.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023