Somehow, in the course of either clicking through our 500 channels or escaping something else, we stumbled onto Super Nanny last night. The premise is that a nanny straightens up a different dysfunctional household each week, teaching kids (and even more, parents) how to behave. She's like a cross between Mary Poppins and Barbara Wodehouse.
I have to wonder: how many nannies in America, super or otherwise, have English accents? I mean, Jo Frost is great: she's an updated, and better-educated, version of the American image of the English nanny (or as one source describes her, "part Mary Poppins, part drill instructor"), and has great testimonials. But most hired child care in the western states doesn't hail from London or Manchester, I'm betting.
Update, 7 February 2005: One thing that impresses me is how much tougher the nanny experience is on parents than kids. For the kids (even tonight's evil twins), it's about learning to deal with structure and rules. It's not like the kids have to move to cabins without running water or anything.
For the parents, on the other hand, it's about having a professional eye cast on your faults-- and, inevitably, confirming that you're a failure at something that either you're supposed to just know how to do (because you're a parent), or should have figured out long ago (because you're supposed to be responsible).
And what's up with putting the twins in one bed? Isn't that house about 5,000 square feet? Don't they have room for separate rooms for those two, or at least bunk beds?
Update, 8 February 2005: The comments section is taking on a life of its own. It's an interesting phenomenon-- a little bit of Amazon review performance art, right here on my own blog!
The show has, of course, several national variants (it seems to be big in Germany), and it would be interesting to see if parents make the same kinds of mistakes in different countries. And the concept of the "super nanny" seems to be seeping into some unlikely places. Last year there was a small media frenzy in Shanghai over the arrival of six graduates of a vocational school that trains young women in household management. They were described as "super nannies."
And last week there was a Craigslist personals in Boston (now deleted, alas), asking, "Do You Look Like Super Nanny?" (I realized some time ago that Craigslist offers a great window into our collective psyche. Or just a lot of funny stuff.)
Update, 9 February 2005: I have to take a little issue with some of the comments that what Jo teaches is just common sense. It strikes me that her particular genius consists of two things: strategic clarity regarding the rules of engagement between parents and children (e.g., how you want your child to respond to you, how you want them to behave, etc.), coupled with-- and here's the special part-- a lot of non-obvious advice about how to interact with kids. Much of her advice to parents consists of things like where to pitch your voice, or how much eye contact to make with a child you're disciplining-- the kind of stuff that most of us don't learn, and that isn't common sense unless you're a psychologist (in which case it isn't common sense either, but professional training). Indeed, that kind of advice brings Jo Frost somewhat closer to Barbara Woodhouse than, say, Dr. Spock.
Update, 14 February 2005: There's an interesting parallel between "Super Nanny" and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy:" to a degree that's easy to overlook, they're both heavy-duty exercises in surveillance. Each uses lots of hidden cameras trained on This Week's Subject to diagnose problems or reveal misbehavior-- to say nothing of the camera crews that accompany the hosts.
I wonder how well-behaved my children would be if a camera was following them around? Actually, given how many pictures I take of the, they'd probably not even notice.
And am I the only one who thinks the term "naughty spot" has a weird double-entendre quality about it?
Later same evening. Does the show (tacitly) require that the parents-- or at least the mom-- break down on-camera over her inadequate parenting? Does the show's narrative arc echo that of, say, AA-- requiring that you publicly acknowledge that you have a problem? Is it reasonable to treat parental failure as akin to drug addiction?
17 February 2005. Of course, if you can't get enough of her, you could buy Jo Frost's book, Super Nanny. It's like the TV show, in convenient book form!
23 May 2005. Here's a link to Google News, with the latest Super Nanny-related stories. Interestingly, there are a ton of articles about her in the Australian press. The weird things you learn thanks to Google.
2 August 2005. The New York Times reports that
Those Televised Supernannies May Be Just a Bit Too Super
[Shows like "Supernanny" and "Nanny 911" are] popular among parents. But pediatricians and other child development experts say that they are only partly rooted in reality.
The discipline challenges presented on the shows are in some ways typical of those that real parents face, and much of the advice is based on the same techniques that the experts themselves use.
But some advice is simplistic or questionable, the experts say, and the families in the shows appear extreme, their children more out of control than those in most American families. Some doctors also worry that endings may not be as happy as they seem and that appearing on the shows may leave some children with emotional bruises.
[To the tune of Cocteau Twins, "Pitch The Baby," from the album "Heaven or Las Vegas".]
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