History wasn't like that.

My child is being marketed too, quite effectively, because we'll get these books out of the library and then there are pictures of other books on the backs, and then she'll ask me to put them on hold, too. And so we ended up with a handful of American history stories that wouldn't otherwise have been on anyone's radar (two westward expansion, one white family & one black family, & an underground railroad one) and this is all very well except for the thing where writers tend to co-opt little bits of modern culture in ways that irritate me.

( blah, blah, blah, underground railroad book about a white boy, whatever )

and then his father gets home and goes to talk to him in his very own room, with (according to the illustrations) an awful lot of space in it, and I get all *argh* about the idea of an 8-or-10-ish boy with two brothers having his own private bedroom. Heck, most kids with five sibs *these* days don't get a room to themselves. Pre-civil-war, odds are he wouldn't have his own *bed.*

There's also the princess trend where reigning queens end up the primary caretaker for their children, and um, no. Being a queen is a full-time job, plus some, being a prince or princess is more job than most American kids see before they turn 16, and there is always going to be support staff. Your house is full of support staff, always, and private parent/child moments have to be slotted into complex schedules of public life & all the other stuff that needs done, and most of them aren't really private as we'd think of it. (see also: Brave... where are their attendant ladies???)

It is possible that I stop for plausibility footnotes the second or third time we read these things.

History wasn't like that.

My child is being marketed too, quite effectively, because we'll get these books out of the library and then there are pictures of other books on the backs, and then she'll ask me to put them on hold, too. And so we ended up with a handful of American history stories that wouldn't otherwise have been on anyone's radar (two westward expansion, one white family & one black family, & an underground railroad one) and this is all very well except for the thing where writers tend to co-opt little bits of modern culture in ways that irritate me.

( blah, blah, blah, underground railroad book about a white boy, whatever )

and then his father gets home and goes to talk to him in his very own room, with (according to the illustrations) an awful lot of space in it, and I get all *argh* about the idea of an 8-or-10-ish boy with two brothers having his own private bedroom. Heck, most kids with five sibs *these* days don't get a room to themselves. Pre-civil-war, odds are he wouldn't have his own *bed.*

There's also the princess trend where reigning queens end up the primary caretaker for their children, and um, no. Being a queen is a full-time job, plus some, being a prince or princess is more job than most American kids see before they turn 16, and there is always going to be support staff. Your house is full of support staff, always, and private parent/child moments have to be slotted into complex schedules of public life & all the other stuff that needs done, and most of them aren't really private as we'd think of it. (see also: Brave... where are their attendant ladies???)

It is possible that I stop for plausibility footnotes the second or third time we read these things.

Xposty from dreamwidth.