A quote:

You know that book Love You Forever? The kids' book where the mom rocks her new baby and sings him a little song, and then, as the baby gets older, she always rocks him in her lap and sings that she'll love him forever, sweet and normal as can be? But then, towards the end, she appears to drive up to his house in a pickup truck, climb a ladder, break in through a second-story window, and pull his grown-man body out of bed, where he's presumably sleeping with his wife, and drag him over to the rocking chair and into her old-lady lap, to rock and sing to him? I really don't want to be like that.

So says Catherine Newman, in her journal �Bringing up Ben and Birdy� at parentcenter.com. I was, quite frankly, relieved to read the passage above. For months I�ve been feeling like a sick freak for seeing a dark side to some so-called children�s classics. Whenever I�d pose these possible interpretations to others, I�d get looks that said, �That�s nice, but don�t you come near my children again.�

Another disturbing book, and one we frequently find ourselves settled down with at story time, is Margaret Wise Brown�s classic The Runaway Bunny. It begins:

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, �I am running away.� �If you run away,� said his mother, �I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.�

The little bunny then imagines a series of self-transformations to effect an escape. In each case the mother bunny trumps his card. When little bunny becomes a fish, mother bunny becomes a fisherman. When he becomes a rock on a mountain top, she becomes a mountain climber. When he becomes a �crocus in a hidden garden,� she becomes the gardener � this includes picture of her approaching bunny-crocus rather ominously with a sharp-looking hoe. When little bunny becomes a bird, mother bunny becomes the tree he lives in. When he becomes sailboat (�and I will sail away from you�), his mother becomes the wind to �blow you where I want you to go� (I think this is the one I find most disturbing). When he becomes a trapeze artist in the circus, she becomes the tightrope walker. When he becomes a little boy, she becomes his mother. The book concludes:

�Shucks,� said the bunny, �I might just as well stay where I am and be your little bunny.� And so he did. �Have a carrot,� said the mother bunny.

Now, I know that the basic idea of this book is supposed to be a demonstration of the depth and breadth of a mother�s love. But instead, at least to me, it comes off as a lesson in how you can never escape your mother, no matter how hard you try. It�s a story of a mother breaking her child�s spirit, squashing his desire for adventure, forcing him to remain in her world under her control.

Rather than remind me fondly of storytime with my own mother, this book makes me think of the Joan �No more wire coathangers!� Crawford School of parenting. Or perhaps the mother depicted in Laurie Anderson�s �O Superman,� from Big Science.

I want to underscore that this interpretation is no way a reflection of the behavior of my own mother who is wonderful and perfect and certainly doesn�t wear army boots (although I think she does own a hoe). I�m not sure what I would have done had my mother pulled that kind of power trip on me when I was a kid. My mom was the queen of cool. When I�d had it at home, I�d pile my belongings into a bandanna, tie it to a stick and announce, �I�m going out to seek my fortune.� My mom would say, �Bye, have a good time.� And I�d hike up the street to the circle, the green space in the middle of our cul-de-sac that held a makeshift small-scale baseball diamond, some rotten logs with really interesting fungus formations, bushes for hiding in and some great climbing trees. I was a champion tree-climber. I�d always come home in time for the next meal.

I was rather dramatic with my exits. That particular one was a favorite and was inspired by any number of fairy tales, but mostly by one of my favorite children�s books, Peter and the Rabbits, now sadly out of print.

My favorite books were always about escape. Don�t get me wrong, I had an extremely happy home life. It wasn�t that I felt the need to escape from something. It was more of an escape to. I wanted a bigger world.

As I got older, the escape involved books where the parents were completely absent. I went on a huge kick of orphanage and boarding school books (a largely British genre, one of the many precursors to Harry Potter): What Katy Did at School, Charlotte Sometimes, The Little Princess, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre. And I was a big fan of a British TV show called Grange Hill. I eventually talked my way into boarding school for myself for a while, which, surprisingly, I enjoyed almost as much as I had expected. Like little bunny, I went through a series of transformations largely intended for the benefit of shocking my mother, who inevitably failed to play the role I had cast for her. When I dyed my hair black, she failed to comment. When I came home with some new and outlandish item of clothing, she�d say it was cool. As a parent, the most surefire way to stop a teenager�s behavior is to condone it.

In fairness, I was a pretty good kid. I didn�t do anything seriously dangerous. And when I did something that I really knew my parents wouldn�t like, I made sure they didn�t find out about it. But usually I just didn�t do it. I wasn�t that interested in pissing them off.

I often wonder what AJ will think of me as a mother. At the moment, he doesn�t analyze. At the moment, I register somewhere on his scale between God and Wonder Woman. I am his best friend, prosecutor and defender. I am the judge, jury and district attorney all rolled into one. I can fix anything, remove all pain and suffering, make anything grow out of nothing. My entire life from here on out is going downhill in his eyes. There is simply no way I could hold onto such a reputation. The maternal instinct thrusts you into the role of defender and protector above all others, so I am often in danger of becoming Mother Bunny. Like Newman, though, I hope that I am not that kind of parent. Because not only does AJ need to find his own adventure, seek his own fortune, but I do too.

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