The Parents of Summer Babies Have Already Failed

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Being a parent is hard. Being a parent in New York City, where if you don't get your kid into the right preschool or kindergarten you've pretty much ruined the kid's chance of getting into an Ivy League university and having a successful, productive life (or some seem to think), is even harder. Thus, parents must do everything they can to ensure their child has a fair shot at happiness in this life. The New York Post's Tara Palmeri writes of the latest pre-helicopter parenting trend in the city: "Frantic mothers have begun planning their pregnancies so that their babies aren’t born during the summer, to avoid getting shut out by elite private kindergartens."

A horrifying example of what happens when you don't take the appropriate precautions: "One fashion executive said her August baby was rejected from seven private kindergartens." We can only imagine where the poor thing is now.

Once a kid is shut out so rudely because he or she is not quite old enough "to keep up," (how dare they?) they have to apply again the next year. But if they get rejected twice, "they have to go to public school, where the age-cutoff date is Dec. 31, and begin in first grade." And that's the end of that. 

This cursed reality is enough for many moms to insist on no summer babies, no way, no how, even though sometimes that means battling nature: 

“I can’t help when I’m most fertile!” said one pregnant Manhattan mother, who is expecting a second child in the summer.

We're all for this new trend because, obviously, summer babies are thwarted in life. But what the Post fails to mention is that it's actually because they never get to have a birthday party with gluten-free cupcakes to brighten an otherwise dreary social studies class. That sort of thing can really wreck a person. Which is precisely why we were born in March.

Image via Shutterstock by Olly.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.