The author is lamenting how much the whims of the child control her parenting. I don't want to make this about wealth but it kind of has to be. Wealth buys the freedom to cater to these whims and make the cost seem justified. This is normal to her because the author lives somewhere and associates with people in similar situations, it's the local status quo. The kind of stuff the author describes does not fly in families of lesser means. Good for her for having those means but her experience is not universal.
You can bet that when daddy is waking up at 5am so he can be sitting in the cab of an excavator at 6am mommy would be making the whiny 6yo sleep in his own bed. The parenting experience would be very, very different with less emphasis on the needs and whims of the individual child and more emphasis on what's best for the family unit, parents have to work, kids have to go to school. There is little room for compromising the routines around that.
Edit: I'd be interested to know why people disagree with me so much.
You were down voted because this is HN and someone felt offended.
You're spot on with what you said and I appreciate your perspective. We cave to the whims of our kids eventually but that's because we earn a large dual income so it's no big deal if the eldest girl wants some new expensive art supplies. She told us that one of her friends has second hand / used clothes for school and doesn't even get her own bedroom. Sometimes I think it's better to grow up with some sort of struggle, our kids will never really know struggles so they'll assume things just come when you want them.
I'm still figuring out the best way to handle this as I'd like to build up resilient kids rather than entitled ones that are confused when they don't get given that $100 block of clay.
The eldest is a straight A student and we told her that straight A's get us off your back. This was a mistake as grades are only one aspect of what is important in raising children. I know try to teach her patience and persistence, how to be confident with people, how to handle angry people and how to negotiate, I feel like some of this is coming too late though however the last 18 months have seen her go from being shy to be being more confident with approaching adults.
It's hard to be a parent, you never know if you're doing the right thing and you don't find out until it's too late!
Of course it's from a wealthy perspective. The author was raising her kid in Silicon Valley in the the 2000s. Even before the startup/VC explosion, it was expensive to live there. It's a good piece of writing, but also very sheltered and privileged. Not everyone has the luxury to romanticize parenting as a "hostage situation" where the child is always in control.
That might be more in the "very low" segment. At any rate, the point stands in my experience; so many of the whims and desires my partner and I have been able to cater to for our kids come from our privileged ability to do so, and I can list a few dozen things we'd cut out immediately if time and money were more scarce.
Sure, it is basically free after all. Caving to a 6yo's request to deviate from the normal weeknight routine is not more common though which was my point.
You can bet that when daddy is waking up at 5am so he can be sitting in the cab of an excavator at 6am mommy would be making the whiny 6yo sleep in his own bed. The parenting experience would be very, very different with less emphasis on the needs and whims of the individual child and more emphasis on what's best for the family unit, parents have to work, kids have to go to school. There is little room for compromising the routines around that.
Edit: I'd be interested to know why people disagree with me so much.