For the Best Parent, proving they are a better parent than you is of primary importance. This was once a dreary and tedious chore, filled with costly tennis lessons and time-consuming carpools to baseball, golf, or soccer practice. Add to this, the Best Parents’ compulsion to condemn most forms of mass media, especially those anti-social video games, and it was indeed the Dark Ages of White Parenting.

But then, in the Fall of 2006, the white light of freedom, fun, and status arrived in a stylish, Apple-esque, box. But this was no overpriced I-tunes-laden Ipod (which the Best Parent already owned, thank you very much). This was the Nintendo Wii, a magical device capable of accomplishing a trifecta of white parent goals – it was (1) affordably priced, (2) politically correct, and (3) fashionably difficult to find.

It not only enabled Best Parents to flaunt their superiority over non-best parents with grand tales of The Best Parent Ever Wii Hunt. It also offered an ostensibly athletic and pro-social experience. No longer would their precious progeny sit transfixed before their Playstations or Xboxes, mindlessly pushing buttons. Now they could leap around the room, mindlessly swinging a small stick within inches of the new
flatscreen!

Cancel those tennis lessons! Get your refund from Little League. With the Wii Play
game and Smooth Moves, you can even, in good conscious, renege on your promise to buy the brood a ping pong table or dartboard! Get the Wii Zapper and you’ll never hear: “Mommy, I want a Crossbow for Christmas!” With the Medal of Honor Wii series, they can even get to play World War II – just like Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan! See, it even teaches history.

The possibilities are endless in this brave new Wii-topian world. While the Best Parent frequently espouses the virtue of community and diversity, they secretly would much rather live in on their own private Biosphere of stylish accouterments and bulletproof safety, exiting only long enough to flaunt their betterness to the other Best Parents and non-best parents alike. The Wii is one of the single most significant advances towards achieving this Utopian goal.

So take that, non-best parent who didn’t get up early enough to stand in line at Toys-R-Us or overpay for a console on eBay! The Best Parent is pressing their A-button and waving their numchuck, straight for the much-better-than-you state of Wii-phoria!

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The Best Parent knows the world is filled with germs. They are everywhere. But mostly, they are on the handles of shopping carts in gourmet food markets. This is where Best Parent and best child alike shovel numerous free samples of bruschetta and tapenade down their germ-infested gullets. And where are they wiping their hands afterward? That’s right — they’re not! While the Best Parent loves their child more than you do, shopping cart germs lead to sick children, and sick children cramp the Best Parent’s busy social schedule. But what can these Best Parents do? They have reservations at 7 pm, and their precious brood are being threatened with social-life killing child bacteria!

The answer for the Best Parent is, as always, to spend a substantial sum of money on something billions of non-best parents never even knew existed, let alone felt compelled to use — the shopping cart cover. Everyone knows these supermarket carts are cold metal petri dishes of disease! The Best Parent only has to look back to their European heritage to see the damage done by lax health standards. Were there shopping cart covers in 14th century Europe? Nope. And can you say Black Plague?

The shopping cart cover not only protects their child from all manner of diseases. It also announces to one and all in the aisles of Whole Foods that, “Yes, you may be eating fat free goat cheese too, but is your child ensconced in germ-free splendor? No, I didn’t think so.” And that’s why the Best Parent is better than you.

So take that, Patient Zero in aisle 3 by the children’s organic-honey cough medicine! Enjoy your night at home with the sick child. The shopping-cart-cover-toting Best Parent will be out living it up in style at their nearest upscale brasserie, slapping that same cover (without washing it) on the eatery’s well-used highchair, because everyone knows luxury restaurants are teeming with diseased children as well.

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Once a relatively simple task confined to the back rooms of department stores and downtown retail centers, child portraits are now more akin to high-end fashion shoots for white parents and their children. They have ultra-stylish lighting , overly-thoughtful art direction, and are almost always shot in black and white, as if Herb Ritts himself was shooting little Cody or Madison for the Spring issue of Vogue.

This is because the Best Parent is perennially drunk on style (or some form of style that can be easily purchased from the nearest Restoration Hardware). And like any drunk, the Best Parent cannot control their own impulses. They must flaunt their personal expression with such reckless abandon that the non-best parent pines for the day police will stop ticketing drunk drivers and instead lock-up any Best Parent who spends more than 20 minutes in Pottery Barn Kids.

“How did this happen?” non-best parents ask, while waiting for the JC Penny portrait people to change the blue sky backdrop to the autumn leaves display. It’s simple, really. When looking at a child’s portrait, the Best Parent Ever doesn’t see a mere picture of their progeny – they see a reflection of themselves. And since they are better than you, their child’s portrait must project this message as well. It must say to all who peruse their artfully framed portraits, in their Crate & Barrel picture frames: “We are better than you and your free 8×10 portrait with no sitting fee! We are so stylish, our portraits didn’t even come with wallet-size photos!”

So, take that non-best parent, waiting to say “cheese” at the mall dressed in those matching Christmas sweaters! The Best Parent just had their portraits done professionally by Annie Leibovitz.

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