By
Jason Diamond,
writer who lives in Brooklyn.
His novel, 'Kaplan's Plot,' is out September 16.
I first heard people talking up the idea of ’90s parenting sometime last year. I didn’t take it seriously right away since it had become popular on TikTok and Instagram alongside 6-7, Group 7, aura farming, and other things I choose to know very little about. Then, the more I saw videos of people with “licensed therapist” in their bio or posts of ten to 20 professional-looking slides explaining things like “Why you should be parenting like it’s 1997,” I got defensive: The ’90s-parenting techniques I remember, as someone who started out the decade as a 9-year-old and wrapped up on the cusp of 20, include overmedicating hyperactive children or giving their kids “diet” and low-fat treats like Wow chips and Kudos bars. Yes, I would probably still crush a package of SnackWell’s if you put one in front of me as many adults did in 1994, but now I know those were heavily processed and packed with all kinds of sugars and carbs. Low-fat snacks, like getting a single scratch on a CD or being told by adults that I ran the risk of being shot by “gangbangers” if I wore the wrong-color hat to the mall, are on a long list of things from the 1990s I don’t necessarily ever want to have to experience again.
