Motherhood is now being acknowledged as a package that requires more diverse wrapping than the history of advertising might suggest, according to Denise Fedewa, a vice president and planning director at Leo Burnett, one of the world’s largest advertising firms. As part of LeoShe, a team at Leo Burnett that profiles women to find out what kind of marketing messages prompt them to get out their wallets, Fedewa says that mothers, like any other consumer group, are now defined not just by motherhood, but by income, age, upbringing, employment and marital status.

Ignoring the complexity of motherhood is not only offensive to women, says Fedewa, it’s also detrimental to the advertiser’s bottom line: to sell. People won’t buy products unless they can fit them into their ideal image of what their lives are or, more importantly in advertising, what they should be like.

LeoShe creative director Jeanie Caggiano, also a vice president, points out that the current generation of mothers grew up watching TV. “They are smarter, sharper and far more cynical,” she says. “This is a generation with a bullshit meter that will go off at the slightest provocation.” Survival for marketers to moms, says Caggiano, means deep knowledge of their targets and a more subtle approach.

Fedewa spoke with Salon Mothers Who Think about the way advertisers package and sell to moms today. A leader of the LeoShe division, she’s been in the advertising business for 15 years. Fedewa has worked on campaigns for McDonald’s, Proctor & Gamble, Pillsbury, Ameritech, Kellogg and Hallmark. She is the mother of a 4-year-old and two adult stepchildren.

Caggiano added to the discussion, elaborating and clarifying in a later interview. She also is a veteran of the advertising business and the mother of a 7-month-old daughter.

Tell me about LeoShe — how it came to be and what your team is doing.

Denise Fedewa: When you work in the advertising business, a lot of what you do in terms of research and learning about women is to look through the lens of the product you’re working on. If you’re working on deodorants or anti-perspirants, everything you do starts with, “Let’s go talk to the frequent anti-perspirant purchasers!” or “Let’s go talk to the heavy processed-cheese users.”

So your research gets to be skewed toward the kind of people who are heavy users of the product. What several of us realized is there are really much broader things going on in women’s lives that we as marketers need to understand and we’re not picking up on them because we have this product lens on all the time.

We started LeoShe two years ago as a group that was just going to be an added bonus to Leo Burnett clients and help all of our efforts here at Leo Burnett. But what happened is — because we do go to the grassroots and find out new things that no one else has written about — it’s taken off. Now we’ve become our own business.

What would you say have been the traditional messages sent to moms?

Fedewa: All of us in LeoShe have worked on several brands targeted to moms over the years. We’ve all experienced having to tell the creative team that this assignment is a “moms assignment” and they’re not thrilled. The reason is, in the past it’s automatically meant the genre of very stereotypical, generalized ads with a universal but boring portrayal of what moms are.

I think that what’s happened with advertising is that we’ve fallen into these cliches, these stereotyped portrayals of people because [companies] have boxed themselves in. “Here’s the way we can portray a working mom that everyone culturally accepts.” Even though it might be really removed from what’s going on right now.

We made it our mission to turn all that thinking upside down, to challenge the conventions about moms. What we saw was about seven or eight clichid categories that you could put all the moms advertising into.

What are some of those traditional categories?

Fedewa: There’s the ’80s supermom, “She can do it all.” It’s waned a little in recent years, but if you look closely, you’ll still see some of that. Another one is the whole super exaggeration of some tiny little problem in people’s lives, making it seem like mothers are just obsessed with this thing. Another one is like, “Just serve our food and you will have family harmony!”

What are the new ways you’re targeting moms now?

Fedewa: So often the target is only defined as moms aged 18 to 49. Sometimes the company will want working moms and non-working moms, but that’s usually about as refined as it gets. So what we really try to do is to present moms 18 to 49 as a really diverse group of people with some really interesting challenges and needs and insights into their lives. Let’s break that down and start to understand what’s really in there and let’s start to address the different kinds of mothers that there are.

How do you do your research?

Fedewa: One of the things we often do on our projects is what we call a pop culture audit: How are moms being portrayed in the media? What are the movie images of women? What’s happening on the talk shows? How are they being portrayed in magazines? We also looked at all the ads and frankly [ads that target mothers] is a very dismal category in advertising.

We don’t do focus groups. We don’t believe in them because we think when we put a bunch of people in a room, they’re going to lie. They’re going to tell you what’s socially responsible to say, like, “Of course I only let my child eat apples after school.”

We do what we call “girlfriend groups.” We ask a woman to invite four or five other women to her home — their environment. We’ve just found that people are a lot more honest and they keep each other honest. If someone tries to tell that apple story, their friend will go, “Oh I’ve seen your snack cupboard. Give me a break!” We feel we get much better information this way.

You mentioned that advertising to women has been dismal. How and why did that happen?

Fedewa: How and why it happened is probably due to two big things: On the one hand it’s probably a little bit of laziness and complacency. People in the industry get it in their head “Oh yeah, I’ve done moms before, this is what they’re like, this is my picture.” They don’t bother to update when that picture might have changed.

The second one is a trend that I find a little disturbing: In some respects, people have become too scientific about it [advertising] and too dependent on research to make all their decisions. If you depend on research to vote on what’s the best idea, often what happens is the safest, most generic [approaches] are going to win because they’re safe and comfortable for consumers to deal with. I think you end up with a product that’s sort of general and sterilized so as to appeal to the widest branch of people.

If you don’t stop and rethink those images, it follows that eventually people — the intended audience — will stop buying the product.

Fedewa: Yes. The more your brand gets distanced from making itself relevant to real people’s lives, the less acceptable it’s going to be, absolutely.

Jeanie Caggiano: The product has to be seen to solve a problem. People want answers to their problems and, hopefully, these products can help them solve problems.

But it’s always about getting people to buy something.

Fedewa: Absolutely. It makes dollars and sense.

What are the four different kinds of moms you’ve defined?

Fedewa: Well, we found there were four distinct groups, roughly equal in size, all around 24, 25 percent.

We start with the most traditional group, which is “June Cleaver: The Sequel.” These women have the most traditional gender roles in terms of their jobs in the family and so on. But we say “The Sequel” because, well, you see so much about people wanting to go back to the ’50s lifestyle and you just can’t do it, you know? It’s not the ’50s. It’s 2000 and the circumstances are very different.

How does it look different?

Fedewa: Well, these are women who very much believe that mothers of young children should not work; but about 50 percent of these women are working — a lot part time. That’s the whole sequel thing: It’s different times and now mothers are working, even the ones who believe you shouldn’t work if you have small children.

They also feel that their need for self-actualization is fulfilled in motherhood. They feel that the fathers of their children are very involved but in an interesting way: He comes home from work and he plays with the kids, he does activities with the kids on the weekends. But this is not a father who’s staying home with a sick child, running the car pool, that kind of thing. And she’s OK with that because in her mind, that’s her job. His job is to make money; her job is to do all that kid stuff.

These are women who tend to skew to be Caucasian and pretty high income. They’re very highly educated. Almost all of them are college educated.

Can you talk a little more about how a woman’s view of self-actualization determines what group she falls into?

Fedewa: Well, we found there were two huge variables that determined what group [mothers] go into. The first is the extent to which a woman was still pursuing what we call self-actualization outside the motherhood role. What we found is that some women get all their needs for self-esteem and self-actualization from the motherhood role and they’re fine — that’s all they need. We found other women who said they could never just fulfill themselves in the motherhood role. They need something else too.

Caggiano: One of the problems that existed in past advertising is that 99 percent of ads only talked to mothers about their role as mothers. There was no room in advertising for mothers who get self-actualization another way.

Fedewa: Another determining variable for moms is how involved the dad is in helping to raise the children. It doesn’t matter how involved he is in reality. What matters is the mom’s perception of it. We found that some women said their husband was an equal partner even when he wasn’t even present.

Caggiano: I think that is why women in every group like to see father involvement in advertisements. It doesn’t represent their reality in a lot of cases, it represents their dream. There is this feeling: ‘If my husband sees this, maybe he will see my dream and it will come true.’”

What’s the next group?

Fedewa: The next group is what we call “Tug Of War.” These are women who have many of the same beliefs as “June Cleaver: The Sequel,” however, their income level is very low and they cannot live that lifestyle. They’re pretty upset about it.

“Tug Of War” unfortunately is a pretty unhappy group of moms. They’re very angry at their spouses. They feel like the father of their children is not helping with the work and there’s also some resentment because he’s not supporting the family enough.

When you talk about the guilty, harried, stressed-out, working woman, this is her. She resents working and the time away from her children and further, she’s the one who has to come home and do the whole second shift because nothing’s happened during the day. These women are in a bad place.

How would you market to a woman you acknowledge is in a bad place?

Caggiano: Mostly, you show ideals, but I think that more realistic role models in advertising would help relieve the angst. I think it might be refreshing and supportive if you could show that everything is not perfect. But a client usually doesn’t want to create controversy. They want things to be wonderful and perfect — they want things to look nice.

So how do you reach them? Do you create an ideal?

Caggiano: Well, there is an example of how to do it in new Crayola crayons ads, which are based on the fact that children involved in art early in their lives score higher on every possible test later on. The ad conveyed this, and if I am a “Tug of War” mom I might think that even if I can’t be there, if I can provide my child with Crayola crayons, then some nurturing is taking place while I’m not there. It solves a problem: I can’t be there and I want to nurture my child.

Fedewa: Demographically, the “Tug of Wars” are certainly lower income. That was the only real skew we saw — no age or ethnicity or anything. A pretty high number of them are working moms. I think it was close to 90 percent.

Why would you bother with them if they don’t have any money to spend?

Caggiano: Well, they are a segment that actually spends more on brand name things — because they aren’t there. They stress obedience, but they are more likely to indulge than other categories. The guilt definitely comes out and marketers, whether they are playing to that or not, know that these mothers are using products to try to provide mothering that their lack of time won’t allow them to do.

Is the third group is a little better off?

Fedewa: They are. They’re called “Strong Shoulders.” This group is interesting because they have a lot of same circumstances as these “Tug Of War” women: lower income, very little support from the father of their children — in fact a lot of them are single moms. They have to work but the difference is that they don’t hold that “June Cleaver: The Sequel” model up as what they’re supposed to be doing, so they’re OK with the fact that they’re working. She also has a positive outlook on life, the “I’m going to make the best of this situation” kind of outlook.

We found that this group was driven by women who came into motherhood in an unexpected way: 89 percent of them said their first pregnancy was unplanned versus 40 percent for our overall stay-at-home moms. Like I said there are very low levels of father involvement, but they’re OK with this. They’re moving forward and trying to make the best of the situation. So they have a lot of the same challenges as “Tug Of War” but a real different mindset about getting through.

This is one group where there was an age skew — this group skewed young. In fact 30 percent of them were 18 to 24.

What kinds of images are used to market to them?

Caggiano: Well, about 10 years ago you would rarely have an ad with a mother and her kids without the presence of a father, even if he just leaned into a room and smiled. More and more ads now don’t have an obvious father and they appeal to the “Strong Shoulders.” If I am a single mom and watching this kind of ad, I can see my family in it too. There is a certain amount of acceptance and glorification of the single mother going on.

And the final group?

Fedewa: Our last group is what we call “Mothers Of Invention.” These are women who say the father of their children is very involved. In fact they come right out and say he’s an equal partner in raising the children. These are dads who would stay home with a sick child. He is a dad who would run car pool and that kind of thing. These are also women who come right out and say, “Hey, I like having an outlet outside of motherhood. I enjoy my work and the outlet that it gives me.” They feel well-rounded. It’s probably easier for them to feel that way because the dads are so involved and we also found that they have good support networks beyond the dads too.

This group was skewed a little to upper income but not like “June Cleaver: The Sequel.” The other thing that we saw was evidence of this kind of mom in all income groups, so it isn’t just an elite phenomenon. What’s interesting about them is that they seem to be really taking advantage of technology and the labor shortage to create some really creative, flexible working arrangement for themselves — which is probably another reason why, relatively speaking, they seem to be pretty happy. Things are going pretty well.

Is it safe to say that in order for “June Cleaver” to relate to a product she probably wants to see images that are like her?

Fedewa: This is another sort of trap people fall into. Just because you’ve understood what your target’s life is like doesn’t mean you have to portray that life in the ad. You don’t have to play back people’s lives to them. You need to give them cues that you understand their life, but you don’t necessarily have to play her life back to her.

For example — and I’m making this up — let’s say the product you’re trying to sell is brooms. You might find that the most compelling thing to your target is that when you sweep with this broom, there’s not a single speck of dirt left. So there would be no reason to show any type of person at all in an ad like that. You just want to prove to them that this broom picks it up better than any other broom. You might know from all your background research that maybe that’s more important to a “Mother of Invention,” who doesn’t have time to re-sweep it than it is to a “June Cleaver” mom who doesn’t mind the extra broom stroke. You might know there’s a difference between those two people, but you didn’t have show them.

Are there any emotional constants for mothers as a whole? Is there a way to target all the mothers at once?

Caggiano: Oh yes. In our research, we asked all the moms if there were things that they weren’t doing a very good job on and which of those things were important to them. They had similar answers across the board. We came up with what we call the “motherhood gap.”

For instance, cooking from scratch didn’t count at all; keeping a home neat and clean wasn’t that important; consumption of junk foods and sweets wasn’t that important either. The things that mattered the most to mothers were building close relationships with their children; expanding their children’s horizons; and fostering good ways of living in their children. And they were worried that they weren’t doing enough on those things.

So how do you play to these fears in advertising?

Caggiano: Disney is our client. The approach there is that you are expanding your kids’ horizons by exposing them to the fun and magic of Disney World.

But what about products that would appear to have nothing to do with those things?

Caggiano: Well, making Rice Krispie treats together becomes an example of building close relationships with your children. The ads I’m thinking of are firmly targeted to “June Cleaver: The Sequel,” but they will work for all moms because the message is that the time you spend making this stuff with your kids is some of the most important time in your life.

Fedewa: A great example of the raising a good person — a great Burnett commercial — is a Hallmark commercial about a little boy who comes home from school and his mom finds a card in his backpack that his teacher gave him. She pulls out of him that he’s been staying in at recess to play with a sick boy who can’t go outside.

I’ve watched it 50 times and I still cry. It’s so beautifully done because she finds the card and asks him what it is. He says nothing. She asks why his teacher gave him this [the card] and she drags it out of him, like you have to with kids, and she’s just so touched that he’s staying in with the sick kid and he’s like, “Mom, it’s no big deal!”

That commercial is like a mother’s dream. To have it so internalized in her kid that he didn’t think he was doing anything special. That was on our reel that we showed in our girlfriend groups and they were all like, “Yep, that’s it. That is a successful mom.”

A lot of the advertising you talk about seems to deal with ideals, with deferred dreams of mothers, who, it would seem, have more deferred dreams that most.

Caggiano: Dreams are a big part of advertising to mothers. Of all the roles we play in our lives, no one has bigger dreams than we do as parents or as mothers. Nothing is ever going to be more important than raising children.

But aren’t women resentful that you play with their dreams, that you use their dreams to sell them macaroni and cheese?

Caggiano: I know that I get angry when I’m being marketed to and their slip is showing. In other words, I get angry when they are very obvious about it. A lot of women do. I want answers to my problems in the form of products and the more marketers provide solutions, the better.

But how do you solve a problem of providing you child with expanded horizons through products?

Caggiano: My job is to help clients do that. Like you can show Disney World as not just a place of fantasy but a place of learning. I know with some basic utilitarian products you won’t be able to do that, but I’m going to try.

On how many different consumer fronts are mothers targeted?

Fedewa: In the advertising business, women are the target for almost every consumer packaged good — things you would buy in the grocery store: food, drugs, health, beauty. That’s a huge, huge portion of the marketing and advertising that’s out there.

What’s happening over the last few years is that categories that people didn’t traditionally think of as female target categories like auto insurance, investments, computer hardware — these categories are realizing they should be speaking to women.

Based on your research, can you talk about how you think these groups might change in the future?

Fedewa: In terms of predictions, even though we could be wrong, we think that “Mothers Of Invention” and “Strong Shoulders” are the two groups that are going to grow, both in terms of size and their inspirational value to other mothers. Well, they’re probably not inspirational to “June Cleaver: The Sequel,” but to the other groups.

Here’s why: With “Mothers Of Invention,” it just seems like every week it gets easier and easier to arrange flexible work. Also, the men who are now becoming fathers, the Gen-Xers and the Millenials [18 to 24], are going into fatherhood expecting to be equal partners. Obviously there are some in their age group that are still very traditional, but generally speaking, it feels like more of them are coming in with that attitude.

We also think “Strong Shoulders” is inspirational and they’re also going to grow because most demographers predict, unfortunately, that the divorce rate’s about to spike again. It stabilized at 50 percent for a few years but they see it jumping to 60 percent pretty soon. But you know what? When you talk to “Tug of War” moms, you can totally see why it’s going to. The human body is not designed to live under that much stress for long periods of time. Something’s going to get resolved.

So in terms of marketing, these are the two groups companies will focus on?

Fedewa: Yes, those two are what we would say are the most important if you’ve got a brand that you want to position on the forward thinking, leading edge of where moms and women are. [However], you still have to recognize that “June Cleaver: The Sequel” will always be a substantial segment. We see it shrinking a little bit because as I said, younger men are thinking a little differently, and despite our economic abundance right now, it’s still well projected that it’ll be more and more difficult for a family to make it on one income.

Sometimes when I see an ad on the television, I think, “Who are they talking to?”

Fedewa: Well, they’re mushing these people all together. You can’t do that.

Let me tell you an interesting story: Are you familiar with the AT&T campaign a few years ago where they had the mom taking the girls to the beach — “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” — and they also had the “Rocket Man” ad?

Well it was so interesting how polarizing it was. About two-thirds of the mothers we showed it to liked it and one-third hated it, roughly speaking. But it was really strong feelings one way or another. There was no middle ground on that ad and we didn’t really understand exactly what was going on. It was so funny how people can react to the same element so differently. For instance, the littlest daughter asks, “Mom, why do you have to go to work?” and she says, “So I can buy you video games and roller skates, etc.” Moms who like the ad are like, “Yep, that’s how it is: A never-ending cycle of everything you gotta get.” And moms who hated the ad were like, “Did you hear why she’s working? She’s working for video games! I can understand if you have to work so you can pay the mortgage, but you’re working for that stuff?” We got a vehement reaction.

That’s when we realized. “Wow.” That’s why so many ads targeted to moms have become so vanilla and sanitized because they focus group them to death and take everything out of them so they please the lowest common denominator. If you really want to strike a chord with people, you have to make a choice about which group you’re talking to, realizing you might be alienating the other groups.

Would you say you have clients who are marketing to more non-traditional families, like single parents or gay parents?

Fedewa: Well, it is certainly a consideration for some of our really big clients, who I’m not going to name specifically because I’ll get into trouble. But instead of targeting directly, it’s more about a heightened sensitivity to not alienate, because if you think about it, a lot of ads are structured in such a way they would be pretty alienating to someone that’s not in a traditional family.

In terms of being a target, both of those segments — gay parents and more non-traditional families — are still kind of really tiny segments. That makes it more of a don’t-alienate strategy than target directly strategy because that would be just diverting marketing funds in lots of different directions.

Do men have the same sort of reactions to ads targeting them?

Fedewa: I’ve done very little work in that arena, but I will say when we were doing the moms project and we talked to some Gen-X dads, we did hear some of them say that they were feeling a little bit offended by the moms commercials where they make the foil the dumb dad: “He doesn’t know how to do it [so mom has to],” or “It’s so easy, even the dumb dad can do it.”

Some of them — these men wanted to be involved fathers — were pretty offended by that. And I think rightly so.

Would you say there are any elements of motherhood, parenthood that have been exploited by advertising?

Fedewa: What do you mean by exploiting? This is a difficult question. I guess I would turn it around. Really good planning and advertising is all about finding the insight about people and linking it properly to your brand so that you know it makes your brand relevant to their lives.

My mom’s favorite ride was the Mad Tea Party, so that was our always our first
stop. You sit in enormous teacups that whirl violently
around and if you really want to make yourself sick,
there’s a wheel in the middle you can turn that will
spin you even more. When I got a little older, my mom
took me on that ride and I almost threw up. She sat
across from me in the cup, laughing like crazy.

To me, Disneyland was the neighborhood theme park. Even after we moved overseas, to countries where Disney didn’t own every child’s imagination, I visited Disneyland every year, during our trips back to the States. This was in the ’70s, when Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy were the mainstays of the park. The place was a palace of ’50s nostalgia by then; Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White were already historic relics. Nothing ever seemed to change or to need updating — not the rainbow-colored construction-paper flowers of It’s a Small World nor the fake hairy pirate’s leg dangling over your head as you sailed through the archway in Pirates of the Caribbean.

As an adult, it’s this sameness that pulls me through Disney’s gates. I know which rides I want to go on and that I’ll want a piece of peanut-butter-chocolate fudge. I’m still awed by the parade, teeming with characters from my childhood. But when I look around, I see the kids clamoring for the more recent characters: Mulan, Pocahontas, Tarzan. As soon as a new movie is released, its animated stars appear on Main Street, in Disney stores, on Broadway. Kids sing Disney theme songs ad nauseam and beg for the latest stuffed toy or action figure

It’s this commercialized fanfare that makes parents dread the trek to Disney these days. Add in the cost of expensive daily passes and the prospect of hyper kids running amuck among the stockinged legs of big-headed make-believe characters and you’ve got a ripe situation for short fuses to blow. A perfect excuse to skip Disney altogether.

So don’t go. Especially if you’re going to blow. Last
time I visited Disney World, in Florida, was in May, and I saw
a terrible thing, a very un-Disney thing. It was a
hot, humid day, steaming and brilliant. I was standing
in line at the snack bar, deciding between the Donald
Duck orange ice pop or the Mickey Mouse-eared
chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream stick, when I
heard a sharp voice behind me. A mother was
reprimanding her young daughter for dropping a soda.
Nothing spilled, since the bottle hadn’t been opened
yet. The child was startled, wide-eyed and silent. She
bent down to pick up the soda, her mother’s words
still fierce. I was shocked. “That’s wrong,” I said
rather loudly to no one in particular. “This is Disney
World. You can’t get mad at kids here.”

The woman heard me and looked up, surprised, maybe
even embarrassed. I was a little embarrassed myself.
After all, I was being a busybody, casting aspersions
on a sweaty, frustrated woman who was probably
consumed with far deeper issues than a dropped soda.
Still, I didn’t want her messing with my — or her daughter’s — memories of Disney. This was supposed to be a place where parents chill out, reveling in their
children’s joy, and kids run around like lunatics,
magically protected from pedophiles, injury, food
poisoning and kidnapping; a place where no one ever
gets lost without being found.

I figured this cranky mom was an aberration. But when
I told my tale to a colleague, she matched it with a
disturbing story of her own. During her visit to
Disney with her two young sons, they went to one of
the must-attend Disney character breakfasts.
Anticipating the arrival of Mickey and friends, one
child became overly excited. When the
characters finally arrived, he bum-rushed them, giddy
and wild. Unable to keep him under control, his mom
trussed him up in one of those child-leashes, the ones
with a harness and plastic coiled lead. I can just
imagine this poor kid, arms flailing as he’s snapped
back by the leash, just out of reach of Simba or
Ariel, maybe even Mickey himself, hot tears spilling
down his puffy toddler cheeks, wailing. That’ll be a
whopper of a Disney memory someday, one for the
therapist’s couch.

These days, the worst-behaved
people at Disney theme parks are the adults.

Maybe they’re pissed they had to shell out all that
cash or that they gave in to their kids’ whining in
the first place. But maybe it’s something more than being
forced to consume. Disney is a kid-centric universe. Real
world rules don’t apply: Kids feel empowered, but adults may feel debilitated. To
me, the greatest thing about Disneyland was that I
could choose the rides I wanted to go and go on them
as many times as I wanted. Nobody stopped me. No one
said no. As adults, we look for instructions,
guidelines, advice. Someone to tell us how things are
supposed to be done. Apart from the Kodak photo-opportunity signs instructing you to point and shoot
and the occasional warnings that pregnant women should
avoid certain rides, Disney is rule-free. Even if you’ve read all the guidebooks and planned for the perfect Disney experience, there’s no telling what your kids might decide they want to do.

A friend of mine calls Disney World a freedom zone,
one of those places where kids wrest free of the adult
world and experience an independence that breeds
imagination and responsibility. He recalls visiting
Disney World when he was 11. The highlight of his trip
was driving a mini-speedboat by himself in one of the
lagoons. “I remember what it was like when the adult
world let me go, totally, at young ages like that,” he
said. “I could really take my world into my own
hands.” He assured me that as soon as he recovers
from all the “corporate patriotic programming” Disney
lodged in his brain at the time, he’ll go
back and ride those speedboats again.

When I asked my friends, all around 30 now, to tell me
their Disney memories, most of them gushed: a first
kiss in the Haunted Mansion; a chance meeting with
Cher and Chastity Bono on the Dumbo the Flying
Elephant ride; getting high while sailing through the
Pirates of the Caribbean; hiding out in Sleeping
Beauty’s castle. These experiences remind them that
freedom is as much the domain of adults as it is
children. Disney lets adults do grownup things — with the playfulness of kids.

So the only way to really enjoy Disney as an
adult is to be like a kid. For me, it’s the nostalgia
of the place that lets me let go. In this Never-Never
Land, I am a princess and my biggest issue is deciding
whether to eat the filet mignon (hot dog) or the
polenta (nachos). I don’t have to ponder the merits of
kissing frogs (men) or battle an evil sorceress
(boss). On the stroke of midnight all my dreams will
still be intact (no deadlines) and when I’m ready to
go home, I’ll leave the same way I came — in a
beautiful glass coach (beat up Integra).

Being an adult has its advantages. Going to Disneyland is one of them.

But what about younger children who might not exhibit any “telltale” signs of aggression? Would a preschooler pick up a gun and shoot another child or himself? According to Marjorie Hardy, assistant professor of psychology at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., the answer is yes — especially if your child is a boy.

In 1995 and 1996, she and her students conducted studies in Charlotte, N.C., to determine how best to prevent young children from playing with guns. By educating the children, all between the ages of 4 and 7, they expected to cause them to steer clear of guns. Instead, when left together in a room with a real, unloaded gun, as well as toys and other familiar items, 65 percent of the 130 children in the studies played with the weapon. Only 35 percent went to find an adult when they saw the gun, and they were mostly girls. In May 1999, three years later, Hardy’s study was re-created at her son’s day-care facility by ABC’s “20/20.” The results were the same.

Why did these children play with guns? Perhaps it was simply because they were told not to. Critics of Hardy’s studies have pointed out that the children were tempted to play with guns because it was a safe setting — their day care. But many children commit crimes each year using guns found in their own homes — another supposedly safe place.

Hardy has concluded that education alone is not enough to deter kids from playing with guns. She suggests that parents monitor their children more closely and set parameters for their behavior. But even that may not be sufficient: When Hardy’s own 4-year-old son was faced with the chance to play with a gun, he did. Afterwards, he lied about it. Salon Mothers Who Think spoke to Hardy by phone to find out more about her studies and why she thinks kids play with guns.

What was the purpose of the studies you and your students conducted in 1995 and 1996?

We set out to try to decrease children’s fascination and playing with guns. In the first study, we had 60 kids. Half the kids listened to a policeman talk about the dangers of guns and the other half didn’t. Then we put them together to see if the ones who’d heard about the danger of guns could persuade the ones that hadn’t heard not to play with the guns. What we found was that it didn’t work. Just hearing a policeman talk about the dangers of guns wasn’t sufficient.

In the second study [of 70 different children] we thought maybe they needed more education. We spent five days educating them about how to make good choices, how to be assertive without being aggressive, how to resist peer pressure. There was a lot of positive feedback when they role-played these situations. Then we videotaped them again, and again we found that it didn’t make a difference.

The bottom line from the educational standpoint is that education alone is not sufficient to deter children from playing with guns.

When kids are told not to do something, they have a tendency to want to go and do it.

I’m sure that’s part of it, and that’s why we do things like lock up liquor and lock up medicine. But we have parents who don’t lock up guns. There’s definitely the novelty part of it, especially when you’re forbidden to do something. So there are some parents who argue that if they take their kids to a shooting range and they let them see the power of a gun, their kids will have a respect for the gun and won’t be so curious anymore because they’ve already fired it and it’s not that big a deal. Does that work? I don’t know. It’s difficult to test.

What did the kids do with the guns? Did they just look at them? Point and shoot?

They shot at other kids, shot themselves, shot up the room. The kids who played with the guns became more aggressive overall, verbally and physically. They called each other names, kicked the toys.

At about what age do kids realize the difference between a real and a toy gun?

As part of the studies we asked the kids to identify the guns as real or pretend and we found that almost all of the 4-year-olds thought the guns were toys. About half the 5-year-olds thought the real guns were toys and by the time they were 6 or 7, they could tell the difference. That didn’t stop them from playing with them, though.

How realistic are the results of the study, considering that children usually don’t just find guns lying around?

What prompted the first study was that the children in that day care had found a gun a few weeks previously that was lying on the ground outside their day care for some reason. They had picked it up before they told the teacher about it. We want kids not even to touch the gun because it could go off. Most of the time kids aren’t going to find them lying around. They’re more likely going to find them in a bedside drawer, at the top of a closet.

But it’s difficult to test this. What I was more interested in finding out was, if they did find one just sitting there, would they touch it? They had just been told that, even in a setting that is safe, even if you’re at home or in day care, if you find a gun, you need to not touch it. You need to go get an adult. In that essence, it was a little unrealistic. Some people criticize the study, saying it’s not fair to leave them lying around in an area where they feel safe, where they are allowed to explore the other toys and items. But most parents don’t tell their kids that they can’t go into their dresser drawers or a particular area of the house. I have a 4-year-old and he’s never gone into my dresser drawers as far as I know, but I’ve never told him he can’t and they’re not locked up.

Based on the results of your studies, what would you suggest is the best way for parents to keep their children safe from guns?

I don’t think you can teach really young kids safety just because they can’t really distinguish between fantasy and reality. They don’t have a concept of death as being a permanent thing. Really what parents need to do is monitor their kids and keep their guns locked away.

You do need to continually educate your child and hope that somewhere, somehow it seeps in. We did have some kids who did leave the room and tell an adult there were guns there. Thirty-five percent didn’t play with them, or got an adult. They were usually the girls.

In the first study, though, in 1995, there was no difference — about an equal number of boys and girls played with the gun. In the second study it was mostly boys. Generally, I would say yes, boys are more likely to pick up and play with a gun. I think that lack of finding in the first study is probably unusual, but that doesn’t mean that girls won’t play with guns.

Were you surprised that your own son played with a gun when given the chance?

Yes and no. I think for some reason the part that really took me aback was seeing the other kids shoot him. I think what surprised me was not so much that he played with the gun, but how he really got into it. He was saying things like “Kill this, kill that, shoot,” just like any other boy.

Why do you think boys have such a fascination with guns?

I think it’s their role models — look at the role models on television. They’re taught from a very early age to act out rather than express their feelings, or cry or talk about them.

We don’t encourage boys to express themselves any other way than physically. I do believe some of it is testosterone. My son couldn’t be raised in a less violent atmosphere than our home, I don’t think. We don’t watch violent television, we don’t allow him to watch violent television, he doesn’t have any action figures. The child doesn’t really even know who Batman is. And yet, we’ve been called into school because he’s hurt his friends.

What are parents and adults up against when they try to teach kids not to play with guns?

It’s definitely a “Do as I say, not as I do” type situation. There need to be distinctions between parents and children. We tell kids not to drink and then we drink — and that’s OK. We need to say, “You don’t drink until you’re a grown-up.” Kids need to realize that there are some things that grown-ups can do that kids can’t and grown-ups need to realize that kids are going to imitate their actions more than they’re going to heed their words.

We have some choices to make as parents. Do we want to set a good example by our behavior? Or do we want to assume that the kids should know the difference?

I get a lot [of flak] from NRA people and gun rights advocates saying it’s not fair to say people shouldn’t own guns. That’s not what I’m saying. My dad owns a gun — some people have to own guns because that’s what they do for a living. That’s what my dad did, he was a police officer.

What I am saying is that if you’re going to own a gun and you have small kids or you’re going to have small kids in your house, you have a responsibility to make sure that that gun is safe.

Older children — say, older than 10 — have a better understanding of the dangers of guns. So why is it that they still seek them out, carry them and use them?

Children have a sense of invulnerability, through adolescence and even in their 20s. Kids know if they drink and drive they could die, but they still do it. There’s a sense of “Maybe it’s dangerous but nothing will happen to me.”

Why do you think we’re seeing this rash of gun threats and shootings?

After Columbine, it’s certainly copycat. I’m just grateful that summer’s here, although I worry about the media bringing a lot of attention to the situation when schools go back in session next fall. There are going to be articles saying, “Are schools safer now?” and “Should your child go back to school?” And it’s just going to open a can of worms again.

I wonder if we’re going to see an increase in home schooling. It’s going to be a pretty sad day when we’re afraid to even let our children leave the home to go to school.

I remember my sister being terrified of pins and sewing needles as
a kid. I used to chase her around the house with an unhooked safety
pin, giggling as she shrieked. I even pricked myself once to show her
that it didn’t hurt, despite the fleck of blood that welled up out of
my broken skin. She never believed me. Now, as I undergo this
voluntary pricking, I find myself on the edge of the same hysteria
that threw her into such a frenzy.

The panic subsides with each new needle tap. I am immobilized, a
pillow propped under my knees, my eyes fixed on the petals of the
flower-lined tapestry pinned to the ceiling above. There is no real
pain, just the apprehension of pain. My muscles finally relax, my eyes
close. A heat lamp warms my bare feet. A needle at the base of my
right thumb soothes my sore throat almost immediately. Another at the
top of my head shoos away bad dreams and dries up my night sweats. I
will lay on my back for 30 minutes, palms open, exposed to the
sky, floating between sleep and conscious healing.

The first time I tried acupuncture was at Canyon Ranch in Tucson,
Ariz. My three-day stay at this bastion of wellness, known for its
celebrity clientele, parsimonious meal portions and spiritual desert
hikes, was a birthday gift from my parents. Apparently they thought I needed
rejuvenating. Aside from my dad’s report that Billy Zane — the bad
guy in “Titanic” — was naked in the men’s locker room, the
highlight of my visit to the ranch was a twilight appointment with a
licensed acupuncturist and doctor of oriental medicine. It was not
something I had planned or sought out. I envisioned my spa vacation
filled with facials, massages and manicures punctured with an aerobics
class or two, plenty of fresh fruit breaks and ample pool-side
lounging.

But the desert does strange things to a person, and after a morning
hike into the cactus-strewn canyons of Arizona, my spirit yearned for
attention. I had tried, and liked, yoga in college, and meditation was
already a favorite pastime of mine, so I opted for acupuncture. I
imagined the clink of Buddhist chimes lulling me into a slight
sedation that would thwart any discomfort. Besides, I wanted to soothe
the chronic pain I’d had in my lower back for the last two years.
Neither physical therapy nor regular visits to the chiropractor seemed
to help. I was sure a few needles couldn’t hurt.

The idea of acupuncture, and any accompanying herbal treatment, is
to harmonize yin and yang. In Chinese philosophy, these
are the opposite traits that characterize a person, like wet and dry,
cold and heat, body and mind. Acupuncture does this by balancing the
body’s elements: moisture, blood, spirit, essence and qi. Each
element correlates to one or more of the five organ networks in the
body: kidney, heart, spleen, liver and lung. For example, blood
storage and the flow of qi are associated with the liver.
Indications that your qi is blocked might be muscle tension in
your neck and shoulders, symptoms connected to the well-being of the
liver.

When I arrived for my appointment at the ranch, the acupuncturist explained
moisture as the liquid element in the body that protects and
lubricates the tissue, and blood as the substance that creates bones,
nerves, skin, muscles and organs. Spirit (shen) is defined as
the metaphysical expression of an individual; I correlated this to the
soul. So far, these were definitions I could relate to my Western
ideology of the human being. Essence (jing), I was told, is
responsible for the reproductive and regenerative elements of the
body. Since the word “essence” is defined as core, or basic, in the
English language, it seemed to make sense that the procreative and
healing elements of the body would be at its core. But qi, that
one threw me for a loop. In Chinese thought, it is the force that
gives us the ability to move, think and feel. It flows through every
part of us. The way I make sense of the concept is to think of it as
consciousness, the element that directs my actions and thoughts.

The first thing the acupuncturist did was take my pulses. That’s
right, pulses, plural. She lightly pressed her fingers on the
inside of each wrist in three different places. I was sure my heart
was racing; I had jogged over to avoid being late. But my heart rate
didn’t particularly interest her, except that it was strong and
healthy. Apparently my kidneys and spleen were weak. That made some
sense, she said, because the kidneys are responsible for the health of
the lumbar region. The spleen relates to digestion and fatigue. When
this region is out of whack, loss of concentration usually follows.
That would explain my recent inability to focus and the stress it was
causing me. No wonder my parents dragged me to Canyon Ranch. When
I was ready, the acupuncturist had me lie on my stomach and take
several deep, slow breaths. No Buddhist chimes lulled me. No incense
burned. In fact, the room I was in was very much like one of the
sterile rooms in my gynecologist’s office. I quickly shoved the image
of steel stirrups out of my mind and inhaled. Through the open window,
the smell of desert sage seeped in and soon I was swathed in its
spice, my eyes closed, drifting.

That’s when I felt the first prick. It’s not that it hurt really. I
was just startled. I felt my back muscles tense all the way through my
neck. The acupuncturist asked me to relax and I did my best. It was
like getting your bikini line waxed: After the first rip, you know
what to expect and somehow that dulls the pain. A few minutes later I
had eight stainless steel needles sticking out of my lower back and
between my shoulder blades. They were strategically placed in areas
where qi runs closest to the skin’s surface, the theory being
that it’s easier to alter the flow at these locations. I stayed
immobile for about 40 minutes. Soon I was asleep, intoxicated by
visions of the desert.

When the needles were removed, I didn’t feel any different
physically. I’m not sure what I expected — maybe a miracle. Instead I
felt the familiar ache in my lower back and wondered aloud if the
treatment did any good at all. The acupuncturist prescribed two herbs,
one to strengthen my kidneys, which are located directly under the
soreness in my back, and the other to balance my digestive system. She
also gave me the name of a colleague back home in San Francisco.
Mentally, my head felt clear and I was calm. I walked out into a cool,
cloudless night. I felt relieved. The next morning the pain in my back
was gone — completely.

I now see an acupuncturist regularly for ailments ranging from
colds to stress to broken bones. I take Chinese herbs and ointments to
soothe my coughs, ease muscle pain and help me sleep. Each visit, my
acupuncturist asks me how I am and ushers me into a room with a pink
flowered tapestry pinned to the ceiling. Next to the table where I
lie, a pair of chimes sits soundlessly on a shelf. Incense burns in
the hall outside the door. As the first needle taps my skin, I close
my eyes and dream of the Arizona desert.

There’s no training course for parents on how to dislodge a matted wad
of gooey pink gum from a child’s hair without using torture or a pair of
scissors to cut out the offending glop. After trying to pick my hair out of
the clot strand by strand, my mom finally headed for the refrigerator.
First she tried mayonnaise — something slick to counteract the stickiness.
When that didn’t work, she went for the peanut butter. Miraculously, that
did the trick.

These days, gum in hair seems quaint compared to all the highly
questionable substances that can get stuck in and on various body parts and
household items. Take Silly Putty. All I remember about that pliable goo is
that it came in an egg-shaped container and was the color of a dull pink
eraser. You could press it onto newspaper comics and the cartoon would
imprint on the putty’s surface, and when you got bored with that trick, you
could roll it into a ball and drive your mother crazy by bouncing it off
the walls. Soon after that, it was confiscated and locked away.

The good news about Silly Putty is that it’s nontoxic. The bad news is
that Silly Putty — now in Original, Glow-in-the-Dark, Glitter, Changeable and
Bright colors — has the potential to stain clothing and other fabrics,
like the priceless antique velvet gracing your new sofa. Luckily, printed
on the Silly Putty package is a toll-free number to call with questions
such as, “Can you remove Silly Putty from dog fur?” or “My daughter just
shoved Silly Putty up her nose. Should I be concerned?” (The package warns
not to use the tacky substance as ear plugs, but it doesn’t say anything
about nose plugs.) But be forewarned: The Silly Putty 800 number, run by
its corporate parent, Binney & Smith of Eaton, Pa., is only staffed from
9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern Time. So if you’re sitting down to dinner
in Idaho and your fanny lands on the gob of Silly Putty your son left on your
chair, you’re out of luck. If the putty happens to chemically bond with the
seat of your pants during office hours, however, the cheerful
representative will recommend you spray WD-40 on your butt, let it sit
there for a while and then scrape it off. The resulting stain should be
treated with rubbing alcohol and any other residue can be apprehended with
a damp sponge and dish-washing liquid. Binney & Smith, the smart business
people that they are, do not guarantee perfect results.

A modern, gooier take on Silly Putty is Mattel’s Gak, which has the
consistency of dry rubber cement and has no redeeming purpose except to
make fart-like noises when you squish it. Developed in conjunction with the
children’s cable television network Nickelodeon, this delightful substance
comes in a variety of colors and odors. Beach Gak, for instance, stinks of
salt water and dead fish. Precautions should be taken before engaging Gak.
It’s nontoxic, as children’s toys must be to meet safety
standards, but, as the wrapper warns, GAK IS NOT A FOOD PRODUCT. Tell
that to your older-than-3-but-younger-than-rational child. The
package goes on to caution (also in bold) against playing with Gak on
carpeting and warns that it may stick to or stain fabrics, varnished and
unvarnished surfaces. Take my advice: Try to relegate Gak handling to the
great outdoors, where your child can explore the relative uselessness of
this toy on the grass rather than on your new all-wool carpet.

But let’s just say it’s raining outside, and in a weak moment you let the
buggers sculpt their Gak indoors. And let’s say that the angels –
inadvertently of course — grind a dollop of Gak into the aforementioned
wool carpet. What do you do, besides cry? The package recommends removing
excess Gak by applying carpet spot-remover and then washing the area with
detergent and hot water. What if it gets on clothing? Don’t bee-line
it to the dry cleaners, because even a good dry cleaning will not remove
Gak. When I called the Mattel Consumer Affairs hot line to find out how the
hell you can remove the stuff, a representative told me her own
personal remedy for removing Gak from clothes was cold water and stain
remover. Genius. When I asked her for a recommendation for a good “stain
remover,” she rifled through what sounded like the Handbook of Gak
Removal until she found an old e-mail from a consumer like me. Using a
solution of half vinegar and half water, that enterprising woman found she
could get the Gak out of most any article of clothing. Of course, this
nifty liquid potion might fade your clothes, but hey, at least your blazer
will be Gak-free.

While I never thought I’d be singing the praises of that evil birthday
party staple Silly String, my research shows that it is the least
ruinous of the gunk. Made by Wham-o — mass producer of the Hula Hoop –
Silly String comes in several colors, including my personal favorite,
cotton-candy pink. When you shake the can and spray, a thin string of foamy stuff and a thick whiff of chemicals shoot out. If you touch the string before it dries, it feels wet and cool and it leaves a slimy trail when you pick it up. The only material Silly String
claims to stain is vinyl, so make sure your prized white go-go boots are
safely out of the way when your little one takes aim. Wet or dry, Silly
String lifted off of several surfaces I tested — marble, tile, carpeting,
varnished wood — without leaving a mark. Although it’s not supposed to be
flammable, Wham-o recommends that you don’t spray Silly String near an open
flame or even a warm light bulb. Inhaling the vapors (if you like rubber
cement, you’ll love Silly String!) can be fatal, so encourage your kids to
abstain from spraying it in each other’s faces.

And if it does get in someone’s hair, I’d try washing it out with peanut
butter. If that doesn’t work, maybe a little WD-40 will do the trick.