Performative Parenting at the Zoo

hashtag: do it for the story

If you are leaving wine country and going to the Santa Barbara Zoo, as we were, you’ll have to cross the mountains. But don’t worry, because when you come out of the mountains, there’s the ocean — huge and green-blue. There’s the mist on the sea and the body of Santa Cruz Island in the hazy distance. And the amber Pacific sun over all of it.

Rose bushes stand burgundy-red beside the road as it falls down toward the sea. And from the road, you see the houses of the millionaires on the hills (these are sprawling, sand-colored things with wings). They look like the good life — like palazzos lifted right off the Mediterranean coasts. This is Santa Barbara and it’s so damn beautiful that the Prince of England left his kingdom behind and moved here.

And then, at the bottom of the mountains is the Santa Barbara Zoo. The parking lot is choked with flowers and, upon exiting our car, we’re hit in the face with cool. With vibes. There’s a stream of parents heading into the Santa Barbara zoo and they all seem so trendy. They are the sort of parents who keep bowls of gleaming-fresh fruit on their kitchen counters. They wear wide-brimmed fedoras and they look insultingly good in them as they move through the parking lot, pushing their strollers under the shade of the eucalyptus trees. Our baby is wailing in the backseat and I have half a cracker stuck in my hair. And we pack the baby, screaming like an elephant seal, into his janky stroller and join all the other parents wandering toward the entrance.

And I’m all smiles; because I love the zoo. We had a little zoo in the town where I was born. It was a free zoo and they had an alligator, some brownish flamingoes and a depressed bear. We went almost every day. The Santa Barbara Zoo is a different breed of zoo. Their flamingoes are rose pink and they glide about their enclosure with the arrogant grace of beauty queens defending their crowns.

blue-blooded flamingos at the Santa Barbara Zoo

And as you look around the zoo, it strikes you that there are two types of parents here

• A.) parents with children between the ages of 4 and 10. Their kids will love the zoo. These are good parents.

• B.) sentimental suckers like us, taking our one-year-old baby to see exotic animals that he will not appreciate or even notice. We are undertaking an exercise in performative parenting but that doesn’t necessarily make us good parents.

Most of having a baby is survival-mode sort of behavior — we are trying to make it through the day without our sanity abandoning us. But then, occasionally, we take our baby out into the world. Sometimes we take him to dinner or to the mall or the beach and occasionally on outings that lean more toward performative parenting. To the sort of places where the main objective is to take photos of our pissed-off baby sitting on Santa Claus’ lap or him in mid-screech recoiling from a giraffe’s tongue.

But here is a secret I’ve figured out about this kid.