Offbeat: The Onion’s parenting joke flies over the heads of some real parents
- I’m totally aware that it’s satire. But it’s spreading through the Internet and people’s blogs and where it’s coming from is getting left off and it’s looking like a news story.
- Robin Bowen of the California Parenting Institute • Discussing how an Onion story, “Study Finds Every Style of Parenting Produces Disturbed, Miserable Adults,” has created a hilarious side effect where many people think the story is true, and are sharing it without attribution. It got so bad that the institute had to put out a press release denying the story. “The falsified study quoted in The Onion states that all parenting styles lead to the same outcome–unhappy, miserable adults,” the release said. “We have been around a long time because we know that parent education does work.” This isn’t the first time an Onion joke has gone over poorly, and it won’t be the last, but at least this time, it’s relatively innocuous. source