Surprise! Millennial Moms Prefer Eating Their Placentas
In the process of developing KinderPerfect, a new card game for parents now on Amazon.com, over 700 millennial parents submitted almost 8,000 card ideas to create parenting-themed question and answer cards similar to the popular Cards Against Humanity card game. Their suggestions for KinderPerfect reveal a generational shift in parenting.
Eating Placentas
“We expected to see many card suggestions around poop,” says Wayan Vota, co-founder of KinderPerfect. “We were really surprised by the many ways millennial moms are consuming their own placenta.”
Card suggestions included the seemingly mainstream practice of creating placenta pills from the afterbirth, yet other ideas included “an ice-cold placenta smoothie”, “placenta pancakes”, and “placenta lasagna”. Some parents even suggested, “an umbilical cord sample platter.”
“As a GenX parent, I never thought about eating my own placenta when giving birth to our two daughters,” says Amy Vota, KinderPerfect co-founder. “Yet it turns out that humans are one of the very few mammals who do not engage in placentophagy – eating their own placenta just after childbirth. Millennial moms are taking us back to our mammalia roots.”
Consuming breast milk was also central to card suggestion ideas, including “breast milk popsicles,” “breast milk coffee creamer,” and “breast milk pancakes.”
Hating Caillou
Other insights from the thousands of card idea submissions include a deep hatred of Caillou, an animated television series about an inquisitive four year of the same name. For example, “Caillou, that whiny bitch,” is indicative of the overall dislike of the children’s character.
“I never imagined that a cartoon toddler would create such animosity,” says Wayan Vota. “As an American, I was surprised at parents’ visceral hatred of a bald Canadian child.”
Dreaming of Sex
Netflix is now central to the parenting experience, with multiple references to just watching, and often binge watching the television streaming service. Suggestions included the phrase, “Netflix and chill,” that refers to having sex while watching a TV program. Netflix is also used a digital babysitter, where that extra hour of screen time is an opportunity for parents to create younger siblings.
Sadly, millennial parents are not having that much sex. Following in the footsteps of their GenX and Baby Boomer parents, they are going long stretches without sex, or trying to copulate in hushed and hurried circumstances, such as “silent couch sex,” that was mentioned along with “Netflix and chill.” Card suggestions included question cards like “Our code word for sex is ____,” with responses including, “adult wrestling,” “daddy time,” and “Dora the Explorer.”
“During every Design Party, where we test out new card ideas, the ‘Our code word for sex is ____,’ card always creates a entire discussion about the duality of being parents and also being lovers,” says Wayan Vota. “Parental sex, and the lack of it, is a timeless challenge for parents,” concurs Amy Vota. “Millennial parents have more options to entertain and distract their children to allow for intimacy, but they still struggling with exhaustion that comes with parenting.”
Drinking Away the Pain
One way millennial parents are coping is through copious amounts of alcohol. KinderPerfect uses “mommy juice” as a euphemism for wine, but submitters are more frank with their alcoholism, and associated guilt. There were 40% more card suggestions that featured “wine” than those that featured “sex,” with multiple references to “a sippy cup of wine,” “the whole bottle of wine,” “the second bottle of wine,” “not enough wine,” and a favorite, “a bottle of fine whine”.
Posted in News and tagged Card Stories, KinderPerfect, Millennial Moms