it's a War Against Cupcakes!

I was in elementary school in the early 80's in Kansas. I don't recall cupcakes. Maybe singing Happy Birthday? But that's it.

I spent my elementary-schooi years just outside the (brand-new, then) Beltway in Fairfax County, VA. No, we didn't celebrate everybody's birthdays. Class sizes tended to be 30-32 students, which would have meant one birthday every 7 class days in a 185-day school year. And it would of course have been unfair to those kids born between mid-June and Labor Day.

What teacher wants a swarm of chocholate enhanced children buzzing around the classroom?

And it's the parents of the Birthday Child who bake, not the rest.

I have nothing to back this up, but let me put my two cents in, anyway. I think it started when mommies re-entered the paid workforce in big numbers--during the seventies and eighties, to today. Mommy guilt over not being there when Johnny or Janey gets home, like her mother was, has fed a lot of this, imho. God knows, when mom was home when I was in grade school, I never got cupcakes on my birthday. Or a birthday party every year, either. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Birthday cupcakes were a staple in my elementary school, and a great vector for infection. I personally am responsible for infecting half my 3rd grade class with Chicken Pox when I handed out cupcakes before we realized I was infected.

The only birthday ritual I had growing up was in the first grade (approximately 1958). You had to lay over the teacher's lap and she hit you with a paddle on the rear end, one for every year.

And even though it was meant in jest, it actually hurt. I was really skinny and she cracked me in the tailbone, enough to make my eyes water.

Don't they have chicken pox parties these days? You were way ahead of your time, Nied

In elementary school in the 60s we sang happy birthday and the birthday boy or girl had the honor of leading the lunch line to the cafeteria. We were very deprived.

These days, with so much class time devoted passing all the No School Left Standing tests cupcakes can take a precious hour out of an already packed schedule several times a month. It also makes our already chubby kids fatter.

One monthly birthday celebration for all the birthdays that month would suffice. And the kids would proably be just as happy with carrots.

There aren't any carrot allergies, are there?

Things must be awfully good at George Mason Elementary School in Alexandria if cupcakes are the biggest issue they have to worry about.

Message to the cupcake lovers at George Mason Elementary School in Alexandria: Get your priorities straight. People are dieing in Iraq, and I'll bet most of you voted for the idiots who made it happen.

aa

I'm a teacher, and few of my students bring cupcakes. Quite a few bring some kind of treat, but it's usually trail mix or something like that. Due to the fact that schools now have breakfast, snack, and lunch plus afterschool snacks for the kids, many schools are trying to stop the birthday treat. As a teacher, it's just a distraction to wait for the kids to settle down, get food, and then try to get back on track teaching. Imagine doing that 20 times a year!

We actually got a mock paddling from the principal on our birthdays in grade school (1970s), but this was in MS. There may have been some other little thing like a lollipop or something, but all I really remember was the sort of abashed silliness of the paddling. And that I shared a birthday with a girl in my class who was a year older, so she got one more lick than I did.

No cupcakes were involved, anyway... there were a few class parties over the course of the year, and treats were involved then.

At least in my school there was no concept of "makeup birthdays" for those whose b-day fell in the summer, so for us it was [(class size) * (9/12) * (financial situation factor)], which came out to about 10 cupcake days/school year.

Cranky

(class size) ranged between 35-45 btw. Our classrooms had fixed desks in 6 rows of 10, so at one time someone thought there might be even more students/class.

With class sizes the way they are these days, it does indeed work out to be about 20-30 cupcake days per year in many schools. If you figure an average of 25 cupcakes per year, at 400 calories per cupcake, that's over 10,000 extra calories annually. IIRC, it takes about 5000 calories to lose one lb. of weight, so that's about two lbs. of weight gain every year.

I think the real question is, "Why do cupcakes hate America?"

Someone should get to the bottom of it, soon.

Dang, now I'm hungry...

1960s, central Illinois, you brought in treats of your choice on your birthday. I remember cupcakes, cookies, etc. I also remember getting a birthday "paddling" which was all in fun.

But yeah, my mom baked for a class of nearly 30 every year on my birthday.

I personally am responsible for infecting half my 3rd grade class with Chicken Pox when I handed out cupcakes before we realized I was infected.

You were a regular Cupcake Mary. Sorry, had to say it.

I don't ever remember celebrating my birthday at school. Got to wear a little crown in kindergarten while the whole class sang to me, but cupcakes? Never.

But nothing beats the parents at my husband's school. Wanted to throw a baby shower (cake and all!) for an 8th grader. Principal put the kibosh on that right quick. Nothing like a cake, a party, and balloons to get the young girls excited about becoming little mothers.

Egah.

In the mid-1970s I went to elementary school at Montessori on Capitol Hill and later Georgetown Day School in Georgetown. I don't remember kids bringing in cupcakes. Since Georgetown was more or less in the same cultural region as Alexandria, I think the cupcake thing is actually a fairly new tradition.

The cupcake ban started when very rich people's children began being allergic to peanuts. They could not trust other students' parents to make peanut free foods, so they used their alpha personality types to impose the ban on everyone.

I was in elementary school in '70s in suburban Chicago and I don't remember any recognition of birthdays.

The students discussed birthdays, so I knew the kid who had the same b-day as me.

I'm positive that food was never part of celebrating individual b-days.

I think that this is a fairly recent phenomenon. I don't remember any birthday celebrations at school either. Nowadays many parents go overboard with celebrating their little treasures.

Sounds more like some of those cupcakes were infected with Stupid.

Sorry, I started kindergarten in 1956. Maybe
it's Alzheimer's, but I don't remember any cupcakes.

Me neither.

Sounds like another "Fake Liberal War on Traditional Family Values" piece.

I think Biggerbill probably has it right with the guilt thing plus the notion of wanting to make sure that "my kid has it better than I did and at least as good as the Jones' kid". Since when does it take 5000 calories to lose a pound? I always thought it was 3600. Maybe that is the reason for the obesity crisis. I must say that back in the late 50's there were very few fat kids and only a few "husky' kids. I suspect that was due more to the absence of video games and limited television options, than the absence of cupcakes.

You have no idea.

You try to raise a non-obese, relatively healthy kid and you do okay until they hit kindergarten. Between the cupcake days, the party days, and the "specials" (teacher's day, Arbor Day, whatever) there's hardly a day that isn't loaded with extra artificial food coloring, high fructose corn syrup and fat. And then we wonder why the kids all misbehave. Blue, tattooed "froot" leather does not occur anywhere in nature! But try to tell that to most parents.

Seriously, parents will get near violent with you when you suggest at an average suburban school that maybe we should just have one cupcake/candy/sweet treats day a month, or otherwise limit sweets. So, you can tell your kid that she can sit in the corner and eat her grapes and carrots while her friend passes out the sponge bob froot snacks. You can harp on the teacher. Or you can take it to the PTO where they will roll their eyes at you.

I can't speak to school customs, but the cupcake in the last few years has become a hot commodity here in NYC. It began with the Cupcake Cafe and the Magnolia Bakery -- from what I hear I hear, the craze has spread to L.A. which now has a cupcake mecca of its own (can't recall the name.) This is serious stuff... you walk by the Magnolia in the evening and there is literally a line of twenty people curling around the corner waiting to get cupcakes.

I went to school back in the sixties and seventies in Utah. No cupcakes. My children went to an upper middle class public school in Orange County in the eighties and nineties. I never made them cupcakes and they never requested them, which they surely would have done if it were the norm.

On my birthday, Odysseus whooped my ass! Then they burned my cupcakes for Zeus.

I was in elementary school in the 80s, Bay Area California. People brought a treat on their birthday - cakes, cupcakes, whatever. My birthday was in the summer, so I always felt deprived (though us summer birthdays were allowed to pick another day to celebrate our birthday, but it was never the same. In addition to the birthday thing, parents had to sign up to bring an afternoon snack for a whole week (I think two weeks a year). This was a private school. So we always had something to munch on during story time in the afternoon, cupcake or otherwise. This stopped after fourth grade (cupcakes too).

I went to a New York City public elementary school in the seventies. My mother was not evangelical, working (much less guilty about it), right wing, or kid-obsessed. The other parents split about 50/50 between Upper West Side liberals raising their kids on "Free to Be You and Me", and welfare moms from the housing projects. Everyone brought cupcakes, unless the birthday fell on a holiday. So it can't be that new, or that culturally linked to some particularly disliked group.

We actually got a mock paddling from the principal on our birthdays in grade school (1970s), but this was in MS. . . .
Posted by: latts on December 11, 2006 at 5:44 PM | PERMALINK

In Chile, it's mock electrodes-on-the-testicles from the principal. 10 volts for every year.

My wife is a school teacher, and she would make something for our daughters, now 25 and 19, to take to pre-school and grammar school. I do not know how widespread the practice was then, but I remember having to pack up the goodies and deliver them to the school the morning of the birthday. This is a relatively recent phenomenon, but it apparently has survived. Obviously the situation can get out of hand with parents competing for best birthday treat.

I can't believe no one else sees the actual outrage. It is money. I takes a lot of time and money to have a birthday party for your kid these days. Instead of laying out $1,000 every year, these cheap parents want to say they celebrated little Johnny's breach day with $20 worth of cupcakes and Kool Aide.

Aardvark, you're a f'in moron. George Mason in Alexandria is in the bluest part of the state, represented by Dem Congressman Jim Moran and the just-elected anti-war Senator Jim Webb.

I seem to be in the minority here as I remember cupcakes quite distinctly as part as elementary school birthdays growing up. This was in suburban Philadelphia in the late 70's/early 80's. FWIW, standard middle class neighborhood where at the time, most mothers stayed at home (this wouldn't be true today).

another question -- when did goodie bags become mandatory at Kid Birthday partys

Birthdays in my school (50s-60s) were "celebrated" with one's name and birthdate written on a piece of construction paper, generally in a seasonal shape (e.g. orange pumpkins in October) and posted on the school bulletin board. For a week. No make-ups for birthdays in the summer or holidays. No "treats." (No eating in the classrooms ever, anyway.) I would note that not only was class size pretty large (40+ was the norm), so was family size. Whether working or stay-at-home, moms with 6-8 kids had other things to worry about besides baking extra cupcakes. Also, back then, birthday parties -- outside of a quiet family celebration -- were pretty rare, at most one or two in a child's life. I had two, but a lot of my friends never had a "real" birthday party, and it was no big thing. With smaller families today, children's birthdays are a much, much bigger deal.

When I was in elementary in small-town Wisconsin in the 80's, cupcakes (or brownies, cookies, etc.) were common on birthdays and a Big Deal. I was always kind of bummed on those days, because my birthday is in mid-summer and I never got to bring anything in.

aaron aardvarka: Did you mean "People are dieting in Iraq....?"

IIRC, it takes about 5000 calories to lose one lb. of weight, so that's about two lbs. of weight gain every year.

3,500 calories per pound.

Your point stands, though. I haven't had a cupcake in prolly 25 years. The above info is why.

But now I could go for one...

when did goodie bags become mandatory at Kid Birthday partys

Now that's a good question.

My mom was a "room mother" for one month of the school year in the '50s. One day during her month she brought in cupcakes to celebrate all the birthdays for that month. Other moms took other months. Some months there were two moms/month if there were a lot of volunteers. The teacher worked out the logistics. All were stay at home moms then. I don't recall what happened to the summer birthday celebrations. This took place in San Diego.

What's wrong with kids these days? I recall birthdays as being the day that the class bullies would beat on you even more than usual. No other, more official celebration. I got my cupcakes like every other normal American kid with dysfuntional suburban parents in the 60s- buying 'em at the market with money taken from mom's purse when she was passed out. Ah, good times, good times.

Banning cupcakes an assault on the national identity? What's next, 'you can have my cupcake when you pry it from my cold, dead hands?'

We got to bring in treats up to about 3d grade. Mid-60's in Madison, Wis. A few moms worked, most were at home. No one got fat on a cupcake or a cookie every week or two.

Just about every speculation as to larger social meaning in this thread, including Kevin's, is inconsistent with my experience.

Funny, biggerbox!

I have two thoughts on McCain's hiring of Nelson. In addition to the thoughts offered upthread, that is.

First, maybe Nelson has many good qualities, and McCain figures that he will get to approve ads, and he's keeping Nelson away from the books, too.

Second, if Nelson is working for him, he isn't working against him.

I endorse the "McCain has charmed the media" theory, and I wish more Democrats would do likewise.

Like Cupcake Eater, I'm from Central Illinois and was in elementary school in the 60s. I remember when it was your birthday, you brought in a treat to share with the class. I vaguely remember cookies and brownies, but cupcakes were the classic. It was given out during our daily milk break so it wasn't that disruptive. My mom's speciality was making cupcakes in ice cream cones. That way the kids ate the cone and there was less mess to clean up.

My brother has school age kids living in Central Illinois and they still take in treats when they are in elementary school.

No cupcakes. In first grade there were 100 of us in one classroom; 101 additional first graders next door.

With smaller families today, children's birthdays are a much, much bigger deal.
Posted by: Baker on December 11, 2006 at 6:28 PM | PERMALINK

That's right. Evil Liberals today are having smaller families, because they're Greedy, and want to spend more money on fewer kids. They love only money, and worship only money. The only reason they have one or two kids in the first place is simply to check of an item on their list after "House", "BMW", and "two golden retrievers".

And that's why they're banning the cupcakes too - because they hate being shown for the anti-family commie bastards they are when the Christian parents who truly LOVE their kids take the time to make cupcakes to share with the rest of their class. In Homeschool.

The problem is, (fake)Charlie, the homeschool-made cupcakes always turn out flat or have too little sugar or the icing is too thin, because the homeschooling parents don't understand fractions. But they love Jesus.

Ah, Kevin.

Only a limp wrist wastoid lib like yourself would have no appreciation for cupcakes. It's a staple of Americana, a quintessentially American cocktail of confection. Children around the world love the cupcake, adore its festive trimmings, cherish its funnish sprinklings. The cupcake. A bit of childhood wonder, a little something a kid does on his one way ticket to adultville. Sometimes its the only thing separating a kid from cynical old fogie. The cupcake IS youth, and it symbolizes everything that is young and right and wonderous about this country.

But the America hating liberals want to deny America its cupcakes? They want to take the cupcake in their fist, and squash it and grind it into the dirt. As they want to do with all America.

If you have two golden retrievers, I'm pretty sure you won't be able to have any cupcakes around.

Hostile on December 11, 2006 at 6:02 PM:

The cupcake ban started...so they used their alpha personality types to impose the ban on everyone.

Talk about unsympathetic...You want a kid with an airborne peanut allergy on a respirator or maybe dead 'cause you want a freakin' store-bought cupcake?

Or maybe kids with food allergies should go to 'special' peanut-free schools?

In public elementary school in Detroit in the late 60s / early 70s, we had cupcakes for birthdays. At private Catholic school when we moved to Virgnia we had cupcakes for birthdays as well. I do the same for my daughter, as do other parents, its not just stay at home moms.

The teachers the last few years now ask parents to bring birthday treats during lunch period rather than class time. I suspect this has more to do with SOLs (state tests) than an attempt to eliminate in-class parties. Its all about the SOLs now - they even cut after lunch recess and Social Studies (not an SOL subject) to beef up class time for SOL preparation.

I'm in Riverside County next to Orange County. Until this year, yeah, I've been bringing in cupcakes. But not all the kids get this --- only those with moms who make the effort.

Of course, it hasn't been banned for its elitism. It's been banneed because of the so-called childhood obesity epidemic.

Interestingly, the whole childhood obesity epidemic, stems from a decision on the part of nutritionists and other professionals to change the guidelines about what is obese.

You should have seen the number they did on adults a few years back where the number of obese adults jumped some 3 million in a single year as they changed the BMI definition of obesity.

Don't get me wrong. Half the moms I see at my kids elementary school really are fat. But only about 1 in 20 of the kids even looks overweight.

Now if liberals could get a jumpstart on this issue against the "lying nutrition nazis," think of all those fat moms voting Democrat in Orange County in 2008....

Among NYC yuppies (mainly the women) cupcakes are a high-end, big-deal treat. I can personally name 2 of the best cupcake places in town just from hearing all these ladies rave about them, and I don't really like cupcakes, so I wish I didn't have this information in my brain.

Am I the only one that bribed my parents not to go gung-ho on the birthday? Saw Mom doing the cost plotting for a birthday party back in early elementary school, offered her an exchange: no party, just a friend over for the night and cake and ice cream, in exchange for $50, cash up front. (That's a packet of cash when your allowance is 50c weekly!) Needless to say, she went for it with enthusiasm. Less expenditure, less headache, and nobody ever gets anything really -good- from a classmate at a birthday party...

I guess the 7:15PM post was Egbert's entry in TBogg's 'Write Like Victor Davis Hanson' Contest.

What's the deal with half the kids in America (whoa-oh!) having peanut allergies? When I was growing up in the '70s, I never knew anyone who was allergic to them. Now we've got kids who go anaphalactic if they smell a goober. What gives?

Private school, greater Boston area, grade school = '64-70. No cupcakes, no bringing in any kind of food to school, no vending machines, no eating in the classrooms. There was milk and cookies at recess, and there was lunch. Period. This was an absolutely unquestioned feature of the universe, like gravity.

I'm a freshman in college and so I was in elementary school in the late 90s. My school was in the suburbs of Southern California and we definitely had birthday cupcakes, though donuts were just as popular. My mom works and definitely never baked cupcakes for my whole class. But every year on my birthday my dad would drive me to Winchell's Donuts before school and buy 2 dozen donuts which I would then give out at recess. It was the custom at my school for the birthday kid to give out sugary goodness. I enjoyed it but dont think it qualifies as an American tradition.

I'll give it a whirl and try to answer Thlayli's question.

More preemies live. About 15 years ago we started introducing surfactant into the lungs of preemies and they started surviving in greater numbers. Unfortunately we haven't figured out how to prevent a lot of the deficits that these kids experience in life after they survive. We're working on that, though...

And too, how many unexplained deaths of children that took place more than 30 years ago were actually anaphalactic reactions and we just didn't know? I'm thinking of one specific kid who died at a birthday party when I was eight, and it was just a mystery.

Florida, mid-70's, private elementary school: not only were there cupcakes for birthdays, but "punch and cookies" every day. My mom was (and is) a health food nut and I couldn't participate. I vaguely remember not liking this at the time, but I don't think I'm scarred by the memory and in fact don't like sweets at all as an adult.

Which brings me to another cupcake question: what's with all the adult cupcake mania these days? New Yorkers will know all about the lines for Magnolia bakery's cupcakes, and now two different couples I know have served cupcakes at (otherwise) grown-up parties. Wtf? Even if you LIKE sweets, aren't there about a million tastier ways to get your simple carbs on than yucky little cupcakes? Blech.

The solution here is simple. Alter human genetics so we run on sugar, fructose and transfat.

I don't see what's so hard about this, we just need to evolve quicker and gene therapy is the key.

Uh, for the record, Private Christian School on the Minnesota/North Dakota border, late 80s, early 90s cup cakes between 4-8 times a year.

Maybe class sizes have escalated a bit?

Maybe only a small proportion of your class could afford to bring cupcakes for the whole class - as it was in my small school.

There were so many birthdays in my second school that only one child a month was allowed to bring enough for the class; and they tried to make it so it wasn't the same child every year.

I had my whole class over for a birthday when I was seven, but not when I was six or eight. Why seven? Because cliques hadn't formed yet, and we could afford it.

Kevin,
What an interesting topic you have found here. After reading your blog and most of the responses to it, I have a question for everyone. You asked about the history of the cupcakes, and that is exactly what I’m wondering. When exactly did the cupcake become associated with “white” America. I don’t remember any of the Neo-Nazi’s or KKK members holding cupcake parties, which makes the race aspect of this issue very interesting.
The link that is being drawn between white and cupcake is yet another very good example of the inherent racism within American society. Just the idea that people would be trying to claim the cupcake as a white American icon shows how insecure white American’s can be. I come from Idaho, I know about racism and closed minded white people and I have never heard of anything remotely like this. It’s rather like the appropriation of indigenous peoples cultural symbols. However, in this case can anyone really claim the cupcake as a cultural symbol.
Like many things in this country we spend too much of our time arguing about cupcakes in school when instead we should be focusing on political, social and environmental issues. Discussions about cupcakes in schools should be a local issue, nothing more.
As for Kathryn Oths and her statement about “'watering down' our traditional American culture — meaning middle-class white America.” First of all, how and when did traditional Amerikkkan culture come to mean “middle-class white America?” The traditions of the white culture in America are enslavement, genocide of the indigenous peoples, and resource extraction. Where in our history is the cupcake a significant anything? This is not to say that kids don’t love them, but an American icon, get real.

Geez, I remember times me and da boys stayed after school and more than a few cupcakes came up out of da cakes.

In Chi town, Al always made sure the cakes were "Angels Food" cake - Da cupcakes were sure angels.

In the Great Frozen Northland, we didn't celebrate birthdays at school, at least when I was a lad. This whole concept is new to me. Why would you have birthday parties in class? (apparently I'm more conservative than the social conservatives)

Mr. Drum, apparently you have "missed out." Is it possible your family eschewed brownies, cupcakes, cakes, pies, tarts, lemon bars, and "holiday" cookies? Sugar is a human craving, well-formed sugar can be pure delight. If you cannot remember a twinky and a coke from way back when, don't even try to comprehend the cultural power of food---and the angst it often uncovers: I miss succotash for Thanksgiving and wonder at school rules against even unwrapping a PB&J.

Perhaps the most enjoyable way to understand this anthropology is with one of Greg Poullan's journalistic idyls, "Botony of Desire" or "The Omnivore's Dilemma." (Throw one of these into your reading bag and a top-ten candidate becomes immediately apparent.)

For a regional, national, cultural review: My mother was a baker who taught me well. Every event had a treat because it was cheap to prepare and always well received. (Her recipe for Graham Cracker Pudding is still a closely held family secret and produces a neverending craven desire among those who have had the priviledge.) I didn't know what a bake sale was until I started a family in Virginia; what was always free in abundance became an income stream. With my first wife and two kids and my current with another two, baking for office, school, church, and scouts gained the stature of ritual. Even today, my office still has a regular, homemade, confection, usually unbidden, at least once a month---what a great excuse to leave the cubicle and say Hi. Have I said making cupcakes shows you care or baking a cake from scratch shares and shows love. (Read Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation." It will take months before you buy a prepackaged mix---but you will...) Living now in Maryland, our youngest bakes whenever her friends have a birthday or celebration. She isn't "buying her way in," she doesn't need to; it's just good manners. Have you ever had a warm, ring roll of raised, yeast bread with butter, cinnamon, sugar, and a few nuts, slathered with confectioners' frosting? Donuts pale at the delight. It takes all night to make, providing hours of conversation and games, and raises an aroma that devours all noxious smells while seeping into your pores. The hardest part is waiting until it's cool enough; conversation stops and mouths drool. Get up late? Too late.

Anthropology also brings a frightening antithesis: "You are ruining your body. You are poisoning my child. The only way to eat and live right is to follow..." The strident stance of righteousness has many venue and knows no bounds. Some people are just mean, other oblivious. If you don't want your child to eat a cupcake, fulminate and educate as much as you want, but realize that that sweet is calling naturally, inexoribly. It is better to teach balance, moderation, exercise, and happiness---for the best way to succeed is through enjoyment. Is all this negativity, the various adjectival forms of "correctness," just personal guilt foisted as knowledge, however thinnly sourced? Or does the fear and push back arise from a perceived attack on the most comfortable of cultural inheritance and charity? Food and its mores spread from today far back to Grandma and, with a smile, to a grand future reward.

It's the season for fruitcake and eggnog. Don't miss it!

Bob Johnson
Silver Spring, MD
Bob_Johnson_1@hotmail.com

The eighties were troubling times: big hair, Members Only jackets, leg warmers, rewarding children just for showing up.

Material tokens for participation has always frustrated me. Apparently, nothing is worth doing unless you get a trophy (ribbons are not enough), a cinnamon roll, or a cup cake.

Children must feel valued and loved; and for that to happen, they must be given stuff. Hell, I was floored when I discovered that there are elementary schools that but on a graduation ceremony (complete with mini caps and gowns) for the sixth graders.

Any wonder that some parents think nothing of standing in line for hours and using commando tactics to buy a $300.00 game console for their kid’s Xmas gift.

The cupcake...Sometimes its the only thing separating a kid from cynical old fogie.

My good man, this cynical old fogie does his best to separate the local youths from their cupcakes. Yes, yes, sometimes they caterwaul and carry on and threaten to tell the housekeeper--Mummy's out getting smashed or Botoxed--but a hasty gift of whatever shirt in the closet is oldest, plus vague references to the INS, generally ixnay any hired help-initiated investigations.

The cupcake IS youth, and it symbolizes everything that is young and right and wonderous about this country.

You said a mouthful there, sir, a chocolaty sprinkle-studded mouthful. In fact I don't mind telling you that this old and right and wondrous man finds a good robust cupcake more effective than a pocketful of Cialis in restoring the tattered tissues. Mmmm. Yes.

And you organic honey-sniffing liberals wonder why life without refined sugar is such a lackluster, loveless affair.

I grew up in the South in the 50's. We had cupcake parties all the time. Most mothers didn't work -- bringing in cupcakes for birthdays was one of lots of things mothers had time to do. (And if your birthday came in the summer, it was just one of those things.)

It was a treat, always fun, but it didn't take up much time. Not a big interruption, I think it happened at the end of the school day.

There wasn't a whole lot of other junk food, although hostess cupcakes, twinkies, and oreos were prized additions to your sack-lunch. (You could trade these for stuff, or sell them -- I remember once being offered a quarter for an oreo!)

I absolutely agree with Dr Bob, above, that home-made food -- delicious, in abundance, the making of it becoming a ritual -- is hugely important and wonderful.

To Literate Fool and Norman,

Very, very well said. Thanks to both of you.
(And it pains me to say it with Norman (grin)).

Yeah, went to school in Canada here, and never had a cupcake that I can remember.

BTW. The real problem with youth obesity is two-fold.

#1. Corn Syrup. I shit you not. This stuff is really bad, and it's replacing old-fashioned cane sugar pretty much everywhere.

#2. Child Predators. At least the paranoia about them, have eliminated the ability for kids to keep constantly active, which most kids need to control the weight in some cases. An hour of basketball twice a week isn't going to do it.

People blame TV or video games, or computers. These things are symptoms, not causes. It's symptoms of your house and school being prisons.

There were some great cupcakes in high school.

Karmakin,

You've hit one nail on the head, the use of high fructose corn syrup in soft drinks and other manufactured 'treats.' Just a few days ago I read an article about how the industrial use of corn syrup as a sweetener was politically engineered by the corporate giant Archer, Daniels, Midland. And beyond that the presumptive victory of corn-based ethanol as the American answer to energy independence and global warming (not a good solution).

Take a look:

How Cash and Corporate Pressue Pushed Ethanol (and Corn Syrup) to the Fore

Don't get me started on the looming diabestes crisis. It is the one factor that stands to colapse our health system. I have watched in horror from the inside, and I've been in the lab, soing the actual chemical analysis. I've witnessed with my own eyes the creeping upward of the average gl;ucose reading in the chemistry panels of adults and children alike. I've also watched cholesterol levels get high enough to require treatment at younger and younger ages. Hyperlipidemia and diabetes go hand in hand, and fuel a viscious circle.

Everyone has one issue that has the potential to bring out their authoritarian streak, and this one is mine.

Call it my shrieking harpie issue.

And when I get good and exercised about something the typos are rampant.

Karmakin,

As for your second cause of childhood obesity, I think you're gone far astray. Backyards and schoolyards are still considered safe areas by most parents. TV, computers, video games are not good substitutes for making mud pies, catching fireflies, playing tag. Those are still possible and sometimes take a little parental shove out the door. Urban dwellers must have a much harder time of it in needing to chaperone their kids when outdoors.

Global Citizen,

Did you get my e-mail re: corn syrup?

Yes I did. Thank you. I have a few more grades to post then I can start reading the things I have been accumulating over the semester with regard to Depleted Uranium and the diabetes issue. I don't think the month I have off will be quite enough, but I'll get absorbed what I can. I have two or three emails with links from you that have a very high priority. You always pass along stuff worth reading and I just want you to know I appreciate that - and everyone else to know that, for what it's worth, I think your links are worth following.

In Springfield Mo., circa 1970, and later on in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, we never celebrated birthdays at school. We barely celebrated at home, with six kids, and that seemed consistent with the peer group. You had dinner and a cake with your family and received a gift. Exception: One person I knew in elementary school was adopted, and an only child, and had a birthday party once that was just like in the story books. It was lovely.

That was a happy childhood. So why do I bring school treats for my kids' birthdays and hold birthday parties for them now? I never fully analyzed it, but mostly, it's fun. It adds a little joy to life! Perhaps I saw the Martha Stewart-type parents doing it, and it didn't seem like that big of a deal. Even in the prosperous suburb of DC where I live now (20854), not that many parents bring birthday treats, especially as the kids get older. So it's not cupcakes 25 times a year, it's maybe five times a year. There isn't social pressure on non-participants because most don't do it, but it is fun for the class if someone does decide to do it.

Also, no homemade food is allowed for classmates in Montgomery County, MD under the health code, so anything brought in must be from a store. Some teachers say the class prefers Dunkin' Donuts or popsicles, and some years I've had peanut kids in the class, in which case I learn of a suitable food from the parents.

I'd much rather see a focus on improving the healthiness of the school lunches than see a crackdown on cupcakes. Five cupcakes a year in school vs. food with questionable nutrition content served to kids by the government EVERY SINGLE SCHOOL DAY. Plus the junk food vending machines in the middle schools and high schools should not be available during the school day. The obesity epidemic is not going to be solved by teaching kids that sugar must always be avoided on social occasions, when PE is held only once a week, some schools cut back on recess and serve high-fat glop for lunch, and parents in some areas have lack of resources and time for cooking (especially low-income folks).

Webster Groves, MO (outside of St. Louis) 1976-1982. Cupcakes once a month or so. Some people brought 'em in, most didn't. And we never thought twice about it. They were usually given to us on our way out the door at the end of the day.

I remember cupcakes in elementary school (Bethesda, Md. '69 to '75). I just don't remember what the occassions were, or who made them. Probably for Halloween, Xmas and Valentine's Day. Maybe Thanksgiving and the last day of school. And maybe for someone's birthday if their mom saw fit. The kinds of mothers who did that were regarded as the interfering, overprotective type who still wiped their half grown kids' asses. I remember my mother making cupcakes a couple times, I just don't remember taking them to school. I think maybe the teachers asked mothers to volunteer at different times to send X amount of something (cupcakes, cookies, hawaiian punch) for a planned celebration. I doubt we got them half a dozen times a year. If it was a kid's birthday, the mom did all the work setting up while the teacher instructed, and then it was a quick happy birthday song and scarf a cupcake on your way out to a recess. It probably didn't even take 5 minutes out of instruction time.

My older siblings and I went to elementary school in the San Fernando Valley during the 60's. There were no birthday celebrations, and very few kids ever had birthday parties. I do recall our Hubbard Street School having a wonderful Halloween Festival, for which I am always nostalgic at that time of year. And Valentine's Day was always a big thing. But no cupcakes.

BiggerBill wrote:
I think it started when mommies re-entered the paid workforce in big numbers--during the seventies and eighties, to today.

To me, it seems to be part of what I call "Baby Boomer B.S." The Boomers have excelled at raising fashionable consumers, to the delight of corporations everywhere.

Karmakin, nepeta, and Global Citizen:
Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma does a pretty good job of showing how corn and HFCS has permeated the American diet. It's gotten to the point where it's almost impossible to NOT consume corn in some fashion.

I don't remember getting cupcakes in grade school in the fifties. I just barely remember the brownies in college during the sixties.

In the 60's, when I went through grade school, cupcakes were brought in as birthday treats infrequently. As a child I remember no special pressure to have my mother make some for me to bring in to school, which is something that in any case she never would have done. I certainly don't remember any classmate feeling that this was anything other than an occasional, unlooked for treat.

But then again, where I grew up, soda pop was also an infrequent treat, and certainly not something that was bought by the caseful. I am now 40 something, and although I have no family, I am astounded by how much soda pop I see being purchased by others at the checkout stands. What's wrong with water, iced tea, or lemonade? All of these are perfectly adequate to quench my thirst, and are enough to provide me with a variety. Once in a while I "jazz" up some lemonade with some soda water, but otherwise all three in the long run are just about as convenient as schlepping in and storing several cases of soda pop!

Those cupcakes were heaven, and the ruby liquid from Hawaii was the elixer of the gods. Cupcake birthday breaks were as delicious as the moment your teacher wheeled in a movie projector -- only with frosting.

I wonder if any class ever had birthday cupcakes and The Red Balloon all in one day.

Sugar is the only natural addiction humans are born with. I'm guessing that most of the parents who really push this crap are bloated hogs. Giving the tykes a little mal-nuture to go with their genetically induced proclivities is good way to ensure that when the apple breaks the limb and falls to the ground, it wont be far from the tree.

I have an odd perspective on this, having my 4-year-old in the UN International School here in Hanoi. The modus of parental snack-treat oppression here is somewhat different: in addition to the birthday treat potlatch spiral, we have the even more insidious World Culture Celebration Days. These are the various festivals, holidays, etc. when every parent in school is expected to cook some kind of food or attire their child in an outfit representing the culture of their homeland. There are I think 25 nationalities in the school and a corresponding number of potential national festivals; my kids are half Dutch, half American, and half Jewish, and the number of days and cultures to commemorate is rapidaly spiraling out of control. Every time we have to doll our daughter up in Dutch clogs or bake a pannekoek for her to bring in or show up ourselves to help slice cheese at the Dutch tent or roast hamburgers at the American tent or stuff pitas at the Israeli tent, I feel like the weird Indian kid being made to stand up in front of the class for show-and-tell and explain for the respectful multi-culti teacher and class why she has that dot on her forehead. And everybody else in the school has to do exactly the same thing. I can never figure out whether everybody is as sick of it as I am, or whether there are some sickos out there who actually would enjoy an endless series of Kwanzaa/Hanukkah/Christmas/Ramadan folk dance performances or whatever. Insane.

You're all insane. As long as there have been public schools and, before that, one-room school houses, there have been people bringing treats to school on their birthdays. And holiday celebrations and what-not. Maybe at large, serious, impersonal, or scary urban schools you don't have that. But in Iowa, today and when I was growing up in the 1970s, you have students who are middle-class and upper-middle-class bringing treats to school. Maybe half the students never brought treats, either because their birthday didn't fall on a school day or because their parents were too poor, but others brought Nilla wafers, or Kit Kat bars, or sheet cakes, or foot-long grape-flavored bubblegum, or sour balls, or Ding Dongs wrapped in silver foil, or little store-bought chocolate chip cookies, or Fudge Stripe cookies. And I'm sure cupcakes occasionally entered the mix, although I don't remember them.

How can any of you care if cupcakes are or are not brought to school? They are brought. And all those other things are brought. Not everywhere at all times, but at some places at some times. It's not like cupcakes and goodies are something foreign to the human condition and completely bizarre.

At an American public school the point is not just to educate, but to create conventional, obediant students who learn to tolerate and put up with dreary, boring days at school so they can someday be good little workers who put up with dreary, boring days at work. A little celebration for half an hour or forty-five minutes is a relief from the endless, mind-numbing tedium.

All of you must live in a savage world of evil soccer moms in SUVs who indulge in endless competitive cupcake-making. You see all of this going on and put your hands to your temples and scream, "Oh, when will this agony end!!!"

In the real world (perhaps the classic "All American" world), kids are kids and their parents often give them treats to take to school. Big deal. Get over it.

Wagster wrote:

I can't speak to school customs, but the cupcake in the last few years has become a hot commodity here in NYC. It began with the Cupcake Cafe and the Magnolia Bakery -- from what I hear I hear, the craze has spread to L.A. which now has a cupcake mecca of its own (can't recall the name.) This is serious stuff... you walk by the Magnolia in the evening and there is literally a line of twenty people curling around the corner waiting to get cupcakes.

Here in San Francisco we have Beard Papa's. A chain from Japan that makes fresh chocolate & custard cream puffs while you wait.

They are unbelievably good.

growing up in the sixties I don't remembr ever having cupcakes. In the early years it was always graham crackers and milk in those triangular milk containers with the impossible tab which youcould never get off without some milk squeezing out. Cupcakes I would definitely remember.

Don't schools and parents have better things to do than to decide whether cupcakes should be permitted? Granted, the health of our children is important but so is letting them have fun occasionally. But most important of all, children are in school to learn, not to eat cupcakes. Please...stop arguing about cupcakes and start arguing about whether children should learn their ABCs, their numbers or whatever. A cupcake lasts for a day. Learning lasts for a lifetime.

Nope... no cupcakes for me in my school (60's)... I have a feeling the whole thing stated with the kid's that weren't part of the A list, and their mom's hauling in frosted cupcakes was a way to get their kids a little extra attention from the teachers and the other students, or perhaps the parents couldn't afford to have a b-day party, or the kid did't have enough friends to invite to a party. A cheep box of cake mix and 30 kids in a class room is a quick and dirty party.
Then there is this one... Billy's mom brought cupcakes to school for his b-day.. Talk about the guilt factor of a kid shaming mom into baking, or them lying in the floor kicking and screaming until out comes the cupcake pans and poof... 30 cupcakes on the counter in a tupperware container, waiting for the school bus...

No cupcakes for this 60's Chicago-area schoolboy. No treats at school for birthdays.

I'm new to the school thing since my daughter is only four and in her first year of pre-school. Her birthday was on Halloween, and we were instructed that homemade treats were forbidden. Cupcakes or anything else had to be in a sealed package from a store. Presumably for allergy reasons? Also, my wife is a baker, and she said many icing recipes are high-risk for food poisoning and germs.

Sounded like a prudent precaution to me. Plus, my daughters class has less than ten kids, so the frequency is not an issue...

Few kids brought treats, but it wasn't as widespread as today.

Suburban Chicago in the 70's.

Whether or not kids are fed too many cupcakes, this is the assertion in question: "Think about it. Banning cupcakes is almost like an assault on the national identity,"

I thought about it.

"Banning cupcakes" = not having cupcake parties at public school.

"assault on the national identity" = cutural crisis undermining strong patriotism necessary for confronting terrorist threats.

I'm pretty sure one is not even "almost like" the other. But maybe I have to think about it more.

In graduate school, went to elementary school in the late 80s-early 90s.

In semi-suburban North Georgia, there was usually a little something about once a month for all of the birthdays that kids would have had that month. On the last day of school in spring, there would be one for the kids that had summer birthdays. I recall cookies, a few cupcakes and High-C (ECTO COOLER FOREVER!!!!!)

Also, some of the responses so far are amusing... (We love Jesus = not able to frost correctly??)(I blame the corporations!)

My father was in the service when I was the right age for this stuff back in the 70s, so I went to elementary and middle school in a fair number of places. (North Carolina, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey.) And I have never heard of this before in my entire life.

Also: cupcakes? People are deeply emotionally invested in cupcakes? In New York, where you can get pastry almost as good as the pastry in Paris? This current obsession with children and childhood we seem to be going through has definitely gotten out of hand.

To go a bit off topic, my kindergarten-teacher wife utterly flipped out at her class last week about how two tastycake honeybuns, a bag of chips, and a hug [those little supercheap plastic bottles of sweetener, artificial color and presumably water] is not a Healthy Snack.

As for birthday cupcakes, I seem to remember cakes of cupcakes either in the very early grades or pre-school (public school, Bronx, early 1980s)- but beyond that we either didn't have 'em or I've forgotten, which is quite possible, having repressed most of elementary school . . .

There's plenty of sugar in school, so tomorrow for my son's kindergarden Christmas party the teacher asked parents to bring non-sugery stuff. Celery, carrot sticks, and some other stuff I can't remember.

If it's there, the kids will go for it. We give my son Rosemary & Olive Oil-flavored Triskits, and he calls them "sugary triskits," even though there's no sugar in them. So, we feel like we're getting away with one there.

I grew up in Ohio, late 50's early 60's. No cupcakes, I would have remembered. No treats at all on birthdays. On the other hand, no mock (or real) paddlings, either. Now THAT'S a wierd way to "celebrate."

Hubby grew up in San Francisco and says they would occasionally get cupcakes, but for holidays, not birthdays.

Must second grapeshot on soda being a special treat when we were young, and was just reminising the other day with hubby about how those special treat sodas were 6 or 7 ounces, when today a 12 ounce can is considered too little, and most sodas are consumed in 20 ounce bottles.

I, too, remember graham crackers as just about the only treat we ever got in grade school, tho we got milk in those little cartons every single day, and not chocolate milk, either.

Not to rain on your parade, American Citizen, but oh, yeah, there's sugar in Triscuits.

But I love that your son's school asks for raw veggies. Right on.

I went to elementary school in suburban Detroit and Columbus, and in both places cupcakes were a delicious and appreciated part of kids' birthday celebrations. Giving a kid one cupcake is hardly going to cause dietary problems.

Chocolate cupcakes were, of course, the best. Though chocolate-frosted, plain/vanilla were fine, too. I also ate the crumb-covered wrappers -- or at least chewed them.
Cupcakes of various primary colors, or with oddly colored icing would have proved puzzling, and less enjoyable. But cupcakes were at most a couple-times-a-month treat.

Have things gotten worse (in the past twenty or so years); is junk-food now ubiquitous, and do the most junk-food obsessed parents set the tone for everyone else?