Entertainment

PARENT ‘HOODS

Author Dave Eggers has rendered his verdict on the latest generation of parents, and it is not pretty. “You’re a terrible person!” screams John Krasinski’s character at a New Age-y mom (Maggie Gyllenhaal) at one point in the new movie “Away We Go.”

Her crimes? Breastfeeding her 3-year-old, not wanting to use a stroller and letting her kids sleep in bed with her and her ponytailed husband. Bad, bad mom!

The movie is co-written by Eggers and wife Vendela Vida, who have two small children. It’s a timely, if unintentional, illustration of the current craze of parent-on-parent shaming.

Eggers’ 2000 memoir, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” and his literary journal, McSweeney’s, tapped into a thirst for self-referential irony in the ’90s, and the writing in his movie seems to have aged, along with his fans, into parenthood. Parents for whom nothing, and no one, will ever be quite virtuous enough.

Coincidentally, Eggers’ old neighborhood, Park Slope, remains ground zero for NYC’s alt-parenting elite — though they can be found in every corner of town. Whenever eyebrows raise at a mom feeding formula to her baby; whenever a parent tells another, “We don’t have TV in our house;” whenever a baby is forced to wear a $40 Ramones onesie, the spirit of parental one-upmanship is there.

Of course, not every young mom is buying in. “I’m kind of tired of the ‘indie hipster smirking at the world around you’ thing,” says Brooklyn Heights-based blogger, and parent, Liz Gumbinner. “Cynicism has its place when you’re, like, 20 and raging against the world, but once you become a parent, I think you owe your kids a little better than that.”

Gumbinner, founder of the shopping site Cool Mom Picks, is well-known in online parenting circles for her documentation of one particular kind of smirker: The Sanctimommy.

“She’s the type who snorts in your direction when you feed your daughter french fries in the diner, or who tsks you as you walk past her with your pacifier-sucking 3-year-old,” Gumbinner writes in her oft-linked essay. “She won’t hesitate to comment on your kid’s lack of hat when the temperature dips to 59, or to make a scene over the non-organic produce in your fridge. She has read every baby book, and has decided that her expert of choice is the expert and that heeding any other parenting theories is akin to worshipping false idols.”

One acid-tongued commentator on the Brooklyn baby scene, a man who will only give us his blog name (“Blogngr”), has penned an online apology for presumptuous hipster-parent misdeeds.

“We the parents of Park Slope and the surrounding vicinity,” he writes on his blog, “hereby declare our realization that we and our children can, at times, be annoying as F – – K. We are naturally compelled to value our children’s feelings and well-being above all else, frequently to the exclusion of our consideration for others, our capacity for courtesy, and our common sense.”

Holier-than-thou parenting, he says, is as old as humankind. It just comes in different formats. Today’s “Away We Go” brand is based in a competition to see who can, as he puts it, be the “least evil.” (He hasn’t seen the movie, he adds, but has watched the trailer. “I swear to Christ,” he says, “you’d have to kidnap my children and demand a ticket stub as ransom to get me to go see it.”)

He compares hipster parenthood to the followers of the Grateful Dead. “It might appear that ‘Wow, these guys sure reject the traditional values of social competition — just look!’ But ask anyone who actually was a part of this community. The Deadheads were extremely snooty and holier-than-thou about: Who had the nicest tie-dye rags? Who had the ‘kindest’ old Volkswagon bus? Who had the best weed? They were always competing with each other, BIG time.

“And my retarded generation — myself included — is so conscientious and spoiled,” he continues. ” ‘Ew, don’t give your kid non-organic string cheese!’ ‘You guys had a tug-o-war at little Ansel’s birthday party? We had a pull-for-peace!’ ‘You give your kids birthday presents? We made a donation to cancer research!’ “

The problem, of course, is that such designations — good, evil — are completely subjective. There’s no rulebook to tell everyone what’s right and wrong — only a never-ending stream of scattershot advice.

We’ve never had more ways to connect, in fact; you can find a baby book or a Web site to suit whatever child-rearing style you like. As a result, heated debate is flourishing like never before, especially in online forums. Strollers, nannies, “cry it out,” “breast-is-best” — you name it, you can find snarky insults (often couched as helpful suggestions) being flung back and forth about it.

On local sites such as Urban Baby New York and Park Slope Parents, posters reflexively correct and upbraid those who don’t hew to an unwritten protocol. In one particularly silly, and now infamous, incident, Brooklyn commenters heaped scorn on a lost-and-found posting of a “boy’s hat” found in the park. “What makes this a ‘boy’s hat?’ ” demanded one poster. “Did you see the boy himself loose [sic] it? Or does the hat in question possess an unmistakable scent of testosterone?”

“Recently,” Gumbinner says, “one woman on Twitter was just blasting another woman who had admitted to feeding her kid a Happy Meal. Literally, she said something like, ‘Happy Meals are for people who are trying to kill their children.’ I thought, you know what? That’s not gonna convince anyone. What purpose does that serve?”

No wonder a recent Pew Research Center study found that 70 percent of people say mothering is more difficult today than three decades ago. One of the biggest challenges cited in the study was “societal influences,” including peer pressure.

“I think the intolerance for other styles of parenting comes from the same place all intolerance comes from — fear,” says Ada Calhoun, founder of the parenting site Babble. “The fear that we’re screwing up. The fear that if we do or don’t do X or Y (stay home full-time, breastfeed for a full year, get toxin-free bottles, whatever) our kid will be messed up forever.”

Why has the backbiting been so prevalent recently? Gumbinner thinks it may come back to — what else? — money. Or lack thereof. “Maybe it has something to do with the economy,” she says. “When people are feeling low, and not at their best, they tend to take it out on other people.”

Ken Shallcross, director of p.r. and marketing for Pandora Corp. and a Bronx based toddler dad, put the blame on the modern trend of elevating parenthood to a godlike state.

“I like to think that the people that are the most judgmental are the same ones that act and feel that having a kid is such a ‘miracle’ and so ‘special,’ ” he says. “I guess I’m not like that because I treat being a parent as a job, not a hobby. I don’t compare my kid to others because I know every kid is different. And I’m not ‘in love’ with parenting. It’s a tough job and something I take seriously.”

Others counter the crushing fear of screwing up and competitive anxiety by preemptively, loudly (and, some argue, disingenuously) proclaiming themselves to be failures. “Are we f – – k-ups?” the couple in “Away We Go” ask themselves at one point.

It’s a strategy that’s reflected in the current trend of bad-mommy confessionals crowding bookstores these days, such as Ayelet Waldman’s “Bad Mother,” Heather Armstrong’s “It Sucked and Then I Cried,” and the online-comment compilation “True Mom Confessions.”

Waldman, who’s been heavily featured on the media circuit lately as the face of supposedly imperfect parenting, declined to comment on the parents-to-be at the heart of the film: “‘Away We Go’ was written by two of my dearest friends,” she responded curtly.

One wonders if “Away We Go” has taken its cue from the dads and moms like Waldman, who beat themselves up in print, but ultimately know they’re perfectly decent parents.

In reality, says Calhoun, “there is no ‘right’ for every family. Everyone’s just piecing together parenting philosophies to make up a style that’s right for them. “As one of our bloggers said, ‘hybrids aren’t just for cars.’ “

And then, there’s one opinion nobody is bothering to consider in all the uproar: What about the children?

“One thing I never see, to be honest, is any New York City baby smiling or laughing in their stroller,” Shallcross says. “They all seem to have that ‘get me out of here’ look.”

Williamsburg

* Schools: Williamsburg Neighborhood Nursery, PS 34 (in Greenpoint)

* Stroller: If it rolls, that’s cool (hand-me-down)

* After-school activities: weaving, studying space at the Y (in Greenpoint)

* Philosophy: Why should I quit my band just because I have two kids?

‘Away We Go’

* Schools: any “good” public school

* Stroller: MacLaren Triumph ($190)

* After-school activities: whittling, trampoline

* Philosophy: All we can do is be good for this one baby.

Park Slope

* Schools: PS 321, Berkeley Carroll

* Stroller: Bugaboo Cameleon ($899)

* After-school activities: “collaboration and support,” Mandarin Chinese

* Philosophy: If it’s worth teaching your kids, it’s worth fighting about on the Web.

TriBeCa

* Schools: TriBeCa Community, PS 234

* Stroller: Orbit Infant System ($900)

* After-school activities: sculpture in the “atelier,” Manhattan Youth Players

* Philosophy: We could have moved to Greenwich, but then our kids wouldn’t have known Bob or Harvey.

sara.stewart@nypost.com