Kudos to the New York Times for providing an endless supply of parenting trend stories to irritate and delight. There's a doozy in today's paper, about moms and dads who are trying to oust ice cream trucks from their local parks. Next week: a movement to euthanize Mr. Peanut.

One woman describes the ice cream men as "predatory" because they loiter inside the playground's gates. My favorite passage from the article is a quote from a woman who says that learning how to deal with your children wanting treats from the ice cream man is as difficult as potty training. "The ice cream truck, nobody ever mentions that” as a potential sore spot, the lady laments.

In this matter I must side with the wise Hilary Guishard of Brooklyn, who has driven Mister Softee trucks for over 30 years. “I empathize with moms when it come to health issues," Mr. Guishard says. He continues:

"But moms have a choice. ... We should be mature enough to tell our kids, 'No.'" Wanting the trucks to go away "is not a valid issue," he said, adding, "It’s like a mother being angry at a store being at a particular corner." Besides, the ice cream man isn’t forever. "It’s summer," he said, sighing. "It’s only four months."

Moms out there, do the Mister Softee haters have a point, or are they being helicopter moms to an insane degree?

Photograph of a girl eating ice cream by David DeLossy/Getty Images.

Image in mantle of ice cream and cone by Digital Vision/Getty Images.

Tags: helicopter moms, ice cream bans, mister softee, new york times, summer

Jessica, what I found so odd about the Mister Softee article was the language used to describe the allure of the ice cream man. Vicki Sell prays that her daughter doesn’t have a Pavlovian response to a fruit ice vendor’s bell. Rachael Reiley’s son practically jumps out the window, piggy bank in hand, at the sound of “The Entertainer.” From the descriptions, the ice cream man may as well be the Pied Piper, leading streams of hypnotized kids off a cliff, or selling them Choco Tacos laced with heroin.

But is keeping the truck out of sight really going to make these kids healthy eaters? After all, banishing the ice cream man from parks won’t keep him away for good. He can always set up shop where the adults don’t see him, like he did outside my school as soon as the weather turned warm. I generally bought my ice cream after school and ate it before I got home, possibly unbeknownst to my mother (who might have gotten mad that I didn’t bring a treat home for her). Occasionally, I’m sure, I ruined my appetite for dinner. But I didn’t become some sort of crazed ice-cream addict or sugar fiend. Sugar, though addictive, as it turns out, is not crack.

Photograph by Getty Images.

Tags: helicopter moms, ice cream bans, mister softee, new york times, sugar addiction, summer

At the risk of sounding like a helicopter parent (which believe me, I'm nowhere near; my parenting style hovers closer to the "Whoops, I clean forgot I had a child, where'd she go again?" end of the spectrum), can I just say that I have some sympathy for the anti-Mr. Softee camp? Granted, this is a trivial issue on which to waste much of one's ire, and some of the parents quoted in the Times article about banning the trucks sound like overly invested nuts. But the fact is, the omnipresence of those trucks is a curse for parents at playgrounds. Even if you don't give in to your child's begging, the arrival of Mr. Softee inevitably turns a fun playground excursion into a half-hour or more of whining and fighting about ice cream, which is followed either by the resentful buying of ice cream, or a tearful dragging home. Then there's that aggravating song (which ice cream trucks are now legally banned from playing while parked, not that all of them abide by this rule.)

But the truck is only one symptom of a larger problem our culture has with the constant availability of junk food. To have a small child in 2009 is to navigate a world in which you're constantly barraged by sugary and fatty treats, whether at school (I hear from friends who are public-school teachers that there are many teachers who offer doughnuts and cookies as rewards for good behavior, and scoff in the teachers' lounge at anyone who disapproves) or at birthday parties (where it's no longer enough just to serve cake and ice cream; there have to be giant bowls of candy on every surface, and "goody bags" to take home and fight about some more). Julia asks if just keeping the trucks out of sight will help kids to eat better, and the answer is a partial "yes"; many studies have shown that kids' food choices improve when the availability of junk food decreases even slightly. This isn't just yuppie handwringing, either; as the Times article points out, one neighborhood that's banned the trucks is Chicago's 18th Ward, which is largely black and working-class (and thus likely to be a neighborhood with fewer healthy eating options).

All that said, it's hot outside in August, and kids lining up at ice-cream trucks are hella cute. I like the approach of the Tacoma, Wash. vendor quoted in the piece, who stops at a park, sells ice cream until the line that first forms is gone, then drives away. Take a hint from your song's seldom-heard lyrics, Mr. Softee: If you've been staking out my playground for an hour, it's time to go ding-a-ling down the street.

Photograph by Getty Images.

Tags: helicopter parenting, ice cream, mister softee