In between the time when you are a kid and when you have a kid the culture behind being a kid changes. The content kids watch, their stars, their heroes all change. Some parts of kid culture stand the test of time: Mickey Mouse always gets reinvented for new generations for example. But otherwise each generation of kids has their own cultural touchstones that bind them. As a kidless young adult you heard about some of these franchises just because they get so big, like I knew what Paw Patrol was or even if I was medium on Frozen I knew it was a big deal. Also much of kid culture gets recycled (like Mickey Mouse) and so sometimes you know for example My Little Pony but you don't know the plot details of the recent reboot show.
But some of kid culture only really gets on your mental map if you have kids, as they are almost viral in nature. This sort of kid culture has a set expiration date though, or usually does. Sometimes certain things get reinvented for a new generation: like how Marvel heroes keep being re-invented or how Transformers keeps being updated to appeal to new generations of boys. But certain things are artifacts of a certain generation that is a way for kids and parents of that generation to bond.
For a better part of the prior decade I had a fantasy that I would hoard much of the content that defined my childhood. My idea was to create a bubble for my kids to live in to make sure they could access content that was important to me to bond over. But once I actually had a kid everything hand changed. Streaming services became fleshed out enough that content was at our fingertips and my concept of me putting in extra work to maintain a local bubble wasn't practical given my workload. Another thing that changed is my son is a small me, and with a few exceptions the low def 4:3 content of my childhood isn't acceptable to his eyes (Rugrats ended up being a kinda lone exception).
Streaming services have done most of the heavy lifting, and it has allowed him to connect to the kids shows that defined childhoods in the time since I was a kid. Some I had never heard of- mostly Youtube programs like Little Baby Bum that made it big. But in some cases it was finally connecting with shows I have heard about on the periphery like Paw Patrol.
In my own way I have tried to lean in, and I have put in front of Finn in front of programs I have heard about and was curious about. One of those was the famous "Dora the Explorer" and for a few weeks our home was filled with the sounds of that famous show. River was still in her tear up everything puppy phase, and "no river no riving" was one of our favorite sayings for a bit.
Later on at work I asked Franco if his kids watched Dora, and he scoffed "THAT show? Way too old my kids are interested in it." In that moment I realized a truth, a whole generation of childhood went by between mine and Finn's and some of that culture got lost in the middle. Luckily Finn doesn't know what is cool or not and so I will milk him watching "old" shows for a bit until all the streaming services pull them for being out of date.
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