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BR Parents Blog: Parenting Advice from the Sopranos?

I was a high school senior when The Sopranos debuted 20 years ago. I lived in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma, and didn’t have basic cable, let alone access to HBO to see the cultural juggernaut as it was airing for the first time.

While I was aware of the show, I didn’t watch it even while I was in college and presumably could have found access. But thanks to the peer pressure of Twitter (more like FOMO), I decided to binge all six seasons available on Amazon Prime like some of my online favorites.

Now I’m a basic, approaching-middle-age mom of two girls, which gives the series a different flavor than if I’d watched it when it first aired. The first season did feel like a time capsule to my high school days though, a time before cell phones or computers, with pagers and pay phones, CDs and low-rise jeans. But because of the time that has passed, rather than identifying with Meadow, who was about my age during the series run, I absolutely identified with the parents, although not so much the crime or lavish life, of course!

While I wasn’t surprised that I enjoyed watching the show (I typically like things other people like), I was surprised that there was some parenting advice to be gleaned. Not all of it was, “don’t do anything like Tony and Carmela Soprano,” although that's certainly a good life rule.

Read the rest on the Baton Rouge Parents Magazine website.