When news broke this week that Conde Nast was killing four magazines, everyone howled about the death of Gourmet. Except, perhaps, for those of us whose culinary staples are peanut butter sandwiches sans crust and mac and cheese with pasta shaped like bunnies. No, I’ve been more worked up about the imminent demise of Cookie, the four-year-old magazine for parents that promised, on every cover, to offer “all the best for your family.’’
I’d been a subscriber to Cookie since it launched in 2005, lured by curiosity and a low introductory rate, kept in the fold with cheap subscription prices, an automatic renewal policy, and a morbid fascination with what was inside. Cookie takes only about 15 minutes to flip through in its entirety, but it manages to leave an impression.
The contents, per se, are a lurid little mix of useful and out-of-reach. There is usually one feature about sex and another about skin care. There are lists of books to read and comparative surveys of sippy cups and bandages. There is a glowing cover story about how much Actress X enjoys motherhood, along with several pages of attendant glamour shots. This month’s issue has photos of “90210’’ star Jennie Garth fishing with her three daughters, one of whom is decked out in a $275 blazer, another in a $523 cardigan.
The magazine is largely a parade of price tags, often clustered around fashion spreads involving kids whose hair looks professionally tousled. This month, a boy strikes a pose in a red velvet jacket ($194) and matching pants ($212) from an outfit called Little Marc Jacobs. (His $2.50 socks came from the Children’s Place.) The same issue includes traveling tips - did you know that you and your kids could vacation on a lake in Stockholm? In an igloo in the Swiss Alps? - and an ad for a security system promising that “when you let your housekeeper in from across town with your cellphone, you’re home. Away from home.’’ Don’t I know it!
Cookie has always been good for a shot of class warfare and a chortle about the names certain people give their kids (Brooks, Winston). But for all that Cookie functions as a sick little glimpse of child-rearing on the Upper East Side, the magazine seems equally aimed at the less refined. It’s “aspirational,’’ meaning that even suburban moms who clean their own toilets like to flip through Vogue every once in a while. And Cookie has more than its share of ads from H&M and
Is 400-thread-count good? I have no idea. What I know is that there’s something twisted and weirdly refreshing about the parenting-as-consumption philosophy that Cookie peddles. A lot of parenting magazines function as pious how-to guides, purveying facts about discipline and nutrition, documenting 10 ideal snacks to serve your kids and eight ways to plan a perfect playdate. Cookie defines perfection in a different way. Quite loudly and consistently, it peddles the notion that it’s impossible, and maybe undesirable, to be organized and selfless and eternally calm.
Cookie’s essays sometimes offer excuses for imperfection: It’s OK to favor one kid over another! It’s OK to smoke pot at a kids’ playdate! (Really. The piece made the case that it’s better to be stoned than hung over in the presence of kids. Take that, Family Circle!) Good parenting, the magazine suggests, requires a certain amount of self-indulgence. And good parenthood is achievable through consumption - of dream vacations, meticulously designed babies’ rooms, adorable mom-and-daughter outfits.
You don’t have to buy any of it, literally or figuratively. In fact, it’s better if you don’t: Cookie allows you to feel good about yourself merely for knowing there’s something wrong with the concept of Little Marc Jacobs.
Alas, Cookie never quite capitalized on its position at the nexis of real life and celebrified overindulgence. Last year, the magazine got caught in the debate over autism and vaccines - in the middle of a glowing cover profile of actress Amanda Peet, who declared, “Frankly, I feel that parents who don’t vaccinate their children are parasites.’’ Peet later apologized for her choice of words. Cookie followed up with an equally glowing profile of autism spokeswoman Jenny McCarthy, who spouted her own non-expert vaccination advice.
A sharper, bolder, more devilish magazine might have risen to the occasion - questioned the wisdom of celebrity spokespeople, mocked the way the rich and well-connected can distort the most serious of issues. But Cookie didn’t delve too deep. It isn’t - wasn’t - that kind of magazine.
Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com. 
