Child Friendly

Okay, a few more words about kids in coffee shops:

I thought it was hysterical -- and profoundly sad -- that anyone could equate providing a pleasant coffee-shop experience with ending the insurgency in Iraq or relieving suffering in areas devastated by hurricanes.  Talk about losing your perspective.

Bad parenting by those with a strong sense of entitlement isn't news.  I'm going to repeat this, because it's my primary point: bad parenting by those with a strong sense of entitlement isn't news.  Some parents let their kids run wild in public.  Some business-owners respond to market demand by imposing limits -- soft or hard -- on children's behavior.  Some parents get up in arms about those limits.

This is Just. Not. News.

Not three months ago, a hurricane destroyed tens of thousands of homes, obliterated cities and devastated people's lives.  Then another hurricane came and did some more damage.  It's almost Thanksgiving now, and tens of thousands of people are still displaced, with no expectation of returning home.  Their subsidized housing allowance expires after six months, doesn't it?  How many of those people have found decent employment?  How many will soon be re-locating to the same sub-standard housing that Katrina and Rita destroyed?  How much of the money for rebuilding has already been diverted into the bottomless pockets of corruption that open wide after these events?  How many of us (I include myself) have given much thought to any of this?

When, for that matter, was the last time any of us (least of all me) spared a thought for the survivors of last year's tsunami?

There must be a thousand different stories about good old American parenting -- effective parenting, rotten parenting, dedicated parenting, indifferent parenting -- ready to be written in light of those hurricanes.  How do you care for your child while living in a strange city and looking for a job?  When you used to rely on informal neighborhood networks for childcare, when you used to live within walking distance of the church basement where you grabbed those extra meals at the end of the month, and now you don't, how does that affect the job of parenting you can do?  How do you comfort a child who still wakes up screaming with nightmares, and now lives in an utterly unfamiliar city, and has lost every comfort object she once knew?  If you're black, and used to live in a segregated neighborhood, and now you've been relocated to a white neighborhood halfway across the country, how do your kids react, and how do you handle their reactions?  What's happened to your kids' health, and how has your health care changed?  What's it going to be like, living through your first winter?  Are your kids excited to have a white Christmas?  Will you have the right clothes by March, when your child has outgrown the donated stuff that came your way in early September?

Sure, the New York Times writes the obligatory post-hurricane stories.  They write occasional human-interest stories about the hurricane's effects.  They've even published a fascinating expose of the myths of post-Katrina New Orleans.  (Those endless rapes in the Superdome?  The massive looting sprees?  Apparently both were sheer invention.)  I'm sure there will be a spate of year-after Asian tsunami stories, too.

Meanwhile, however, the editors at the New York Times decided that it was a good thing to devote precious column inches to a story about temper tantrums in coffee shops.  After all, there's only so much News we want to consume.  And temper tantrums sell advertising.  Temper tantrums are sexy.

Upper middle-class mommy wars are really sexy.

Here's what that New York Times article accomplished:

• Parents whose kids behave in public, or who don't take their kids out in public, got to feel a little better about themselves.
• Parents who've taken their kids out, only to realize too late that their child was hungry or tired and therefore ripe for a meltdown, got to feel defensive and angry.
• A whole bunch of folks who don't parent, and don't accurately remember their four-year old selves, got to feel supremely self-righteous.
• Truly indifferent parents didn't even notice the fuss.

This is manufactured vanity.  It's an exercise in demographic mind control.  What's truly infuriating is that I linked to the story.  I was duped by the hype.  Even my hip post-ironic dismissal raised that newspaper's profile.  They sold us non-news, and I bought it.

As for the substance:

Salon invited readers to respond to the story.  A surprisingly large number of letter-writers referenced parental sacrifice -- we've chosen to have children, therefore we have to endure a life without expensive espresso drinks or foccacia sandwiches.

I believe that children are not a consumption good.  Children are not an expensive car whose purchase you subsidize by sacrificing other luxuries.  Children are not a lifestyle choice.  All this talk about parental sacrifice is therefore a dupe.  Parenting does involve sacrifice, it involves the ripping open of your essential self, but that's not what people mean when they talk about sucking it up.  No, in this context, sacrifice is a rhetorical flourish designed to send us skulking home, giving up not just our fa-la-lattes but all the basic services that protect families.

The contemporary language of American parental sacrifice is more than just a dupe.  It just so happens that this concept of parenting -- that parenthood demands special sacrifices by entirely private individuals, and that society shouldn't be in the business of making parenting any easier because, after all, it was your self-centered choice to have children -- precisely contributes to the mindset that allows kids to run wild in public.  If my children are my private concern, then their public behavior is really none of your business.  Screw you if you don't like it.  Or so the argument might proceed, if anyone stopped to articulate it.

I don't take my children to coffee shops.  I'm not over-anxious to shepherd three exuberant preschoolers past a series of flimsy tables upon which hot beverages balance precariously.  When frequenting restaurants, Calder and I stick either to loud family-friendly chains or the pre-dinner, empty-dining room hour.  When dining "fancy," we go to small family-run places where the owners are immigrants who smile on kids (especially because we're filling tables that won't be otherwise occupied before 6pm).

Then again, we don't live in hip urban centers.  We aren't dependent on the establishments described in the article in question.  We have enough money to do as we please.

The signs on the doors of those coffee shops aren't the problem.  The rowdy, abandoned children inside the coffee shops aren't the problem.  I'm not even entirely convinced that the rotten, indifferent parents inside the coffee shops are the problem.  All of them are just symptoms.

The real problem, as I see it, is a society that sees child-rearing as an individual pursuit.  I'll raise my children, and you raise yours, and those folks over there will have nothing to do with children whatsoever.  The kind old woman on the bus who tries to calm my rambunctious four-year old is just an interfering old biddy, and the young man who tries to divert my impatient six-year old with a story while we wait for our tables at the restaurant is just a pervert in the making.  Families are on their own in this dog-eat-dog world, and you can only rely on yourselves.

Go further: all people are only responsible for and to themselves.

Now that's a problem.

Comments

[sarah]

What a great post. This coffee shop thing has been bugging me, but I have been unable to express how children are part of the community without justifying bad bahvior. Or going on an inane rant about how I'd never let me kids do that. That's not the point. It often feels unfriendly to raise children. Thank you for expanding on implications of this attitude.

[Maria]

Great points. As a single mom I especially appreciate the reminder that it ought to be a communal exercise, at least to some degree, and that it's not necessarily a Bad Thing About Me if I am unable to perform every single parenting function every single day. It's more than a one – or even two – person job.

[Jennifer]

What a great post. I've been reflecting on this public: private thing for a while with children.

I read recently (but I'm sorry I can't remember where) that in Germany children have much more freedom to go places, but the flipside of that is that adults anywhere feel quite within their rights to discipline children who are not their own.

That's the hard part; you do have to give up some individual liberty (for yourself or your children) to have society feel invested in your children as anything but annoyances (or at least that's my take of your contrast between the kind old woman and the interfering old biddy).

[swissmiss]

If Germany is like Switzerland, then Jennifer is right. One of the things I like about living here is that I can take the Small Boy with me (almost) anywhere. I certainly do go to coffee shops and the occasional lunch out with my girl friends. I wheel him around the downtown, go shopping, and clunk the stroller into trams and buses. Ninety percent of the time, if I'm alone, a person will even help me - unasked - navigate the stroller up into the tram (not all buses and trams here are wheelchair accessible - usually just two or three per hour per route - and the old ones are pretty awkward to get in and out of). I seem more concerned/self-conscious about his noise level than most of the people around me - which only goes to show that you can take the girl out of America, but you can't take America out of the girl, I guess. So far strangers haven't commented negatively on his behavior, but so far we've been either lucky in the meltdown department or, when the meltdown comes, we depart soon thereafter.

My son was born in Switzerland, so I have yet to be a parent in the States, but from what I can tell the biggest difference seems to be that everybody just accepts it as pretty normal that kids are here there and everywhere. I suppose if he were melting down in a fancy expensive place we might get the Evil Eye - just a guess, since we haven't tried that yet - but in your day to day restaurant or coffee shop people seem to take the presence of children as a matter of course. Demographic groups are all mixed up here - a family might live next to a university student and down the block from an elder home (that's a description of us, actually) so the corner coffee shop is going to see a mix of clients. And everybody seems to accept - or flat out ignore - the presence of everybody else.

It's nice. I never feel like I'm someplace I "shouldn't be" or that I'm isolated in the mommy-ghetto.

I can't even imagine a sign like that in a coffee shop here. How rude.

[Jen (yup, another one)]

Wow. Nice job. I think my brain is melting and I haven't even got kids yet. I used to be able to really think about things and analyze them below the surface. Now it seems I just sort of take them at face value a lot of the time. Thanks for a deep, thoughful (& even self-critical) analysis of this "story" and its larger place in our world.

[Phantom Scribbler]

Thank you, Jody. That was brilliant.

Why do any of us even read the New York Times anymore?

[liz]

Sing it, Jody!

[Ally]

I am always astounded when I hear that people have a choice to have children and therefore just have to suck it up and live with their lot in life.

Uh, propagation of the species, anyone?

I've written about this on my blog a few times. It is an ongoing concern of mine. I don't understand why this country is so anti-family in its policies and in its attitudes. Well, I guess I understand, but I don't have to like it.

[Sandy]

Wow. It's like how Judith Stadtman Tucker and Miriam Peskowitz helped me see that my (reluctant) decision to SAH full-time was pretty much caused by a lack of options (some opt-out); a social condition perhaps unique to our culture.

It doesn't just take a village, it takes a village that gives a damn.

But your best line: Temper tantrums are sexy. ROFL.

[Genevieve]

Really terrific post.

[JustAGirl]

Interesting point you've made here, about raising children as part of a community and about how lonely it might be to be a mother in today's society. I also agree that there are probably thousands of untold stories about the joys and struggles of parents. There are many good arguments in your posting.

I do, however, disagree with you about the nature of this NY Times story. I don't think anyone would be so foolish as to think this is news. I hardly believe that anyone (including the author) would equate this piece with the Iraq War or Hurricane Katrina survivor stories. Those are critical issues and they need the focus and attention of journalists and the readers. There is a place, however, for non-news items in newspapers, online news journal, and blogs. How depressing would it be if we focused on nothing but dire emergencies. Try that sometime and see how long before you want to toss yourself out a window. (Been there, done that, it's not healthy.)

I, personally, have a need for balance and I think that's pretty common and also very healthy. Give me the urgent news stories, yes, but also give me the NY Times Book Review and the funnies. I also need to decompress with hollywood nonsense. These all have a place in my day but I know the proper priority and I don't lose that perspective if cave in to my craving for a moment of levity or non-urgent, non-news items.

Anyway, we are all entitled to our opinions and I do respect yours.

[Lilian]

This post is EXCELLENT! I linked to it in my latest post.

I just wanted to let you know that I recently added you to my blogroll, OK?

[Denise]

Good post. I missed the NYT article about coffee shops in Chicago, but I saw a similar one about resentment engendered by big strollers. Seems like some editor thinks the tension between people with children and people without is ripe for mining. I take two-year-old out to restaurants and coffee shops all the time, though -- sometimes even in New York and Chicago! -- and I get much more of a "village that gives a damn" feeling than "child-free people shooting daggers with their eyes" feeling.

Of course, my child is always perfectly behaved. And when he's not it's definitely not my fault.

[chris]

I love it. Well said.

[Emmie]

Brilliant post. You got me thinking and I referenced it in my last post - thanks for the inspiration. I always enjoy reading your blog.

[lacalda]

I just got back from a week at Disney...which, well... back on track here:

While waiting for a bus, a 7 year old girl struck up a conversation with me and my 3 year old. Her brother, who was about 10, joined in, and then my husband joined in. The little girl wanted to see something in our video camera, and my husband showed her. Her parents looked up from the park map they were reviewing, and joined the conversation, including my child. We all chatted and visited the whole bus ride to the park and then all went our separate ways when we got there.

As we parted, the mother said to me:
"It was nice to meet you."
I complimented her on her children's manners and conversational skills.
She says:
"Its so sad that Disney is the only place you can let them talk to strangers, isn't it?"

Yes, it is, because those kids really enjoyed meeting each other, and I really enjoyed telling the little girl about Colonial Williamsburg (close to our home, I go there often-- she is entranced with American Girls right now and had lots of questions.) Its good for little boys aged 10 to get a chance to be polite to a 3 year old little girl.
Too bad it "can only happen at Disney." (where I guess the implied upper-middle class status of everyone persent makes strangers safe.)

[bitchphd]

Brava.