This morning I did something that I rarely do, for fear of inducing a full-body cringe the likes of which I have not experienced since, aged 10, I jumped on my dad’s back in the local swimming pool only to discover that it wasn’t him: I read one of my old columns. Written nearly a decade ago under the headline “I’ll drink to child-free pubs and cafes”, my twentysomething self grumbles about the presence of kids in adult spaces.
Fast forward and I have a one-year-old who regards my local pub as an extension of his living room. I have sung him to sleep in the beer garden and breastfed him, rosé in hand, while sharing birth stories. Sometimes, I have looked up and seen an exclusion zone of empty tables around where we are sitting. Time makes hypocrites of us all.
There has been a lot of discussion about child-free spaces recently, with two reported plane incidents going viral. The first involved a pregnant woman being asked by cabin crew to clear up her children’s popcorn crumbs, and the second, a grown man’s tantrum about the presence of a crying baby on his flight, during which, after his fellow passengers told him he was shouting, he replied with the immortal: “So is the baby! Did that motherfucker pay extra to yell?”
Both provoked fierce debate online that can be boiled down to, on the one hand, “Crying babies are annoying and should not be in public. Being unable to soothe them is poor parenting”, v “Children and babies are a part of society and they also cry. No one wants them to stop crying more than their own parents.” Although these factions could broadly be categorised along the lines of “childfree/childless” people and “childed” people (a word I dislike, but one that is becoming increasingly popular), many of us could see both sides.
I couldn’t not laugh at the man’s furious logic, because I have felt that, before and after becoming a parent. But motherhood has elevated my (already high) threat responses to the point where a large, angry man shouting at me and my baby in a confined space would almost certainly make me burst into tears, not to mention frighten the poor child. To intimidate babies and their mothers like that is unpleasant, to say the least.
Online, parents and childfree people often seem to be at war. Offline, however, in my personal relationships things feel a lot more cordial, perhaps because we love the people in our lives regardless of their reproductive status, or perhaps because all the beef is simply simmering, unarticulated, under the surface.
Since I became a parent, I’ve been having discussions with friends and readers about what it means to live a childfree life. They have made me think more deeply and empathically about how it feels to be part of a society where parenthood is the default journey when one does not have children. My colleague Helen Pidd’s recent article about the child-free movement and its radical, pioneering spirit, as well as our series “Why I don’t have a child”, added further to my understanding. The decision to be child-free is not always painless and can feel lonely. I can understand not always wanting to be reminded of that tough choice, or having the desire to feel like you’re enjoying life unencumbered. Parents benefit from child-free spaces, too. I love to read a book alone in a pub or cafe, and my heart will sometimes sink at the sight of a crying baby when I have left my own at home for some vital alone time.
I don’t take offence when people articulate a need for child-free spaces. When a child-free 37-year-old woman tells me that she doesn’t really want to be around children all the time, I get it. “But if you say that you have committed two massive, unforgivable crimes: not wanting kids (what is wrong with you?) and then not wanting to at least be involved with kids (you are a freak and must be a psychopath!),” she says.
I tell her that I always try to ask my child-free friends whether I should bring the baby along or not. “Hanging out with kids introduces all the elements I struggle with: chaos, noise, endless tasks ... Sometimes that’s OK and it’s fun, but I appreciate it when friends don’t assume I’ll want to do that,” she says, noting that you can never have a proper conversation with another adult when their child is around. It brings to mind the phone call with married-with-toddlers Magda in Bridget Jones’s Diary: “Bridget, hi! I was just ringing to say in the potty! In the potty! Do it in the potty!”
Though the UK could be more child-friendly, I do still believe in the sanctity of adult-only spaces that I argued for in my past column, and, to quote restaurant critic Marina O’Loughlin: “Children shouldn’t rule the roost anywhere, frankly, but restaurants least of all. I’ve endured too many longed-for, carefully planned moments totally bollocksed by them.”
I suppose it boils down to a need for kindness and empathy on both sides. We all started life as babies screaming from colic or explosive diarrhoea. Babies cry as a way of communicating, and being a part of humanity means that we can’t always choose which other humans communicate with or around us. But when there’s an exit that isn’t 30,000 feet up in the sky, parents can also choose to take their baby through it.
What’s working
I’ve long been a fan of Tessa Hadley’s writing, so it was great to reread Sunstroke, her short story collection, from a new perspective, that of “the warm vegetable soup of motherhood”. No one writes families better than Hadley.
What’s not
Thanks to everyone who got in touch to recommend leak-proof night nappies: trials are ongoing but sizing up has helped. We are now on to molars, however, the worst of all the teething pains, or so I’m told. The poor baby is taking bites out of everything, myself included.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist
