Last month our friend Jay Rayner wrote a review of a pub with very nice food but also, a “pro-dog” policy. You may have read it, plenty did, many fans logging on to add their thoughts to a piece that described the singular frustration of a stranger’s dog (I’ll quote) “indulging in rigorous arse-end frottage” against Jay while he was “trying to get into the asparagus”. Here on the desk, working on the magazine, we expected a certain amount of feedback – dog lovers are passionate and often very online, alert and sensitive to any perceived criticism of their family (dogs), faith (dogs) or right to love (dogs). But we were unprepared for the speed at which the argument below the line became about something else entirely.
Those arguing the case for dogs in restaurants said they would far prefer to dine next to a dog than dine next to a badly behaved child. The comments continued, detailing examples of children moaning, and parents changing their babies’ nappies right there at the table. Others responded with stories of dogs licking their arses and then a plate. Battle lines were drawn in ketchup and a small war played out beneath Jay’s descriptions of mutton and a chocolate torte, one that has recently become familiar to anyone with skin in the game and half an eye on the internet. It was between the child-havers and the child-free, and it never fails to shock me.
It never fails to shock me, which means, well, this year I am regularly shocked. This summer, adult-only travel is a “booming trend”, with more and more resorts, hotels and holidays banning children. “Let’s stop kidding around,” read one advert, speaking directly to people like the Australian woman whose TikTok went viral in February when she called for an adult-only suburb to be created. In April, a man screaming at flight attendants about a baby crying on his plane became international news. Again, the comments were where the war was fought: one reader suggested the man needed to be “swaddled”, another said he should have got a medal for his bravery at speaking out. People are urged to be sensitive about pregnancy announcements, in part because there’s a good chance someone will label them as selfish for bringing another child into a burning world. The fight gets extreme! The fight gets dirty.
I write, of course, as a person with children, and a person who, nine years in, still struggles with what that decision has done to my identity. Not just the “can I still dye my hair pink” stuff, or whether I’ll ever catch up on the culture, but the dark-meat questions, too, about where you leave yourself when you have a child, and whether you’ll ever find her again. My shock at the arguments playing out about children in public spaces is with how simplistic the terms are. You either have children and therefore rejoice at seeing all of them all around you all the time, or you don’t have them and so resent their sticky presence when you are simply trying to enjoy a meal, flight, hotel or suburb in adult-coloured peace.
It reflects a larger issue I have with discussions around parenthood: the lack of nuance, the idea that there is a moral obligation to speak positively about the experience and withhold memories of pain from other women, or (unless perhaps political, or tragic) any stories of struggle beyond the wine-o’clock-ish weariness of fishfingers again for tea. The idea that a parent must preface any complaints (or any suggestion that they might, in fact, relish an adult-only space) with grateful acknowledgments of their incredible luck and love.
Is there any other life experience beyond having babies that requires such babyish thinking? We are allowed to communicate multiple thoughts about the people we marry or the jobs we take, or the politicians we vote for or our thoughts on elderly care. Yet it seems to me that no such nuance is allowed when talking about parenting; there can be no separation of the children and the act, no recognition of the way love, resentment, joy, regret and boredom can exist simultaneously at the same kitchen table. There is a flattening of feeling, a superstitious cautiousness in conversation, and it’s this unsophistication that welcomes in a kind of culture war, creating battle lines, the clumsy lie of us and them.
It can be annoying, being seated next to a kid in a restaurant. It can also be annoying being seated next to a dog. And that’s because: it can be annoying being here, in the world, alongside humans and animals who are not us, who do not engage precisely in the ways we prefer, who whinge and talk loudly about their rash or how, actually, Hitler had a point. It is not always a problem with them, it is often a problem with us. It’s hard, to rub up against other people and be confronted by their manners, grease and crimes, but what’s the alternative? To ban unruly creatures from public life? To segregate our unsteady communities even further? Or to remove ourselves from the chaos and stay home alone, sipping on weak broth, basking in the boredom of our own perfection?
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
