Who owns a printer these days? Not me, which is why I found myself marching up to my local library one day last spring to print off a solitary returns label, with my eight-month-old in tow.
We swept past the colourful children’s section that we were well used to, where morning Rhyme Times broke up those early days of parenting, when I was still finding my feet.
The quiet of the computer section felt heavy, as old men hunched over town archives and students stared at the blank pages of their dissertations. A library worker slowed down next to us. I watched his eyes sweep over the pram containing my sleeping baby, a look of thinly-disguised contempt on his face.
“You’ll have to keep her quiet,” he said.
I felt myself flush with annoyance and assured him that she would be. As I rushed to finish up and leave, I asked myself why I was feeling so stressed. We had as much right to be there as anyone else. Had she been screaming, I’d have left the bloody label for another day.
I’ve felt that contempt a few times since then. Eyes flicking over the pram as we park up at a café next to another occupied table. A nudge and an eye-roll as we slide into our seats on a flight.
When they think you’re not looking, people really tell on themselves. They fail to accept that children are real, live people who are part of our society. Real people who have as much right to be in a public place as they do.
Sometimes though, like Library Man, people tell you right to your face. I saw a recent tweet in which the poster asked themselves why they spend money to suffer “annoying” kids at pubs running around, uncontrolled by parents.
The tweet picked up speed and while I was taken aback at the number of people who seem to believe that children should be seen and not heard, I was more surprised by a common theme: that if one is spending money, it should buy them the right to not have their experience “ruined” by a child’s temerity to exist.
It is, of course, a person’s prerogative to not want to have or spend time with children. There’s a multitude of ways to avoid this happening. Adults-only holiday resorts. Visits to London Zoo advertised with the tagline “avoid the kids and crowds”. Nightclubs. Perhaps children are not so easy to avoid, though, if you’ve decided to visit a pub that welcomes families, in the middle of the day, during the Easter holidays.
While the tweet conjures mental images of kids reenacting Lord of the Flies in the middle of Zizzi or a Greene King, in my experience, it’s more the complete disdain for kids behaving in age-appropriate ways. Behaving like, well, children. It’s easy to objectively suggest that parents are lazy, entitled, selfish beings who simply can’t be bothered to look after their children in public spaces. But is it just that people who aren’t around kids are simply unaware of the reasonable expectations that can be expected of young children?
I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but no parent believes that children should have the right to run riot, potentially creating a dangerous situation for themselves and others. Regardless, expecting a child to sit quietly for hours in an environment where adults and children are both present is often unreasonable.
Like you, all we want is a nice day out. We don’t take our kids out in public to spoil it for you. None of us wants to have to converse over screaming children, nor have a fresh beer or hot coffee knocked over as an excited child whips past.
But the reality is that most of the time, parents do seek out family-friendly places. Most people with kids out in public are actively trying to manage their children while doing their best to actually take a breather, too. I promise you, we are really f**king trying. We are trying to enjoy our limited family time around our jobs, a treat, a rare day out or just a bog-standard visit to the local coffee shop without fear of embarrassment or reproach from others for simply being there.
Look, I’m not trying to convince anyone that they should want to spend more time with children. But there are 3.2 million 0-4-year-olds in the UK. Chances are, you’re going to come across a few. Kids and their parents can’t be confined to soft play and parks, so unless you’re paying for a specific adults-only experience, sorry, but we’re all just going to have to get along.
Ella Delancey Jones is a freelance journalist
