“Everybody’s children are so special. It makes you wonder where all the ordinary grown-ups come from.”
–Maria, from the movie Code 46
I recently heard a story about an acquaintance that tried to make dinner reservations for some adults and a baby at a restaurant in Toronto. She was told that they didn’t allow babies in their establishment, and this infuriated her to the point where– believing it was a human rights violation– sought to take legal measures against the place. It’s worth noting that this was the same woman that didn’t allow children to attend her wedding just one year earlier, thus illustrating that an individual’s politicization is often born from feelings of personal exclusion rather than empathy for others.
Reasonable people can disagree on whether children have a place in adult spaces such as restaurants, movie theaters and concert halls. I’m certainly sympathetic to the isolation a new mother, perhaps feeling excluded from the pulse of civil society because she’s taken on the responsibility to attentively raising a child must feel, but on the other hand, I absolutely hate having my evening hijacked by the enforced spectacle of somebody’s child rearing.
We’ve all been there, and it’s difficult to know what to do. Becoming increasingly preoccupied by the offending parties, I tend to quietly seethe, which is probably what most people do. It’s awkward as hell, and there’s a political subtext to the battleground that’s entirely frustrating.
At any rate, this entire debate is pretty much the exclusive precinct of the upper middle class. Typically, the people impassioned by these sorts of annoyances are those that have become acclimated to privilege and entitlement. Many of my peers waited until careers were firmly established and finances in place before having children, and have become habituated to having some authority and power over their environment. These are people with disposable income, living lives plotted by the freedoms money grants access to, and when they find that their leisure time and social liberties are now impeded by the presence of a baby, well, they find religion, so to speak.
Of course, getting babies into to an upper end restaurant in Yorkville is likely not going to be very helpful to the vast majority of weary parents just scuffling along. No matter, for most of these well-heeled new parents, there is nothing that takes precedence over the development of their child. Bach for babies, organic meat, exclusive schools, summer camp for the gifted and an appropriately limited exposure to third world poverty, are all typical of the upper middle class narrative.
The child becomes a vessel of concentrated light, one that contains the brightest qualities of both parents, and this potential is guided lovingly into the world with such radiant pride that it can’t help but burn bystanders standing outside of the immediate family unit. For these proud parents, imposing on the comfort of 50 other people in a restaurant on a Friday night so that they might spend time with their child seems perfectly natural.
I guess what I find frustrating about such scenarios is that these parents typically ask the rest of the world to become participants in the narrative of their lives, rather than using their imagination to become a part of the narrative of the rest of the world.