The Parental Cocoon

I've muttered before about parents schlepping their crying kids around public transport, restaurants and shops where the adults don't want them yowling. There's places kids should not be. But there's also places that adults shouldn't expect to go because that's where children and parents belong. Call it the parental cocoon, the simplified, safer world which makes raising children easier, protected from the ambiguities, emotions, physicality, sexuality, uncertainties and threats of the adult world. The cars drive slower, the surfaces are softer, the toilets larger so nappies can be changed, the spaces between tables large enough to accommodate prams, there are no rowdy teenagers pushing and shoving, nor mysterious hoodie-wearing strangers carrying sports bags going in and out of flats during the day... whatever it is that makes parents' lives easier. If we could remove the boogie-men created by the Social Services' PR machine expressly for the purpose of putting fear into parents, well, I'd do that as well. Children need open spaces to play in, open roads to cycle along, responsible local shopkeepers who don't sell them things they shouldn't have... I don't know how you do that now, but some politician should think about it. What does a child-friendly space look like? What are the child-friendly hours? When does the world belong to parents and children, and when does it belong to adults with jobs and social lives? And no, everywhere cannot be part of the cocoon, nor should it.

Because the lives of adults and parents do not mix. The spaces adults like are not suitable for children.  Adult spaces are crowded, fast-moving, ambiguous, sexual, physical and assume that everyone is aware of where they are, where they are going and what is happening around them. Tourists are like children in this respect - they don't know where they are or what they are doing. If you do, you're a local even if you don't live there.

Adult spaces are subject to discipline, manners, courtesies and sacrifices. Children can't do these things and parents are too tired and made too clumsy by prams and tired ten year-olds to do them as well. That's the real reason why children and parents aren't welcome in adult spaces - they don't have the manners, they can't behave properly. One of the largest adjustments people have to make when they have children is to stop living like adults and start living like parents. It's a larger sacrifice than they realise - if they knew how much it was, many wouldn't do it. That's the decision the Spanish make.

Only the movie industry has had the insight to define its own parental cocoon: movie and TV ratings define the extent to which the space of the show is part of the cocoon in which parents need to raise their children. It's time other industries did. Children are not exempt from the manners of adults, and their inability to behave as adults is why they should not be in adult spaces. However, parents need their cocoon as well. And when they want to take part in the adult world, they can hire a baby-sitter.