Buy This Book!

You would not learn to drive by reading a manual written by someone who has never driven and yet, remarkably, you can buy parenting books written by the childfree/childless. I have written before about my general disregard and distrust of parenting by the book/s but that was because the right book had not yet been written. Calling your book 'The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read' certainly suggests no lack of confidence on the author's part but the truth is we all long for advice from those quietly confident in its soundness.

That is not to suggest for one second that Philippa Perry, its author, claims absolute knowledge about the best way to parent. She does however take real pains to set out why some of the conclusions she draws are well founded by her researches and, most particularly, by her own experiences of parenting. She is quick to illustrate reflections upon her own childhood experiences in consciously shaping her own intentions for parenthood.

A remarkable number of people seem not to question their own childhood experiences or weigh up what was successful or less successful about their parents' parenting. True it is that there are a lucky few whose early years were characterised by clear boundaries within which needs both basic and complex were attended to and there was the fullest possible realisation of physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual development but was that genuinely your experience? Even if it was it's impossible that came about by pure chance.

A lot of parenting books insist upon a clear right way/wrong way duality with wholly implausible case histories where the author's edicts are followed to a T and overnight a howling banshee becomes a model of docility. There is often a distinct absence of kindness and gentleness in the imparting of advice and that is where Perry excels. In her words it's never too late to repair the ruptures. And ruptures there will always be despite and sometimes because of our best intentions.

Another thing that Perry gives a lot of thought to is the vocabulary of parenting. She decries the description of children as naughty or bad but instead, rightly, suggests a focus on the causes of the behaviour being exhibited. Characterising, as she does, 'bad' behaviour as inconvenient may seem euphemistic or mealy-mouthed but the reality is that the worst toddler meltdowns are the worst because they happen in the most inconvenient ways at the most inconvenient times.

The hardest truth of parenting to absorb and process is its inconvenience but resistance to this truth does perhaps more harm to children than anything else. At the start of parenting it comes as a shock that you have to sublimate your desires (convenience) to meet your child's needs every single time. A baby's cries are a very effective way of ensuring that the immediacy of that requirement should not be overlooked. Although a baby can be 'trained' to an emotional awareness that decibels don't work. That uncomfortably is what 'sleep training' depends upon. Deliberately rendering impotent your child's only means of communication might be convenient but it's also very uncomfortable.

Children have needs. They are never needy. If children's needs are neglected that neglect often manifests in adulthood as neediness. When a parent prioritises their convenience over their child's needs they simply defer a debt that will have to be paid at a most inconvenient time in a most inconvenient way. The good news is that it is never too late to settle the account.

Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!

I am bad at maths. Numbers are no problem but letters send me loopy. Even well into adolescence I would be reduced to tears at my incompetence at something that came effortlessly to my peers. Everybody can identify with that consuming anguish that engulfs the body when you just don't get it, even when the teacher patiently explains for the thousandth time. So it is with baby pacification, gummy smiles give way to howling hysteria the instant the baby passes from my wife's arms to mine (and the baby doesn't enjoy it either).

Walk him around. Sing him a song. Don't hold him like that. Don't bounce him on your knee. Even an idiot could follow those simple instructions. Plainly I have yet to graduate idiot school. There is a vicious circle. When the mother does all the mothering what right minded baby wants an ersatz paternal substitute. But if the dad doesn't do the primary care giving he will never be baby's first choice. And if the baby is benefiting from breast is best that top spot on the podium is as inaccessible as Mount Olympus.

Another Saturday another long read in the Guardian about patriarchy's enduring stranglehold and why there is nothing natural about male supremacy in the world. A concomitant conclusion is that there is nothing pre-ordained about maternal primacy in the home. And yet. 3 years into being a dad and still basically as clueless  as when I started; I have a strange hankering to meet and learn from single dads. And I don't mean ones that have outsourced to a nanny or their mother but the ones that are genuinely doing it on their own.

I don't know any fathers who are parenting without the benefit of female assistance/input/instruction and I assume they are few and far between. They are certainly not a common cultural trope. Likewise, how often do you read mothers writing about how their partners take the lead and the load when it comes to child rearing and domestic labour? Almost never.

There was a cartoon that did the rounds a couple of years back about unequal bearing of emotional labour by women and the effort involved in giving instruction to useless men. I could scarcely get to the end so excoriatingly close to the bone did it cut. I didn't want to be that guy, I don't want to be that guy and yet, so often, I am that guy.

It's a cliche but parenting is about teamwork and communication. But an important codicil to this excellent advice is that all teams have a captain. Someone has to be in charge. And captaincy carries its burdens but also its privileges. When two parents equally decline to take responsibility there is not a happy outcome for the children. However the same is also true when both parents vie for the task of laying down the ground rules. Perhaps the secret is familial government by tribunes but I've rarely seen that in action.

My wife recently laid the charge of hypocrisy against me to which my plea is unequivocally guilty. If you want to see a dad stepping up to the plate and putting in his shift don't read a blog by a man about parenting; any proper dad has no time for navel gazing like that. And just as fine words butter no parsnips they wipe no bottoms, noses or work surfaces either.

I know that I am hardly alone in wanting to be a better parent and a better father but sometimes I feel as Nancy Astor must have when she first took her seat in a place built by men for men. I have been to enough mother and baby activities to know that other than the occasional token bloke they are for mothers and babies. On a recent extraordinary outing to Water Babies with my toddler it was only dads that turned up. The swimming teacher could not overcome her cognitive dissonance and kept on addressing us as 'Mums'.

I am crying out for writing by dads for dads. Until then I prostrate myself before my wife as yet again the co-pilot has put the parenting plane into a nosedive.

Father's Faith

Recently I rushed to Rome for 24 hours in order to attend the canonisation of John Henry Newman at the Vatican. Unless you are a Catholic or a particularly keen Anglican you may have not heard of him but he was a Church of England priest who converted to Catholicism in 1845 and later became a Cardinal. He is also the reason why my family is Catholic because one of my ancestors was his contemporary and was persuaded by his writings, teachings and personality to follow him to Rome.

How much screen time, breast or bottle, nursery or child minder - these are questions all modern parents grapple with. Should we give our child religion? Not so much. In observant families religious education/indoctrination obviously remains a foregone conclusion. In wholly secularised families the question probably does not even arise.

That leaves the 'maybes' and I am intrigued and identify with the 'maybes'. I am confirmed Catholic but find the notion of godhead worrying itself about human beings' sex lives absolutely absurd. Furthermore I do not subscribe to a bad apple analysis of clerical sexual abuse but instead see it as a poisoning of the  entire holy well. Even one priest making a mockery of Jesus' command to suffer the little children deals a mortal blow to the moral authority of the church. When it transpires that rather than rooting out this cancer the church has, it would appear, connived to hide these criminals under its cassock it is little wonder that many parents hesitate before entrusting their children to the clergy.

All of that before one even begins to address the powerful ambivalence triggered by embracing patriarchy's granddaddy. And yet I was married in church, my first child baptised and my second soon to be. The Catholic Church welcomes babies with open arms but try joining as an adult and you'll find the Royal Marines selection process is less testing.

Suffice to say if my childhood experiences of churchgoing had been marred by even the slightest wrongdoing I certainly would not be writing this. Instead I was an enthusiastic acolyte at Farm Street which, as you can see, is full of light and colour.

Its priests are Jesuits and its choir is exceptional. I derive comfort from the liturgy, from ritual and sacred music can be absolutely transcending. Obviously it is easy to balk at the so muchness of Catholicism, the literal gilding of the lily. Perhaps the Quakers have it right in their stillness and simplicity. But the richness and splendour is, for me, a pure manifestation of the human desire to adore and to revere.

I know that the religious hardly have a monopoly on spiritual transportation and many derive a sense of the numinous at mountain tops or in great forests and, no doubt, some exceptional types may feel it even in the midst of the throng on Oxford Street. But when religion is not war, not hypocrisy, not interference in people's lives and their bodily autonomy it has the capacity to cater to some very fundamental but also some very evolved human needs.

But that's a lot of buts and perhaps the best kind of parenting permits children to make their own voyages of discovery towards or away from faith and religion. It's to my wholly secular wife's credit that she has sanctioned my introducing our children to what I have known and rejoiced in but also been disappointed by.

Faith, or its absence, is obviously an intensely personal thing but it's a family thing too.

You, me, and baby make 3, add one more & now we're 4

What do you give that takes away? Answer - a sister or, in our case, a brother. If a sibling is the greatest gift you can give your child you at the same time deprive them of your undivided attention. This is, of course, a good thing, although notoriously few first-borns feel that way when their 100% suddenly goes half price.

As an elder sibling it is fair to say I harboured some quiet anxieties as to how Hardy 1 might take to the arrival of Hardy 2 and although I have no conscious memory of the arrival of my sister there will always be an atavistic awareness that while Katherine may have been great for my parents she was a massive gatecrasher at the Max party.

So it was that the elder was kept on a tight leash for the introduction with, (oldest trick in the book), a very large new toy, ('a gift from baby'), on hand to sweeten the bitter pill. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. His ecstatic cries of delight even sounded as though they might be genuine and if there was a modicum of disappointment that we had failed to deliver the clearly requested big sister he did a consummate job of hiding it.

And here we are 7 weeks down the track and he seems just as pleased that he's no longer flying solo. Indeed he is ever solicitous of the baby's well-being and swift to shower him in kisses which never once threaten suddenly a smothering. I suppose touching 3 he is not yet conscious of any diminution of resources although it's only a matter of time before he comes to learn that the Bank of Mum & Dad has a new customer.

If there is one mild criticism to make it is that on the subject of shrieking he has revealed himself to be a rank hypocrite. It turns out that toddlers detest screaming baby blue murder as much as the rest of us. Yet it does not occur to him, strapped in the back of the car, making increasingly hysterical demands of his baby brother that he stop crying that just perhaps the pot is calling the kettle black.

But this is a trifle and at the moment all bodes well for the Hardy Boys.

Pay to push? What future for free healthcare

If you go into an American hospital be sure to have your credit card visible at all times or you may find that you are taken firmly by the arm and shown the door. This is not in fact true but what is true is that the first thing that you will be asked upon arrival is how you're going to pay and relieving you of your life savings and the roof over your head is a dead cert if you don't have insurance. Consequently if you want to avoid 'checking out' you will find that check out is the first and most prominent area you will find when you cross the threshold.

Contrast this with a British hospital. I don't know if you have ever been to the cashier's office in an NHS hospital but they're the devil to find. In the hospital where my wife gave birth it was buried in the bowels of the basement. The lugubrious lady behind the counter informed me that in decades of working there she had never seen daylight. It was plastered in stickers informing medical staff how to claim expenses.

When I explained that I had come to pay money the woman looked slightly taken aback and apologetically explained that the card machine was not working. The fact is that having kept us in (wholly unnecessarily) overnight after our baby's arrival my wife, not unreasonably, asked if we might be able to stump up for a room rather than enjoy the close harmony choir of the wailing ward.

Evidence that this was not the American way came from our being ensconced in the room BEFORE payment was taken and although the piece of paper proclaimed that we would be chivvied for bed and board if payment was not made before departure I wasn't so sure. I, of course, paid gladly.

As I trooped off to the cash machine with a spring in my step that I was not making imploring phone calls to my bank manager from the lobby of the Lindo Wing or portico of The Portland I reflected on how lucky we are to have all this laid on for free. Then a few days later, inevitably, this article appeared in The Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7355681/Government-warns-NHS-hospitals-prepare-charge-newly-arrived-EU-citizens-No-Deal-Brexit.html

It claims that EU citizens already resident in the UK won't be liable to pay but who's going to chance a Eurostar trip to Paris after 'Independence Day' when the loss of free healthcare to my German wife may be the unexpected extra of being arbitrarily deemed a new arrival.

We have already endured absurdly more onerous requirements to obtain a British passport for our British born second son than his elder brother was subjected to applying in pre-lapsarian days. No explanation has been provided as to why the British passport authorities need to see the original German birth certificates of my in-laws complete with authenticated translations in order to issue a British passport to the British born child of a British citizen.

But the thing about slippery slopes is that they always start as imperceptible inclines. Not to worry though, the sovereignty is free, for everything else there is Mastercard.

The wisdom of innocence & baby gazing

When our first child was born I would lift him as I would a Ming vase. Every movement deliberate and risk assessed. And while I wouldn't say I tuck the second under my arm like a rugby ball I am a lot more attuned to the robustness of very small babies. And they are pretty robust; I certainly don't want to put any bounciness to the test but equally I know they don't collapse like souffles upon the slightest touch.

It is always an interesting business having visitors around when a newborn is in the house as you immediately detect who can handle a baby and who definitely can't. Those that decline to hold them or do so as if having a ticking bomb placed in their arms invariably cite anxiety about the baby's fragility. However I have a theory that this reticence is actually a manifestation of the baby dodger's fragility.

As adults we like to think we are pretty robust, young adults in particular can think themselves indestructible hence engaging in crazy sports like ski flying and sand sailing. Confronted with a baby however and we have a visceral and tiny reminder of how susceptible to damage and injury our mere flesh and blood is.

But this is not just an observation about how insubstantially corporeal babies are. They are the embodiment of blank slates. Watch people's features as they look into the face of a newborn and you will see them soften and melt. So soothing is looking at a baby's face I think it is a genuine shame that doctors are not able to prescribe the experience for the downcast and anxious. These are faces completely and utterly unmarked by the vicissitudes of life. Every expression that of pure instinct unmediated by life's hard lessons.

I believe that some people find this purity unsettling and like looking into a mirror that reflects back the beneficent innocence of one's beginning. This can, for some, be an overwhelming experience. As for the baby, every second that passes is a cascading torrent of the new and fascinating. Very small babies are rheumy eyed. At the very beginning they can only discern light and motion, then faces and shapes with the ability to make eye contact coming in after about a month.

There is an awful lot of the world to take in and it's not by chance that nature only enables babies to do that by degrees. We benefit and learn from experience but our most fundamental humanity is reposed in our innocence and if you ever need reminding of that just cradle a babe in arms.

Mother and baby are doing well

Any woman who has given birth and anyone who has witnessed a birth will know that this rote phrase encompasses pretty much any situation in which all main players are drawing breath at the end of the saga no matter how many midwives, obstetricians, tongs and vacuum cleaners were required to get there. Thanks to the power of television and the internet there must be few in the UK today that have a baby without ever having watched a birth on screen.

But watching a birth on screen is like watching parachuting on screen. It shows but it does not feel and really it's all about the feels. Such is the magnetic appeal of appearing on the box there seems, astonishingly, no shortage of women willing to be filmed in what is almost certain to be their most undignified moment.

What I find surprising is that no hospital seems to offer the chance to watch birth live from behind a two way mirror as in a police station. This would be the real service to expectant mothers and fathers, not the edited clips of One Born Every Minute. All hospitals, absurdly, offer tours of their maternity units which are as useful as a tour of the Somme in peacetime when 4 weeks later you're being sent over the top with your Lee-Enfield.

Truth be told I was a lot more anxious about birth this time around as first time ignorance had proved to be bliss. Obviously as second timers there were no classes for us and so I did what I always do when something is making me anxious which is pretend that it isn't happening. Consequently there was a real moment of vertigo when my wife woke me up at 1 o'clock in the morning to say that actually it was happening and such was my level of denial that she had to remind me to put the child seat in the car when we set off for hospital.

One of the most unsettling things about labour is that you have no idea how long it will take and so mentally you don't know whether you're settling in for a YouTube clip or a viewing of every Harry Potter film back to back. In fact this time around the whole thing was over in 3 hours which is about the length of a standard superhero film these days, aptly in my wife's case, as it allowed her no time for the administration of any pain relief.

It would be fair to say that our interaction with the midwives was extremely brisk bordering on the brusque and despite the large notice on the door reminding them to introduce themselves we did not have the faintest idea of the name of any of the women that marched in and out of the room where my wife was valiantly trying to put into practice her hypno-birthing visualisations.

Eventually the boss midwife turned up when it was clear that new life was, quite literally, at hand. She stood at the end of the bed as if she was breaking a disobedient puppy, fixed my wife with a fierce eye and commanded: 'When I say go you GO! When I say stop you STOP!' It would be fair to say that I have seen police directing traffic with more politesse.

Notwithstanding that my wife got the baby out in remarkably little time it was plain that the midwife was not impressed by her adherence to her orders. She rebuked her loudly: 'I told you to stop BUT YOU DID NOT STOP!' It was all my poor wife could do to murmur a weary apology for her insubordination. It was at this stage that I realised that the exorbitant cost of the Lindo Wing and the Portland is simply to ensure that one's wife is not addressed like a calving cow. I asked the midwife once the dressing down was over how many she'd delivered; she said she had stopped counting at 600.

One constantly reads in the newspapers about NHS bed crises which makes it all the more remarkable how astoundingly difficult it is to get discharged from hospital. Indeed there were some startling similarities between our day and night on the labour ward to my early days in the magistrates' courts. Eventually, with some substantial wheedling and determined lurking at the nurses' station we were sent on our way.

And so to home where our 3 has become 4 and our 2 year old is slowly becoming used to the realisation that his brother is forever. I feel that a balance has come into our home and that while it is possible to drive around on three wheels a Robin Reliant family just isn't properly weighted.

Most importantly: mother and baby are doing well.

Let's Go Round Again

In a few short days I shall be a dad again. And just like you never get the first pancake right now is my chance to start again with a blank canvas. Except, unlike the first pancake, I have not put my first child in the bin (however tempting that sometimes feels). I am of the strong view that if any mother could remember anything of what happened to them during childbirth they would neve ever have another. And yet somehow a universal amnesia descends and as night follows day where once there was one there soon are two.

We have been trying to get the firstborn ready and after much show and tell and dramatic role play he has just about grasped the concept of a sibling. However he has guaranteed himself disappointment as his resolute and unequivocal order is for a big sister and whatever’s coming it ain’t that.

In particular we have been reading the bizarre ‘There’s a House inside my Mummy’ in which the newborn’s arrival is hotly anticipated by his brother with this extraordinary verse:

“I just can’t wait to meet him

I hope that he’s all right,

My daddy says be patient

As his door is rather tight.”

In truth my son and I do share a thwarted wish which is for a girl. I know you’re not supposed to express a preference but I’ve seen mini-me and any further pint sized replication seems extremely ill-advised.

Furthermore I feel the age of men has run its course and I was rather relishing the challenge of being a daughter’s father. The silver lining is that I have had more than one parent comment on how ‘complicated’ girls can be; as if having a son is the quick crossword to the daughter’s cryptic.

It seems to me that being a parent to a child of any description is a fiendishly difficult undertaking the absolute impossibility of which is never made apparent until it’s far far too late. But I have always supposed that there is some difference to the challenges.

Raising a son is like climbing a mountain, the peak usually remains in sight, it’s physically hugely demanding, dangers are usually clearly signposted and serious harm is the likely outcome of foolish risk taking.

Raising a daughter is like traversing a mature and dense forest, the path seems clear but suddenly one can lose one’s bearings in a sickening moment of uncertainty, there is no obvious reason to fear but a stray root can trip at any moment or a darting adder draw blood with poisonous bite.

Anyway, I am not one for generalising and I know my son will be his own person as are we all and I’ll love him come what may.

Parents' Pride

It shouldn't be news but it is. Progress should have completed its journey but it hasn't. Prince William won headlines and praise for the wholly ordinary and normal statement that he'd support his child if it was gay while at the same time sounding a note of caution that he would worry about 'hateful words, persecution and discrimination.' LGBT Pride Month ends on Monday with, inevitably, numerous bigots complaining that it is now a whole month that we pause to think about the death, misery and incarceration that is still visited upon those that deviate from heterosexuality in certain parts of the world.

Sure we've made progress here but it's at times seemed like an inexorable ice climb with a constant reminder of the dizzying void that lies beneath. Slowly people are learning that difference does not mean one thing different from another but as different as there are people on Earth. There aren't enough colours in the rainbow to reflect that but it's as good a reminder as any. A joyful banner prompting us to rejoice in difference not to fear it, never to hate it.

Becoming a parent has caused me to reflect on a particularly bittersweet vein of coming out stories. They regularly crop up on social media. A youngster (sometimes not so young) recounts how after years of fearfulness they showed themselves to their taciturn father or conventional mother only to be delighted at the parent being absolutely cool with it. Obviously this is on one level heartwarming but in other respects it is a tragedy to think of completely needless adolescent turmoil which could have been headed off by some basic talking.

Children see far more than their parents know and parents understand far more than their children realise. The reality is unless a parent is unusually obtuse they will soon notice if their child is eyeing up the boys or the girls, or both, or neither. It is not necessary to wait until that moment to have a simple but important conversation with your child. In truth it is not really a conversation more an assurance: love is love.

The child that loves generously and freely, in whatever direction, deserves every encouragement from its parents. The notion that children need to be protected from the knowledge of this is the real perversion. No child is too young to learn that it is loved for its authentic self and never too young to be taught that love is sharing that self with another.

It is incumbent upon every parent to ensure that their children understand implicitly that the home is a place of absolute sanctuary against a still hard world where still hateful prejudice subsists. The greatest parental pride is a child knowing it is safely loved to safely love.

The Favourite - The parenting taboo that dare not speak its name

Like most parents I swore blind before junior arrived that I would preserve his privacy with my life. I scoffed and scorned at those parents who documented every moment of their child’s life riding roughshod on their child’s autonomy over their personhood. Needless to say, two years down the track, I had to promise my wife I would pay a £1,000 fine if I put another picture of our child on Instagram. Sharenting doesn’t come close: this was true #nofilter voluntary intrusion on our child’s privacy.

Still - there’s the evidence of my love for him. Not for me the wistful photographs of pints and champagne flutes and fond reminiscing of when I was footloose and fancy-free. So much have the traditional taboos been broken down that these days one occasionally sees pieces in the papers from parents prepared to go public that having kids was the worst thing that they ever did and they wish them away every moment. Although, notably, these articles seem to be confined to when the children in question are not yet at school to be confronted with the documentary evidence that that they were a terrible mistake and constant source of regret.

There remains still one topic that even the boldest parent will not own to and that is favourites. We have favourite colours, favourite ice cream flavours, favourite football teams and we have our favourite child. I thought I should write this post now, when we have only one, and there can be no doubt that my one and only really is my one and only. (Although I have a slightly challenging theory that if your favourite child is not your firstborn then even when your first was your only child they were still not your favourite, but this is no place for philosophy).

Being the favourite is of course not an unalloyed blessing. Nothing in life is more galvanising than the realisation that you have to fight for attention. Also an awareness that you’re second best makes it much more likely that you will venture into the world with a clearer sense that nobody owes you anything. That being said if there are only two of you it must be hard not being the favourite. If inclinations were fairly calibrated it would obviously be equitable if one child was the favourite of one parent and the other of the other but, as we know, life’s not fair.

I’ve often thought in very large families, rarely found these days, that there must be a real sense of camaraderie in not being the favourite. After all if you’re one of eleven, as a Catholic priest friend of mine is, only one of you is going to be family captain. One thing that I think is important is to be reconciled to your status. Favourites are immutable and no endeavour is more bound to fail than a child’s attempt to usurp its sibling’s status.

Don’t whatever you do broach this as a topic with your parents, they will deny favouritism to their dying breath, all any good parent can do is seek to suppress those instincts lest the truth too uncomfortable rears its ugly head.

Harry, Here's How Its Done

So, you're a dad. And, as you observed, it is a wonder that women do what they do to give life. As I say, if you want to know how childbirth feels ask a mum, if you want to know what actually happened ask a dad. Not even a fortnight has passed and you will be realising that all those months thinking, worrying and meditating about the journey to base camp are as nothing compared to the climb ahead.

Your wife may be a duchess and a global figure but one thing she will share with all mothers is the 'benefit' of unsolicited advice. This pours in from all corners, often at the most unexpected times; although I suspect she won't be enjoying the unasked for mothering tips that often accompany a meltdown in the supermarket checkout queue.

You, on the other hand, may be spared much of this received wisdom. Most dads don't regale each other with advice on the best way to tie a baby sling. The mothers' WhatsApp group from our NCT class has generated more words than the Complete Works of Shakespeare, the fathers' group's collective output would struggle to complete a haiku and such content as there is amounts to a proposal for a father and child get together down the pub during the Six Nations.

You have the benefit of a brother and one that has ridden the rodeo three times, if he's feeling generous he might offer a few pointers. But if you really want to know how to be a better dad go and speak to a mother. Many mothers will offer the same advice: the mother's job is to look after the baby, your job is to look after the mother. Be very careful about interpreting this advice too literally. A few back rubs and the occasional bunch of flowers is definitely not going to cut the mustard.

In fact that advice is nonsense because the best thing you can do as a new dad is give your wife sleep and the only way you can do that is by looking after the baby. In principle this may seem a fair and obvious step to take but, as you will rapidly discover, it makes no allowance for what the baby wants. And if what the baby wants is its mum even your best effort at the three o'clock in the morning feed will end in dismal failure.

You, me and baby makes three. I often feel, when it comes to a woman's affections, that having a baby is a bit like losing the Boat Race. You come second and last. A lot of men aren't very good at talking about their feelings and, in particular, about what it is like having their place in their wife's heart dislodged by a mewling, puking infant. Well the answer is that it feels weird, unsettling and occasionally infuriating. You have become three but your wife's time for you will more than halve.

You will have to find a way to reconcile yourself to those feelings because this is forever. One way to ensure that you don't  become dislodged from the nest entirely is making sure that you pull your weight. This is easier said than done because another truism of being a dad is that no matter what you do with the child you will almost certainly do it wrong, even if you're doing it right, if, by chance, you are doing it right never, ever point out that you're doing it right. That is the most wrong thing of all.

Apparently you've changed some nappies, this is in fact one of the easiest things to get at least nearly right and if you really want to get ahead put yourself in sole charge of this, it's likely your wife will be prepared to delegate. On no account buy any clothes or dress the child without consultation. 

If you come, in a few months' time, to have any thoughts about bedtime routine I strongly counsel that you keep those thoughts in your head. Likewise never say how tired you are and, in particular, state or even imply that you might be more tired than your wife.

The most important thing is to enjoy yourself because, as I said, it's forever.

Age is just a number

Sometimes when I leave the nursery I lurk by the door and watch my son through the glass. This is primarily to ensure he is not inflicting his domestic hysteria on the harried nursery workers but also because I love to watch him interacting with other children.

The ease with which children play together is an instinctive and charming quality that sadly gets lost in adolescence when the notion that you might play with someone you had just met becomes absurd and freighted with all kinds of teenage angst.

There is something warming to the depths of the soul to see how solicitous children can be towards one another when they are in distress. Of course, as with everything child related, these moments are offset by countless episodes of snatching and selfish cries of 'mine'.

It is a basic hallmark of 'nice' parenting that you should be seen and heard insistently to impress upon your offspring the virtue of sharing. As with a lot of perfomative parenting I often feel this is not actually being done for the benefit of the child who would be much better learning for itself that to give is to receive.

We recently stayed with a friend and her 5 year old son and watching our 2 year old interact with him was fascinating and caused me to ponder something I had never wondered before. Do children know that other children are children? The obvious answer to this question is yes and certainly once a child is 5 or 6 it can plainly tell the difference between itself and a baby or an 11 year old.

But to a child of 2 is there anything other than size that differentiates a 7 year old from a 14 year old? It was immediately apparent with the older child that our son instinctively deferred but was that deference to age, experience and sophistication or half a foot?

These days many don't consider themselves adults into their 30s but when does a toddler see an adult? Does the concept of adulthood mean anything to one so young? I used to long for the autonomy of adulthood, not to engage in vice, but simply to go to bed when I liked, eat what I liked and do what I liked. Certainly a toddler sees its parent as the great interferer in its autonomy but does it imagine that one day it will be responsible alone for all that decision making?

Some day soon I will be able to ask my son and hopefully elicit an intelligible answer rather than his current babbling stream of consciousness; until then I hope he continues to make friends regardless of whether they are 9 or 90.

Mothering Sunday & Fraudulent Flowers

These are the flowers that we all pretended today my 2 year old purchased for his darling mama. Of course when I tried to persuade him to hand them over he elected instead to crush a number of the stems in his hot little fist while laughing maniacally in my face. Which is rather what I feel the rural Sussex florist was doing behind my back when she added £10 to the price, having elicited from me that I was from London, and a further £10 penalty for being a barrister.

I can never really tell where Mothering Sunday falls in the pecking order of Christmas, Valentine's Day, birthday, wedding anniversary, first date, first time we went to Waitrose together of essential dates that any sensible husband remembers if he knows what's good for him. All I know is that it takes a braver man than me to find out what the consequences are of ignoring it.

The thing is, I know what my wife would prefer to a bunch of flowers, howsoever fragrant; it is sleep, a Celine handbag and never having to change a nappy again: in that order. You might think that handbag is crazy expensive but it is nothing compared to paying for live in childcare.

The problem with 2 year olds, and yes I know there is more than one, is that trying to get them on board with the whole Mothers' Day thing is an exercise in futility. Next year I'm going to skip the whole cold, rubber eggs in bed thing and take him straight to fixing her a dry gin Martini when she walks through the door at the end of the day, but for now, it's on me.

And I must confess that this evokes in me a confused feeling. Because as I bashfully present bouquet and card insisting she is the world's best mum I can't help remembering the many, many occasions on which she has tersely reminded me: I'm not your mother, you know.

Childcare - child cares

A close friend and I were talking about children and competence and he said that he eventually felt his son was becoming competent when, finally, he could clip in his own seatbelt. Of such little things are the most maddening parts of parenting made. It is easier for a rich man to pass into the Kingdom of Heaven than it is to strap in a toddler mid-meltdown.

Every parent will have their own personal bugbear about the things that their children can not do. In a strange way it is easiest when they are a newborn because they literally can't do anything. Even, in the case of many babies, suckle. So steeled are new parents for their  baby's incompetence that they will often check they are still breathing.

As the months pass and such feats as not needing the head supported, not needing to be burped and not needing to be fed five million times in the night are achieved it can feel that real progress to basic competence is being made. Then they turn two.  The problem with the toddler years is that development continues but to the soundtrack of regularly random screaming which tends to obscure the progress. Recently I had to carry my child out of Waitrose like a rugby ball tucked under my arm so close were the security guards coming to calling the police or social services or both.

Nonetheless, slowly but surely, skills are being learnt and the inching towards independence continues. Of course, until recently, you would be well within your rights to expect your child to get a job at 16 but as decades have been added at the other end of life there has been a begrudging acceptance that children should be permitted a little more dependence before they take flight. Although living with your mum at 40 is still definitely not OK.

What I find interesting is the concept of catching up with your parents. Eventually one day you're on a level with them. Your competence at life matches theirs.  This is a hallowed time that in many families goes unnoticed but for a period, which may be years or decades, the parent/child dynamic take second place to mutually respectful and beneficial adult dialogue.

Of course if the slights or wounds of childhood are allowed to linger this time may never come, equally if a parent refuses to acknowledge the independence and autonomy of their child they will never look at them eye to eye.

Eventually the circle of life dictates that the child's competence will surpass the parent's. At this point the child has to make a choice, either consciously or unconsciously. If the child's incompetence was met with love and care the chances are the child will reciprocate that in turn. The lessons learned in childhood reach their fullest fruition decades later. Conversely poor parenting at the start is likely to lead to poor care at the end.

As the saying goes; what goes around comes around. Food for thought for parents of any age.

The ABC of class for children

I had a nanny. A few in fact. One was a Dutch harpist and she used to practise outside my bedroom door as I went to sleep; I soon learned that this was not normal. A later nanny was keen to ensure I minded my manners and was quick to upbraid me: 'Don't say what, say pardon'. Confusingly, however, my mother was just as swift to insist: 'Don't say pardon, say what'. And thus it was, in my tenderest years, that I was introduced to class consciousness.

As a child grows it becomes aware of groups around it. A classic trope of the American high school genre is the sorting of the student body into well established cliques: the jocks, the stoners, the nerds, the thespians, and, of course, the princesses. This selection occurs by a process of self-identification but also by a form of group sifting and enforcement.

English schools don't tend to replicate these groupings. They do however provide a constantly renewing supply for a uniquely English form of categorisation namely the class system. The branding of an English education will dictate, to a very significant extent, what tribe you belong to and what tribe you are accepted by. 

'P'olitics as an activity is receding ever faster from most people's lives 'p'olitics has never seemed more accessible and urgent. The opening paragraph readily betrays the political tribe of my upbringing. However it doesn't take long working in the criminal courts to find one's political steering wheel turning sharply to the left.

For a time I was a member of the Labour Party before it succumbed to its current orgy of self-identification. In recent years I have pinned my colours to the mast of the Women's Equality Party. Some deride supporting what is condescendingly referred to as a protest party on the basis that split votes will keep Labour out of power.

However until Labour abandons its obsession with symbols and its mythology at the expense of communicating its values it will, in fact, be the protest party. A core article of faith for many tribal Labour supporters is hatred of the Tories. I will never subscribe to compulsory demonisation of an opposition party because politics and the exercise of power has to be dictated by pragmatism not ideological purity.

In the desert of talent and integrity that is the current Parliament there are a few, sadly vanishingly few, politicians that are prepared to distance themselves from 'my party right or wrong'. Jess Phillips is one such politician. The frenzy with which she has been accused of class betrayal for wearing 'nice' clothes and for having a professional mother is perhaps a reflection of how many on the left are threatened by a plain talking woman ready to communicate far beyond tribal Labour.  They would do well to encourage her because, in or out of the party, she won't be stopping any time soon.

Meanwhile I need to get back to giving my son his tea/supper/dinner.

Bad to the Bone - Who's to Blame?

There are many child rearing conventions that you breach at your social peril but which also do not withstand one minute’s scrutiny. High on the list is what I call performative discipline. A child of two is not a creature of reason and yet when in the playground it floors another youngster running pell-mell for the slide we have to go through the charade of explaining to it why this is unkind and wrong. Even to the extent of getting it to lisp 'sorry' the meaning of which is as significant to it as 'blancmange'.

This is not done for your child’s benefit nor even that of the other child. Instead this is for the consumption of the other child’s parents. And yet somehow when a child of 10 behaves in a completely horrid way how rarely does one see such public admonitions from the parent. The truth is when a child of 2 is a terror that is because they are a child of 2 and prince or pauper nothing will change that.  When they are 10 they are no longer doli incapax and capable, in England at least, of forming a criminal intent.

1, 2 add a few and suddenly the bad behaviour has a cause and that cause is you, or at least that is the assumption when children’s behaviour tips over the edge of criminality. In the early years of my day job as a barrister I spent a lot of time practising in the Youth Court. The Youth Court is one of the private/secret places in society. You’re not allowed in unless you’re a party to the case. The perfectly sensible rationale is that when children and the Criminal Justice System come into contact this should not be done in the glare of the public eye.

However if you subscribe to the maxim that it takes a village to raise a child you might say that it absolutely should take place in the public eye so that the local community can bear witness to what has gone wrong with the child and the families involved. And a child committing a criminal offence must, we assume, come from a family gone wrong.

Jihadi brides and unfathomable child killing has been much in the press recently and reading articles about the children involved leads one to wonder what was happening in their homes and upbringing that brought this about. But what if the answer is not drink, drugs, domestic violence and family strife. What if within those homes are loving and attentive parents asking themselves precisely the same questions but with an urgency we could never imagine?

In one of my first posts I wrote about how the really interesting milestones of childhood almost never get written about or remarked upon. One of those was noticing the first time your child is naughty. Not when they were infuriating or maddening through unreasoning impulse but the first time they deliberately did something that they knew was forbidden, simply to vex and annoy.

There is the first glimmer of a child's agency that leads one day to a junior barrister mitigating on behalf of a mother being prosecuted for failing to ensure that her 15 year old, the size of a man, is attending school as required by law. It is bizarre that practice in the Youth Court is largely undertaken by the youngest and most junior barristers because it is there that the causes of criminality are most immediate and the prospects of doing something about it are the highest.

When children commit crime through nurture it is incumbent upon all of us as members of society to take account and step in to lend assistance to ensure that child is protected. If children are committing crime through nature, something many deny exists with the idea of being ‘born bad’ treated as anathema, that needs to be established at the earliest possible juncture to ensure that other children are protected.

In the mean time I recommend an indifferent disregard to all anti-social behaviour by your toddler in the playground and if other parents complain remind them that the Good Book enjoins us to forgive them for they know not what they do.

Made in Britain - Labelling Children

One of the consolations of having a 2 year old child rather than, say, a 10 year old, is not having to explain Brexit to him. Although the random piercing howling that is the current soundtrack to my life suggests that my son is at least aware of the concept.  As a thought experiment I sometimes wonder how I would explain Brexit to a youngish child.  The best I can come up with is that there are some people who believe that Britain is best on its own and want Britain to be on its own so that they can show the world that Britain is best.

Brexiteer is a label and its one that devotees of the cult of Brexit wear as a badge of pride.  Parenting has got me thinking a great deal about labelling and the process by which children learn to label others.  And the hard truth is we are very quick to label others.  The womb is a special place because, for the vast majority of the world, it is the last place people will be without a label.  Only on arrival does the labelling begin.  Is it a boy or a girl, what's its skin colour?  Foetuses have no nationality, no political affiliation, no favourite band even.

I was recently congratulated by a woman while shopping for my son's gender neutral dolly.  Although well intentioned the fact is that I did not buy my son the dolly and I certainly didn't force him to play with it: that was his choice.  I am slightly uncomfortable with the concept of gender blind parenting insofar as it conjures up images of sending my son to school wearing a dress as a matter of principle.  Instead I identify much more strongly with the concept of cultivating a sense of gender awareness.  Children that come to understand the power and prejudice associated with labelling others go through the world with their eyes wide open rather than, impossibly, insisting upon blindness to difference.

When we label others we are free and easy with the full spectrum of designations and often have no compunction about attaching negative epithets to people. Lazy, bad, stupid, violent; how quickly we make these judgements on the shortcoming of others.  But how often are those assessments predicated on a genuine, objective assessment of their conduct and actions rather than assumptions about their appearance, accent, skin colour or sex?

In labelling ourselves we rarely, unless in the midst of a crisis of self esteem, reach for terms of condemnation and opprobrium.  Instead our self-labelling is generally self-approving.  Those we identify with are also good.  Gunners chant with Gunners, Freemasons stick up for Freemasons, Metalheads thrash with Metalheads.  Teaching a child empathy involves teaching them to temper the instinct to label those around them and, importantly, to understand what labels others will seek to impose on them and why.

Any child's first experience of racism or sexism will provide a lifelong and painful reminder of what it is to be reduced to a label by others.  If you're white, heterosexual and male it may be a long time if ever that you are exposed to this kind of labelling.  That may seem to be an advantage but in fact it massively increases the likelihood that you'll pass through life oblivious to the poisonous effects of reducing people to mere labels.

Stop for a moment to think of the things that you are.  In my case a person, a man, a husband, a father, a brother, a barrister, a Londoner, a European, a Briton, an Englishman, white, heterosexual.  When you create that label soup if you go on to order those words in order of importance to your self-identity you consciously create an image of yourself from a self-selection of labels.  Everyone you meet will be applying their own labels to you, some will accord with your own and some would horrify you.

It is not realistic, in life, always to take others at their own estimation, we must and can evaluate others for ourselves.  But we betray our children if we raise them believing that only those that look and think like them hold value.  British is not alway best.

Love is...How annoying am I?

Before Tinder started and after actually meeting people ended there was Internet dating.  A theoretically inspired site, www.MySingleFriend.com, was completely scuppered by one major flaw in practice. You wanted to find someone special so you got your best mate to write a sales pitch for you. In fact on reflection a rather bizarre business model, after all who gets their drinking buddies to draft their C.V.?

Anyway the problem was that your mate bigs you up because that is what mates are for. You meet someone but pretty soon they’re disappointed, they read the Ad but you’re not all that. False advertising might earn you a quick buck relationship-wise but what most people are ultimately looking for is a lifetime investment. And this is where a simple tweak to the site’s premise could reap dividends.

Instead of bullet pointing your most admirable attributes you get your mate to lay out your flaws, drawbacks and deficiencies in excoriating detail. And of course you don’t stop with your best mate. Other contributors must include your parents, your sister, your boss, your childhood nemesis and, most importantly, your ex.

Now obviously this seems mad and counter-intuitive but this is basic due diligence or KYC as David Brent might say.  Because ultimately what sustains a relationship over years and decades is not the cherishing of your partner’s finest qualities or their hilarious best story (still so fresh on its 1,000^thtelling) or their rock hard abs slowly dissolving into blubber. No; what really keeps it on the rails is putting up with your partner’s shit and their willingness to put up with yours.

And if you don’t know what I’m talking about here it’s the ‘for worse’ bit in the wedding vows that everyone pretends does not apply to them. Well it does: it applies to you, it applies to me and it applies to everybody.

People say that having a child is a testing experience and that is an accurate description if by that they mean it is like taking a Japanese exam that never ends, when you had been learning French all year.  I would like to say that having a child with another human being really brings out the best in both parents. But I won’t because that would be a complete lie.

Instead parenting is like an endless voyage of discovery in which you slowly come to understand how utterly different in every conceivable way your childhood was from your co-parent’s to the point where you see why in some cultures marrying your cousin seems like a good idea.

But the thing is.  And this really is the thing. If you spend your entire time fulminating about how unbelievably wrong your partner’s parenting is you will be overlooking a very, very important point – and that is how unbelievably wrong your parenting is. But not just your parenting, in fact every aspect of your ‘contribution’ to the relationship.

There’s a lot of talk at the moment, thanks Marie Kondo, about throwing out anything in your life that does not bring you joy. If new parents did that the queue to the Principal Registry of the Family Division would stretch to Land’s End.

Instead I have a little mantra that should ensure parental tensions dont exceed a fast simmer and certainly never boil over.  You may remember a whimsical cartoon that used to appear in certain newspapers (when people still bought them), it featured a cutesy boy and girl and every week there was a new answer but the strap-line always remained the same Love is…

If you really want to know your partner, really put yourself in their shoes then you will understand that the ultimate answer is a question and it’s a question you should ask yourself daily –

How annoying am I?

Nursery, nanny or on your knee?

There comes a point in every parent's life when their child will be left in the care of a stranger.  Even the most committed earth mother will not be in loco parentis for ever.  In some ways it's like removing a plaster; there is a school of thought that believes fast and soon entails less pain for everyone rather than slow and sore.  As with so much of parenting it's probably not something you give much thought to until the crashing realisation comes that you are responsible 24/7 for keeping a reckless, incapable human being alive and, as far as is possible, happy.

Every family is different and every child takes differently to the change from exclusively parental caring to being looked after by some random your dad met in the park (just kidding).  I say just kidding because there are few more fraught discussions between new parents as to who your priceless cargo will be entrusted with.  Unless you are the Rees-Mogg family, in which case your children's nanny was your nanny and your father's nanny too, the process of identifying a person or institution is anxious making and uncertain.

My wife is German.  Our child is German.  Germans speak German.  Our child speaks German (insofar as toddlers speak anything that is not inexplicable howling and scarcely intelligible demands to watch bus videos).  The reason our child speaks German is that my wife completely reasonably demanded we employ a German nanny.

It is only by a miracle that this happened because, it transpires, German child carers are about as easy to come by as flying nannies with tradesmen admirers.  But we found one and she poured all her gemütlich goodness into Hardy Junior Nummer Eins.  And then she left.  At just the point in time that the child was still too young for us to explain that nursery represented a first thrilling rung on the ladder that leads away from parents to independent living, thinking and, most importantly, spending.  But also at just the point in time that the child was old enough to make plain to any passer by en route that this strange man was intent on abandoning it in the charge of Beelzebub and his minions and I will scream until you call the police, thank you.

Suffice to say the first days of nursery have not been greeted with wholesale enthusisasm.  Indeed as soon as the child awakes an imploring mantra of 'No Kita' starts up.  My wife, with an unerring sense of self-preservation, has delegated the drop-off to me.  On a recent journey the mantra accompanied us the whole way until I missed the turning whereupon it tailed off in shocked relief.  Having turned the car around a hopeful 'Zu Hause?' started up only to be replaced instantly by a terrible keening noise when in fact I turned into the open prison.

This is a grossly unfair designation for a jolly, professionally run outfit with all the safeguarding staff even the most neurotic parent could hope for.  But still it's not home: you know that, they know that and the child sure as hell knows it.  Nurseries always put me in mind of that dreadful greetings card: Jesus is coming look busy.  I imagine that a buzzer sounds when a parent is spotted approaching on the CCTV and suddenly it's a hive of story telling, messy play and sing songs.  As soon as the door is closed every child is chained to a cot with a jam smeared dummy.  Obviously I know it's not like that but that's what comes of giving a child Matilda and The Witches to read.

Anyway this post is in solidarity with any other parents who are 'transitioning'; with an encouraging reminder that they'll be instititutionalised before you know it.