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.
