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.