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.

Children Blaming - The Last Taboo?

They split you up, your son and daughter, they may not mean to, but they do.

Philip Larkin is the patron saint of parent blamers and it doesn't require a Masters degree in psychology to attribute character defects and personality shortcomings to poor parenting.  However the reproach that dare not speak its name is children blaming.

Everybody knows about the fearful consequences of favouritism by parent towards child; there is no surer path to resentment and disunity.  Few talk about favouritism by child towards parent.  But the fact of the matter is three's a crowd and the cuckoo in the nest is your newborn.

You think I joke but my toddler son has a working vocabulary of about 50 words (with bus and train being by far the most emotionally significant); if he wants something he can manage 'mama bed', 'mama bath', 'mama shoe' but his most emphatic expression is reserved for when he catches me giving his mother a hug: 'No papa cuddles!'  It's like living with an infant Mother Superior.

Indeed the only time I can safely embrace my wife is when he is fast asleep or, ironically, when he is himself hugging her knees; then I can safely take her in my arms until he realises with a shout of indignation he's become the relish in a parent sandwich.

My wife obviously finds this hilarious but I can tell she thoroughly endorses his decision to clasp himself, literally, to the maternal bosom.  The painful truth is I have nothing to offer beside holding him upside down when he's having a meltdown (surprisingly effective but best not utilised on the Tube or in the G.P.'s waiting room).

It's very important, however, that you don't let your child render you redundant.  Remind your wife what you can give that a 2 year old never can, like paying the gas bill no more than a week late and making sure that the Ocado man gets all the plastic bags to take away.

We have a king size bed but the little prince has rendered the true monarch a serf in his own kingdom, father beseeching son for the right to occupy a narrow strip one foot wide.  So much so that I often think it would be easier if I just slept in his cot, or by the bins which he thinks is my deserved post in the household.

I have come to realise that the fundamental issue here is inequality of arms.  There is nothing for it I will have to have a daughter.

Parental Privilege

I've written recently about privilege in the sense of having unfair access to capital whether it be cultural, social or just good old money capital.  That kind of privilege is usually unearned but there is another kind of privilege which is paid for or otherwise achieved.  When I feel particularly careworn by the burden and responsibilities of child rearing I am quick to give myself a pinch and remember what an awesome privilege it is to be a parent.

It is modish at the moment for those that commentate on having children to exaggerate or otherwise focus  on the trials and tribulations attendant upon trying to keep a child alive and prepared for the living hellscape that is the world of the twenty teens.  Whether it is the expressive stick mother of Hurrah For Gin or the unvarnished truth of the Scummy Mummies you don't have to look far to find a parent to tell you how awful it all is.

I don't intend this as some kind of saccharine antidote by pretending that parenting is all teddy bears, blowing bubbles and nursery rhymes in gingham dresses.  Anyone who has ever met a child will know the truth.  However I do think that in a society where many long in private anguish for a baby that it is worth remembering from time to time what immense good fortune it is to have a child to parent.

Socrates observed that the unexamined life is not worth living and there is truly no greater examination in life than being a parent (and I've sat Oxford Finals).  And therein lies the real privilege of parenting.  As you reach out to mould this new life you find yourself considering the contours of your own and the forces and experiences that shaped them.

I've previously written that I don't believe you can ever fully experience gratitude for your own parents until you yourself have become one.  Equally I'm not sure you can fully explore what made you until you engage in the terrifying task of making someone else.  Day by day, year by year, as your child grows you are able to bear witness to the fruits of your investment in your child.  If you are a creative person you can point to your buildings, paintings, songs or sculptures to show your progress over time but even the genius of the Sistine Chapel or the St Matthew Passion remain products fixed in time, examples of arrested development.

A child takes what you give it and makes it its own, something more, ever changing.  It is common for parents to lament the passing of their child's babyhood; I think this reflects a wholly understandable human desire for simplicity, innocence and (frankly) control.  Childhood and the vexing chrysalis of adolescence are all anxious steps to the garden gate but beyond lies the wide world and all the pleasure and pain of watching your child making her way.

I'm not one for counting my blessings and even if I was it wouldn't take me very long to count to one.

Privilege Part Two

Waitrose running out of hummus, your Uber rating taking a knock, that day's Pilates class being full are all classic first world problems.  But a quandary I wrestle with eclipses them all, namely wondering how much privilege I should seek to bestow on my child.  Admittedly this is not a question of Bill Gates telling his children they won't be inheriting his billions because he wants them to make their own way.  Although, interestingly, that has not stopped him from ensuring they have received the best possible education and a reassurance that, while they won't be billionaires, they will have a safety net that the average child could only dream of.

If you are not privileged you don't think twice about doing absolutely everything in your power to provide your child the maximum possible privilege, as much of a head start as you can muster for them.  In truth many privileged people don't think much about this either.  But the fact is that once you're fortunate enough to provide for your child's basic needs you have to make decisions about their more evolved needs.  Education is unquestionably chief among them.  The education you provide your child in your home is, universally, a matter for you as its parent whether you live in Hull or Honolulu.  Conferring privilege upon them in that regard is entirely contingent on how much time, energy and interest you take in cultivating their interests and developing them as a human being.

Some people are so financially disadvantaged that simply providing for their child's basic needs allows them no time for this domestic development.  Some people are so financially advantaged that they outsource what should be domestic development to outsiders and to institutions.  Either scenario is liable to produce a person lacking the benefit of a parent or parents who have been able or willing really to focus on that child and who that child might be.

Every single one of us is born with talents.  Some of those talents are highly marketable, a natural affinity for coding by way of example, some confer a negligible financial advantage, such as being really good at whistling.  Talent is innate but skills are learnt.  The privileged are remarkably adept at ensuring that their children become skilled in a marketable way irrespective of their talent.  Top jobs go to the privileged because the skills they require have been drummed into their occupants from a tender age.  If talent is not nurtured it will never blossom, like the seeds sown on stony ground in the parable, equally if sufficient skills are taught to the untalented they will bear a fruit of sorts like tomatoes forced in English greenhouses.

The privileged understand all of this implicitly.  It is why they spend so much money ensuring their children pass the right exams at the right schools to get into the right universities so they are at the front of the queue for the right jobs.  This is all done whether the talent is there or not.  The counterpoint to all this is that an unprivileged child may be blessed with all the necessary talent but, denied cultivation of the necessary skills, they will pass no exams, go to no university and not even know about the jobs.  Take a moment to imagine, for example, what the world would have lost if Shakespeare had never learnt how to write or Mozart how to read music.

Wanting the best for your child is not wrong.  Being able to give the best to your child is not wrong in the same way that it is not wrong to win the lottery.  However we don't need to look far to see lives ruined by huge payouts.  What you do with your privilege is what counts.  And privilege is not necessarily the same as wealth.  It has always been an odd feature of the British class system that it was possible to be privileged and yet not actually very well off.  Increasingly, however, money does now mean privilege and its lack denotes its absence.  While charity does begin at home when you concentrate privilege solely in your child you inflict a small concomitant harm on society.

The Criminal Bar is, unquestionably, a profession that requires talent but it also requires many skills.  For a majority of barristers gaining access to the Bar entailed some connection to privilege.  A huge resource of raw talent alone is unlikely to propel an aspirant through all the countless hoops that precede entry to the Inns of Court.  This is where those of us who have benefitted from privilege, thereby enjoying the privilege to practise, owe it to other people's children to provide a helping hand.

The Bar Council runs a mentoring service for students in Year 12 & Year 13.  There is no good reason not to volunteer for it.  The student I mentor is so brimful of enthusiasm and he knows that he will have to make the connections that for some of us were provided on a plate.  It costs me nothing but a small amount of time to be a resource and a guide.  The Kalisher Trust has for many years provided concrete financial help to embryonic criminal barristers but also undertakes outreach work teaching children how to construct an argument, conquering their fears of public speaking.  These are the sort of soft skills that the privately educated sometimes don't even realise were inculcated in them and therefore look askance when promising youngsters don't present with the polish of privilege.  Kalisher is always in need of funds so if you're cash rich and time poor why don't you support its work: https://www.thekalishertrust.org/donate (and yes that is me modelling a fetching pair of pink trousers).

I remember balking the first time I heard the expression 'check your privilege'.  As time has gone by I have realised that anyone who has been the beneficiary of privilege needs to undergo their own truth and reconciliation exercise.  It's not enough merely to check privilege we need to fully survey and delineate it because unless we understand how we have been advantaged it's highly unlikely we will be motivated to advantage others.  

Ultimately it goes without saying that I want the best for my child but only so that he can give the best of himself.

This is the second part of a blag that I have published on both my legal blog  Counsel of Perfection and also my parenting blog  The Paternity Test because it touches on both my professional and personal interest.

Privilege Part One

The Bar Council is running a successful social media campaign at the moment titled #IAmTheBar. Barristers from across the country are recounting the adversity they overcame, the long roads they travelled, the deterrents they fended off to be called to the Bar.  The tales make for inspiring reading and hopefully the young and not so young seeing them are persuaded that not all barristers are people like, er, me.

A procession from Eton to Oxford to the Inns of Court misses only a stint in the Guards and a safe seat to avoid giving me the institutional royal flush.  I am the Bar people expect because I am the Bar as it always was.  In fact, as the Bar Council's campaign correctly demonstrates, today barristers are a much more diverse bunch than people and the media give the profession credit for (at least on the publicly funded side).  This is thanks to a short-lived purple patch when Legal Aid was rightly widely available and rightly properly funded.  As the tide has gone out faster than the sea at Weston-super-Mare many commentators have predicted a raising of the drawbridge and a return to the privileged Bar of old.

In one important respect they are wrong.  And they are wrong because of the way in which privilege operates.  This blog is not about the funding of legal aid, I have written about it until I am blue in the face, and the Secret Barrister continues to do so to much more public and beneficial effect than I ever have.

We hear a lot from the privileged.  One of the biggest benefits of privilege is that it gives you the biggest stage.  You don't have to fight to be heard and you assume, by your privilege, that when you speak people will listen.  One topic that the privileged rarely talk about, however, is privilege.  When they do it is often, absurdly, to insist that they don't have it; like a child covered in spots claiming not have chicken pox.  You will no doubt remember the extraordinary claim that Benedict Cumberbatch had been 'held back' by his Harrow education.

I obviously can't speak for Harrovians but the thing about having been to Eton is that you just can't, with a straight face, deny your privilege.  It's like a marquess claiming to be middle class.  That isn't to say that some don't try.  If you live on privilege island you will only meet privileged people and that is a very comfortable place to live, it's surprisingly easy to pretend that there isn't the rest of the world out there.  For the moment you acknowledge your privilege you have to acknowledge the absence of privilege and that provokes some uncomfortable realisations.  Like how you got a bloody great big head start in life.  Like how maybe it wasn't just hard work and brains that got you into Oxbridge.  Like how maybe you weren't the best man (or woman) for the job: just the most advantaged.

And on the subject of women you don't get to be privileged only by going to Eton.  You just have to be a man, or white, or heterosexual, or live in Western Europe, or have a roof over your head.  Every single one of us has some privilege over the next worse off person and there are many, many worse off people.  However, because the conveyor belt of social mobility is only supposed to go in one direction, many of the privileged don't want to know about, still less care for, those less fortunate than them.  You might be in the 1% but unless you're in the 0.1% you're still a worker, still struggling, keeping it real because you only have a Range Rover not a Lear jet.

Have a think about who does the complaining when tiny incremental changes are suggested to reduce the number of trampolines given to privately educated men trying to reach the top jobs.  Quotas for women are unfair, say the men who have enjoyed a 100% quota, quite literally for centuries.  I don't know why they're complaining because they seem to have forgotten the first rule of Privilege Club which is that, like the Hotel California, you can check out any time you like but you can never leave. Privilege is not like your house keys or your passport; it's not something you can lose.  Where it is like your passport (at least until next March) is it enables you to go anywhere and do anything without the hassle of getting a visa, of obtaining permission.

I don't see privilege like an island I see it like a wall.  On the privileged side the sun is alway shining, there is always enough to eat, everybody knows everybody and absolutely nobody wants to be on the other side of the wall, many pretend there is no other side.  On the unprivileged side the weather is very changeable, sometimes there is food sometimes not, there are many strangers some of them hostile, most want very much to be on the other side of the wall and are abundantly aware of how extraordinarily difficult it is to scale.  Think The Wall in Game of Thrones and double it.

On the top of the wall there's an 'I'm Alright's Watch' keeping an eye on the masses but preserving privilege for the few.  From time to time they might dispense the occasional scholarship pour encourager les autres but like a bouncer at Studio 54, ensuring that only the right sort are let in.  Noblesse may sometimes oblige but never forget the divine ordination of the privileged child's favourite hymn: 

The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

God made them high and lowly, 

And ordered their estate.

As a privileged person working in criminal law I ascend to the top of my side of the wall (there's a lift) and see what life is like for the unprivileged.  At the end of the day I go home and when I'm being my better self I reflect on my good fortune and wonder at how I can pass some of that privilege on.  When I'm being my worst self I worry about how I'm going to adhere to the second rule of Privilege Club, which is how I'm going to pass some of that privilege on - to my child.

And that rule is why commentators on the social mix of the Bar are mistaken.  Privilege begets privilege or it is repudiated.  It bears its unfair fruit when one generation passes on the leg up to the next generation.  If legal aid won't pay the school fees (and it won't) the privileged won't touch publicly funded work with a bargepole.  It does rather beg the question where the barristers of the future will come from if the unprivileged can't afford to get over the wall and the privileged are scared they might fall off it.

Next week in Part Two - What to do with your privilege? (hint: pass it on).

I am publishing this on both my legal blog Counsel of Perfection and also my parenting blog The Paternity Test because it touches on both my professional and personal interest.

A time to be born

No, no, no, not now, not now, now, Now, NOW! - never.  They say surfing is all about timing and in a sense so too is child bearing, with one important distinction; if you have a kid you’re in for the ride ready or not.

The modern world has a lot to answer for and I truly believe one of its biggest mixed blessings is choice.  100 types of breakfast cereal to 1,000 men on Tinder.  How can you ever be satisfied with the choice you have made when there are countless alternative options mocking your maladroit selection.  How even are you supposed to make a decision at all.

Agency is anxiety when you lack confidence and sometimes what you’re really looking for is a set of instructions.  Nowhere is agency more illusory than when it comes to starting a family.  Making an intended baby requires two very important things that we have some agency over and one essential thing over which we have none.

We need to find somebody to have a baby with and we have to decide to have a baby.  We also need luck.  I had my child at 36.  That is 6 years later than I had always insouciantly assumed from youth that I would.   As my 30s have progressed I have noted a dismaying depletion in my physical energy.  The vigor I enjoyed at 30 will almost certainly be replaced with Viagra at 40.

I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have a child at 18 (definitely the first No).  Technically an adult but still full of the presumptuous certainty of adolescence.  I could have matched that child shot for shot on the tennis court, they would be in the midst of university, months away from flying the nest.  But what meagre nest could I have provided.  Would university even have been a possibility.

I also look at friends (men, for biology will enforce this inequality for some time to come) who have had children in their 50s and wonder how they scoop a screaming toddler from the floor when even rising from an armchair elicits a heavy sigh.

Musing on timing I suppose I am left with an equivocal thought.  If you can love your child, which ultimately is all it really needs, there will be times when no time will seem the right time but also any time can be the right time if you so choose.