Leave home without them

Leave home without them - A US eatery’s ban on children under six makes Fenella Souter wistful for a kid-free cappuccino.

American restaurateur Mike Vuick runs a casual bar and restaurant called McDains in Monroeville, a suburb of Pittsburgh. It’s nothing special, but last year Vuick achieved a degree of fame when he announced a ban on children under six. In some of the online commentary that followed, one could be forgiven for thinking Vuick had called for their execution. Perhaps more surprising, however, was the support. He claimed business rose 20 per cent and that he received 2000 emails, running 11:1 in his favour, some from parents.

The kids aren't alright … in American café McDains at least. (Illustration by Tanya Cooper)

An article about the ban on Yahoo! Shine attracted 20,000 comments, many arguing it was the parents who were the problem, not the squealing children, although that really boils down to the same thing unless Vuick could vet the parents before admitting the family.

On Twitter, #youngkidsshouldbebannedfrom became a trending topic, with tweeters suggesting the banning of small children from places that ranged from public pools to supermarkets to aircraft. (It wouldn’t wash in Australia, where restrictions on children may be open to challenge under the Age Discrimination Act.) Said one: “Don’t ban them. Just require a muzzle and a leash whenever out in public.”

Extremism aside, Vuick seems to have voiced what many are too scared to say in public, because to suggest small children shouldn’t be brought into traditionally adult spaces is to invite accusations of being “anti-child”, and that’s almost as bad as not liking dolphins.

Pitted against the nobler ideals of children’s rights, the liberation of mothers from the lonely bondage of home life, the enriching of community as Oliver and Serenity sip a babycino with the grown-ups, the so-called “anti-child” lot are on a hiding to nothing. How feeble to articulate the real reason they don’t want excitable groups of small children in cafes and restaurants – that being: it’s annoying. At risk of looking like self-absorbed meanies, they’re forced to fall back, lamely, on health and safety arguments. The perils of hot liquids, say, or of waiters tripping over tiny tots; and shouldn’t the little ones be napping rather than experiencing mussels scented with kaffir lime?

Family values have the upper hand right now and they dominate the public conversation. There are regular calls for everything to be made “suitable for children and families”, from Big Brother to New Year’s Eve, from topless beaches to chilli crab. With a few exceptions – strip clubs, casinos, the TAB – children are to be welcomed everywhere.

The cafe has become the new crèche. Flash mobs of yummy mummies descend with a shiny air of ownership, ponytails swinging as they park colossal prams and strollers and do a lot of fiddling with large bags and small children.

Most parents do their best to keep their kids settled but some appear to mistake cafes and restaurants for playrooms. Perhaps they think the child-free patrons are bored and would enjoy the enlivening effect of their children’s antics. The other day in a tiny establishment nearby, where there are sometimes eight or nine babies and toddlers plus their mothers (sometimes fathers, although fathers tend not to flock), one small child was racing little cars along the floor while another took Buzz Lightyear for a fly around the tables. A third settled for banging on the table and a fourth looked perilously close to falling on a fork. The room was black with strollers. It’s the same in hundreds of other cafes.

I admit I’m torn. Part of me finds it charming. Life! In all its vigour! Part of me wishes the mummy mafia were elsewhere. Or at least, not here in such numbers. What happened to playgroups held at each other’s homes, or in parks or halls, where kids could run free without disturbing others? Too downmarket? Nothing to buy?

It may be merely another example of the increasingly blurred division between the lives of adults and children, just as adult and child fashions have blurred, but one suspects there’s also a sense of parental entitlement operating that isn’t actually about the kids. A case, rather, of parents feeling it’s their right to take their children wherever they, the parents, wish to be. Hooked on a sophisticated, consumerist way of life, they are reluctant to let parenthood interrupt it, even if it means others around them – including their own children – have to suffer. The result is a kind of mandatory public sharing of the difficult years of child rearing.

One young mother I know recalls a conversation with a friend who had a new baby and was complaining about the difficulty of keeping up her previous level of partying and socialising. “I said to her, ‘But you’re a mother now; you’ve got a baby’, and she said, ‘Well, I don’t see why my life should be put on hold.’ ”

On the other hand, women, especially mothers, have been locked out of public life and public spaces for centuries. Perhaps this is a reclamation and should be applauded. It can be lonely and alienating being a new mother; the chance to talk to others in an adult setting is seductive. And I still remember how wounded I felt, as a young single mother myself, when two of my childless friends primly announced that my three-year-old “interrupted their lifestyle” and would I mind not bringing him with me.

But back to that ban … Complaining online about McDains and the “backlash against children”, one incensed American mother wrote that she made an effort to expose her daughter to arts and culture, and bans like these would hinder that program. Her daughter knew what to order at a Thai restaurant, knew how to use chopsticks, often went to art galleries, had a passport and had regularly flown. Her daughter was three. It’s hard to imagine those were the child’s preferred activities.

Apart from anything else, what’s going to be left for her to experience? I suppose there’s McDains when she turns six. ( smh.com.au )