Given my interest in the topic in the past I feel obliged to highlight that yet again there is a conversation happening in the feminist blogosphere about child-free spaces, although I won’t be keeping up with it this time because I have begun to think that it borders on masochism for me to read those threads. My heart goes out to all the good people fighting the good fight, thank you. Plus, honourable mention for this over at Speaker’s Corner and this over at Strollerderby. Dishonourable mention for this over at Jezebel.
P.S. As it happens we’re taking our children to a bar this Saturday afternoon for a friend’s birthday drinks. Not only did this non-parent friend specifically mention that our children were welcome at her celebration, but some bars in Australia, like the one we’re going to, actually go out of their way to be quite child-friendly. Fancy that. So, for once I am glad we’re not living in New York.
Don’t blame it on us New Yorkers, please. We’re not all like that.
For example, this is what happened to a friend of mine at Jezebel.
There are cool people in every city. And then there are the other ones.
littlem – I don’t mean to sound like I hate New York. In my post I say “for once”, like I spend pretty much all the rest of my time wishing we lived in New York.. it is just that the last time we had a thread of doom about child-free space over at Feministe it was very much focused on NY.
[…] my surprise, then, when the blogwars came to Blue Milk! Well, not quite – she’s steering clear of the threads of doom, and I […]
I have figured out what happens.
No, seriously.
This is my theory: The world is split into two groups. Group A and Group B. When discussing Scenario Y, Group A imagines one thing in their heads and Group B imagines something else, and neither group is able to understand why the other is being so goddamned unreasonable.
So Group A imagines a bar on a Saturday afternoon that serves booze and also foodstuffs and their own kid. Group B imagines a smoky bar that has no food on a Friday night at 11pm when it’s packed with people trying to pick each other up and screaming and rowdiness.
That’s my theory, anyway. It’s hard for me to see these conversations because they make me really upset – I’m due in September and I would like to think that I would still be able to see my friends and go out even if the baby is with me.
Emily I think you’re spot on, this is exactly what is happening in those threads.
You know I totally cannot understand why feminists do not understand the intersectionality of this issue. Children as a class today are increasingly nonwhite compared to the older generations who turn up their noses at them, and I wonder how many of those “badly behaved” in those anecdotes children are actually children of color and girls in the minds of the adults remembering the story.
Furthermore, in framing it being ok to dislike kids because it’s a phase, something to be gotten over, feeds into the idea that disabled people need to be “fixed” and “cured” and there should be a time table on it and when they’re “better” they can interact with wider society.
If we have any chance of stopping OTHER systemic problems in our society, we need to promote the valuing of humans as humans and as they are *now* not in imagining they’ll become sufficiently human later for me to interact with.
jemand – well said.
Alara Rogers suggested over at Feministe that sometimes people are taking their justified anger at certain white, upper class arrogant assholes out on an easier target – their children. That often times in the most obnoxious anecdotes, the entire family is obnoxious and self-centered – and not just in a “they won’t control their kids” kind of way. But that people zero in on the kids because it’s safer to call kids on their shit than to call privileged adults on their shit.
I think both of your theories make a lot of sense.
And thanks so much for that point about phases and disabled rights – that’s a great way of explaining what bugs me so much about the idea of justifying anything on the idea that childhood is not permanent.
FYI – Alara also has a several other great comments – including at least one about the whole idea of child-free and child-friendly spaces being a throwback to the Victorian idea of separate spheres. If anyone feels up to wading through the rest of the comments to get to them, the best are closer to the bottom.
Thanks for the mention on Twitter, Blue Milk 🙂
Emily, good theory. And then people in both groups read Derailing For Dummies, and we have a thread’o’doom.
If I might add to your theory, I’d say the thread’o’doom is compounded by the fact that there are another two groups, C and D, where group C’s philosophy is “people are different – let’s find ways to deal with that” and group D’s philosophy is “people are different, but they shouldn’t be – let’s find a way to make everyone be the same”. But you can get people in every permutation of group – AC, AD, BC and BD – and since each of the 4 types disagree, the shouting continues for ever.
Emily, good call. I’ve been both an outgoing, drunky, single, and mother with kids in public, and I swear I can’t ever recall the Group A scenario colliding with the Group B scenario. The latter vision, where your three year old is mixing it up at Bungalow 8, or the Beatrice Inn, is, to my mind, wholly fictional.
Addendum: I suppose on further reflection, that the situation described in the original post is the one time I have heard of that happening: mother and child out at a bar until an hour when a friend would call and say “hey, let’s kick on til dawn at my place”. But that situation has got to be so rare that to discuss it as a reasonable possibility really detracts from the conversation’s substance.
I liked the threads about this topic on Bitch PhD best, primarily because the OPs were so blunt about the fact that child-hating and exclusion is bigotry that it actually got through to me (a childless woman who doesn’t know anyone with kids).
Yes BitchPhD’s threads on this topic have been brilliant.
Can I ask the name of the child-friendly bar you went to??? Always up for a recommendation. We like LocknLoad for the courtyard out the back but haven’t tried many other places…
[…] August 1, 2010 by blue milk So, in response to all the ridiculous shit being fired at mothers (and Mai’a particularly) at the moment over at Feministe, I mentioned that we also take our kids to bars from time to time, including this very weekend in fac… […]
When I was a baby feminist and playing in bands, late 70s / early 80s, I played at lots of dances and benefit concert type events and I remember that the more an event was aligned with feminists and/or the Left the more of a tendency there was to assume that children would come along. There were very often small creche spaces so the kids could be with other kids and sleep if they wanted.
If people are seeing feminism as anti-child in the US it might be due to the rise of that really toxic childfree subgroup – I don’t mean the idea of celebrating womanhood with or without children, I mean the kind of childfree who go on internet boards and talk about “moos” etc. I don’t think we have that toxic culture to such an extent in Australia… do we?
I think you’re right Helen, though I have to admit to feeling a little paranoid about places I take my children now after reading so many of these “toxic childfree subgroup” comments around the place.
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[…] again there’s a conversation in the feminist blogosphere about child free spaces: Blue Milk has the details AND she’s taking her children to a bar. Lauredhel is delighted by the children who were in the public space when her scooter packed it […]
[…] no less insightful for it). Most of these came via my friend Molly who happened to mention the blog Blue Milk (thinking+motherhood=feminist) in a post earlier today which sent me link […]