Impractical Parenting: DO expect me to fall all over myself because you’re A Parent

Not happy Jan!

Happy fucking Mothers Day! Compassion, where is it? Seriously, I am getting very tired of all these articles about how mothers expect people to fall all over themselves just because they’re a parent. Well, let me give it to you quite simply. SHOW SOME COMPASSION! I’m a mother, I have a three year old daughter and one year old twin boys and I can assure you that I do not want people to “fall all over themselves” just because I am a parent. And here’s another little secret, none of my parent friends want you to either. However, we would all like a little bit of decency and respect shown to us. Is courtesy so hard? I show people courtesy, regardless of if they are single, married, young, old whatever, I expect a little common courtesy in return. So how about we all just operate on an understanding that everybody has shit to do, everybody had issues, and let’s just make this world a better place, not a worse one, for other people. Maybe try that out of vogue thing called “Random Acts of Kindness.” I’d like to just operate under the system of – Be Nice To One Another.

But if you are so uptight that doing anything that is not 100% your way is so foreign to you that you think of it as a complete affront to your sensibilities, how about I give you a few ideas on how to respect and accommodate your parent friends without “having to fall all over yourself.” (If anyone else read that same article that has me so steamed, you probably also read the one putting down Stay At Home Mothers, I’ll be ranting about that one when I get a chance too. Seriously, just be nice people. Everybody is doing it tough.)

1. If you are crossing a footpath and are perfectly able bodied, you can step up on the gutter… MUCH HARDER FOR PEOPLE WITH PRAMS! So perhaps make that ultimate sacrifice and step up and allow people with prams, infirm and people in wheel chairs to use the dips in the guttering that provide ramps, which they actually need. Shocking I know. The idea of stepping an inch to the side. I do it naturally when I use a crossing sans-pram, step up, and don’t even consider it falling all over myself to accommodate people who need the ramp in the guttering. Maybe try and see if you can do such a thing without it ruining your life.
2. Don’t whine to people with young children about how hard it is for you to visit them because they live x far away and they should visit you. Let’s even forget the fact that it is way easier for one or two adults to get in a car and drive somewhere than it is for someone to load three kids, a pram and a couple of porta-cots. Because honestly, the fact that it is way easier for someone who considers compassion to be a foreign concept really won’t care about ease anyway. So let me appeal to your logic, you ask for a fifty-fifty split in going to each other’s places, go right ahead but do expect to live up to fifty-fifty in every single other area of the friendship. You call fifty percent of the time, you arrange things fifty percent of the time, and you do fifty percent of everything. If you don’t have the compassion to be able to literally travel the extra mile when it is easier for you, I doubt you have the compassion to give fifty-fifty in other areas either. So take your pick. Step up in your friendship or step up in your travel.
3. Don’t tell mothers that you didn’t decide to have children so why should you have to tolerate them. FUCK OFF! That’s what you deserve to have said to you. Over and over again. Unfortunately, your parents did decide to have a child, and it was you, you who apparently wishes that no children could be seen or heard… which translate to, no children exist. Go off and live in a forest away from all. Adults were children once, if you want to interact with adults, well, they have to get through their childhood first. Nobody is asking a child hater to look after their child, or even spend time with them. You’re not the kind of person we want influencing our kids’ minds. But yes, kids will be breathing your same oxygen on the footpath. They’ll even be there on the train when you are, they’ll be serving you coffee at Maccas, and heaven forbid, babies, who cannot use words to communicate their disdain for you, will cry in your ear space. So really, show some tolerance or move to the mountains. Here’s another hot tip, people will burp, fart and sneeze in your air space too. Even if you choose not to emit gasses others will. So really, you should just go live a life of hermitude. Sorry that we humans and our tiny offspring piss you off so much, hopefully you’ll find enlightenment when you’re on your own away from our filthy populace.

I could go on but I said a few and I think I have vented my spleen enough. Seriously over this whole, put everyone down and don’t show any compassion to people thing that is popular today. It is like people have worked out that racism and homophobia is not okay but instead of putting their hatred aside and realizing it is toxic they have simply lumped it onto mothers. On behalf of all mothers, We’ve got enough shit, go peddle your hate elsewhere.

My boys looking guilty because they dared exist when there are people out there who didn’t want children… they also fart in your general direction.