I love being a parent, and when the twins leave home next year, I’ll miss them. But what I won’t miss is the endless conversations you’re meant to have with other people about kids. I know I’ve said it before, but definitely the worst thing about having kids is other parents. For the last twenty years, far too many of my interactions with other adults has involved talking about every stage of parenthood in painful detail: labour, delivery, sleeping, crawling, teething, tantrums, toilet training, childcare, kindergarten, school, exams, Oh God please make it stop! I cannot think of a single topic of conversation I wouldn’t rather have than talk about little Timmy and his prodigious feats in his NCEA exams. Maybe it’s just sour grapes – I’m definitely a failed Tiger Mom – the nearest I came to Hot Housing my kids was putting the oldest in front of a video of Baby Mozart at six months while I read my book. Let me just get them safely to adulthood, is all I ask. I blame my parents (as you do), but actually their style of laissez faire parenting was probably fairly typical of their era. OK, maybe my siblings and I were a bit feral at times, but on the other hand, I can’t imagine anyone asking my Mum about cloth nappies versus disposables when she was a psychiatric registrar, wheeling her portable ECT machine around the wards; or later, quizzing her about bedtime routines when she was refusing to prescribe benzodiazepines to inmates at Paremoremo prison (which her counterpart was dishing out like lollies). Maybe if I was just more of a kickass person I wouldn’t have to put up with this sort of crap either?
*I decided to change the name to reflect the fact that it was such an unpleasant rant and I was not my usual cheery self. Also, I have figured out how I could have avoided these conversations over all these years, and it’s simple, really: be a man. Then I could have just talked about the important things in life: rugby, renovations, and craft beer.