If it’s summer, that means it’s time for another shitshow on Feministe from a guest blogger who declares that the childfree hate and oppress children — this time, it’s because the GB was at a bar with her kid when she received a call from a friend who wanted her to hang out, chill, drink and greet the dawn — at least until the GB’s friend (or the friend’s friends; there was mention of whispering in the background) asked if her daughter was with her. From this, the GB declared, “You do not have a right to child-free spaces,” slammed US culture (the GB, Maia, lives in Cairo) as child-unfriendly, and pretty much put people on notice that if they see a child misbehaving in public, they’re awful, child-hating, oppressing people if they don’t send “warm energy” rather than eyerolls the child’s way.
No word on whether she asked her friend why she asked about the kid’s presence, which might have cleared things up. But I guess revealing the source of the friends’ reluctance to party down with a three-year-old might cast doubt on both the central premise of the post — that wanting a handful of adults-only spaces is misogynist — and on Maia’s description of her child as Cooler Than You.
Things devolved, as they do on Feministe. This is a well-greased third rail. Within the first ten comments, the original idea of “How dare you want to keep me from bringing my toddler to an all-night party or have a limited number of spaces where kids are not allowed” to “The childfree want to keep kids out of ALL public spaces, and that’s misogynist because it limits the movements of women in society, you bigots!” While that would be the case if true, it’s, well, not true, and so: I call straw. Particularly nice was the way that PWD were mocked for wanting quiet spaces, or service workers were told to just shut up and do their jobs if they complained about kids who knocked things (or people) over and created more work/a more dangerous work environment.
But I’m not going to rehash all the depressingly well-trod talking-past-each-other business; others have done so. I’m going to follow up on Karnythia’s post and talk about kids and drunks, as someone who’s been there.
It’s a topic on which I am well-versed, having grown up with a seriously alcoholic father. How serious? He drank nearly a liter of Scotch every single night (in a little under three and a half hours) when I was growing up. When I was little — as in the age of Maia’s daughter — I probably didn’t notice his drinking too much because a) he was not quite as bad then; b) I was in bed by the time he really got rolling, and my mother ran interference. But of course, as you get older, you get a later bedtime, and I started becoming aware something was wrong as I started staying up late enough to see him really get sloshed.
Mind you, unlike Karnythia, I wasn’t brought to bars. My father drank at home, and if we were out somewhere when he was drinking, it was a party or a barbecue or a bar/restaurant, and my mother was there as well, not drinking, and keeping an eye out for when we should get the hell out of there before he made a scene. She didn’t always get him to leave before that happened, but she usually was the one to drive home (usually — I do recall some terrifying rides with Dad drinking while he drove).
So unless I saw drunk uncles or neighbors or friends of parents, my experience of drunks as a child was pretty much limited to my father.
And let me tell you, if he was any guide — and I found out when I was older and hung around drunk people at bars that he indeed was – drunks are fucking terrifying.
I still get agita when watching TV with people who like to have the TV at high volume, because if Dad heard the TV when he had a snootful, he would probably come downstairs or into the basement and start bellowing at us, chasing us around, or on occasion, beating my brothers (once, he attacked my brother with a thick steel T-square, hitting him on the head; my brother called child protective services, which didn’t go down very well with Dad or Mom). We couldn’t be assured that he was really passed out after 9, when he usually went upstairs, because there were a significant number of times when he came roaring down the stairs after he’d gone up and we’d all emerged from the basement or outside.
Same thing with yelling. I get heart palpitations when people raise their voices around me (when it’s otherwise quiet), and I don’t think that’s ever going to go away. Once, when I was 7 or 8, my sister and I found my parents’ first kitchen table down in the basement. Since we didn’t have a desk in our room, we asked our mom if we could have it, and she said sure. I know we painted it; she may have even helped us. That night, we were in our room, in bed, when he kicked open the door and demanded to know where the marijuana was. Kat and I cowered under our covers, screaming; we didn’t know what the hell he was talking about - I’m not sure we knew what marijuana was (did I mention I was 7 or 8?). Turns out he smelled the paint fumes and assumed they were drugs — probably because he had no idea what weed smelled like.
The thing that made all of this so terrifying was its unpredictability* — you really just never could tell when he would go off, even if you had a general sense of what might set him off; as in the paint fumes/marijuana incident, you could be woken from a sound sleep by bellowing, banging, roaring. A lot of drunks are like that; they can be happy one second and violent the next, but if they’re strangers to you, you don’t know the triggers or the warning signs or how many drinks it takes to go from one to the other — or how many drinks they’ve had. Not that knowing makes it any better.
Which, you know, makes taking your toddler** to a bar a really stellar idea.
If that makes me an oppressive child-hater, I will wear that name proudly.
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* What made it really poisonous was that we couldn’t talk about it, except among us kids. He didn’t remember a goddamn thing, and my mother wanted to pretend it never happened. We lived our lives wrapped in shame and fear and furtiveness. And resentment — oh, boy, did we live with resentment. Even when he got sent to rehab by his company because he kept getting stinking drunk on business trips, he tried to blame it on us for having an issue with his drinking.
** Not limited to toddlers. I don’t like to see kids of any age at bars. Leaving aside questions of the unsuitability of a bunch of drinkers as companions for children, bars are fucking LOUD even if they’re not playing music. A crowded bar creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop of noise — the bigger the crowd, the louder it is, and the louder you have to talk to be heard. I will leave a bar that’s too loud; I can’t imagine that’s good for the development of any kid’s hearing. For that matter, what is wrong with people who bring their dogs and their sensitive hearing to loud bars?
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