Women in public/children in public

Well quite. Not to mention the fact that why is a child's reason for needing to be on that train seen as less important than other peoples?

Exactly! And given the route I take, there are really only two reasons a person would take their child on a commuter train - to go to Guys & St Thomas' Hospital, or to go into childcare more local to the parents place of work. Two extremely valid reasons - although I couldn't care less if the parents were just getting an early start on a day out either. They are just as entitled to be on that train and existing as I am.

Performance parenting is definitely - IME - a thing

Well, if it is a 'thing' as you say, perhaps it's because parents, mainly mothers, feel as if they need to put on a show that they are doing a good job because everyone judges them whatever they do? Just a thought.

I usually engage with children who are trying to get my attention, and will smile (or pull faces) etc. But sometimes I just don't feel like it or I'm in my own thoughts (often necessary on a packed morning train, it's the only way to survive) and the joy of them not being your own children is that you aren't obliged to engage with them. Maybe I'm a nob on occasion...

Performance parenting is definitely - IME - a thing, but it isn't just reading a book using funny voices or pointing out interesting things from the train window. It's something very different but the phrase has been coopted to cover normal, engaged parenting done in public

I have had a woman on a train pointedly saying to her annoying child with whom I wasn't engaging that "the lady isn't interested in you darling"

Ignoring a child who is trying to engage with you makes you a bit of a nob. I wouldn't say you were being judgemental though, just a nob.

I am also glad you started this thread op. I feel like parents but mums in particular cannot win.

As a pp poster says, you have to talk to your children to stop them from getting bored and playing up and if no one ever talks to their children or takes them anywhere how the bloody hell will they ever learn anything.

I also don't get the vitriol against parents who complain about people parking in p&c spaces. Yes, there are some people who need to use them, elderly people/ people with disabilities but don't qualify for a bb/ heavily pregnant women but generally people who take these spaces when they don't have a child are just lazy, entitled twats. Ultimately, it is a shop's decision whether to provide these and they are for people with young children to use.

I always get confused by the irritation at little children on rush hour trains. Who would plan a journey specifically to be on a packed, more expensive train if it wasn't necessary?

Well quite. Not to mention the fact that why is a child's reason for needing to be on that train seen as less important than other peoples?

I always get confused by the irritation at little children on rush hour trains. Who would plan a journey specifically to be on a packed, more expensive train if it wasn't necessary?

I get a busy commuter train into London every morning and I feel like I'm the only person who doesn't get irritated if their is a parent and child talking to each other

I have lots of childfree friends and acquaintances who moan about children on rush hour trains. It infuriates me. I regularly used to take my DC2 on rush hour trains because she had hospital appointments in town. But of course we were just getting in the way of all the "important" people going to their "important" jobs!

Great post OP, it's not something I had ever really thought about before but something that's quite natural to me as a childless person!

I get a busy commuter train into London every morning and I feel like I'm the only person who doesn't get irritated if their is a parent and child talking to each other when the train is otherwise quiet. I think it's lovely to see a 2 year old taking an interest in everything around them and their mum indulging their curiosity rather than trying to shush them.

The same way that when I've been near women with children in coffee shops and they have apologised to me for their child being anything other than silent, I've told them it's absolutely fine and nothing to worry about and that children can't be expected to be perfect "seen but not heard". Kids chatting and babbling and asking endless questions is adorable. Kids tantruming in public is normal and unavoidable.

"The UK does seem to have an issue with the idea that children are people too - and by association, parents (and so especially mothers). "

Not the UK but South East England. Everywhere else people are markedly nicer, happier and smilier toward families with youngish children. IME.

"You are right, hydrangea, there is an element of performance that is necessary to keep young children's attention. I know that the more interesting I make it, the longer I can draw out a meal, the more she will eat etc. Or the longer she'll be happy in our seat on a train journey. It's part of what makes it so tiring."

"I learnt a new phrase the other day "performance parenting". I didn't know something like that even existed. It always takes a bit of a "performance" to keep a child's attention. It's ridiculous how judgy people have become."

BasketOfDeplorables and hydrangea nailed it. Thank you .

Exactly basket. I don't know how Lass went from that to actually thinking we're all annoyed we're being ignored

I don't know you went from what I said to "we're all annoyed we're being ignored".

I have had a woman on a train pointedly saying to her annoying child with whom I wasn't engaging that "the lady isn't interested in you darling".

I expect there are some mothers who want attention, but I imagine they wanted it beforehand, and mothers who didn't continue in that same way. I doubt having a baby changes that aspect of personality.

From a conversational point of view, I know others aren't going to be as interested in the minutiae of what my children are up to, but I was always aware of that about my job, which is something I can't say for everyone. But I do see a distinction made when some people I know talk about mutual friends: 'all they talk about is their baby' when previously they only ever talked about work, but this was never commented on. Similarly 'they just don't do anything but baby stuff now, god, you can actually get a babysitter' when previously they had periods of working intensely that meant they didn't socialise much for similar length stretches that weren't seen as negative at all.

I do sometimes wonder if mothers interpret a complete lack of interest in their children as some sort of judgement.

I never understand this idea that parents want everyone to look at their children with adoration. In the same way that I imagine most people aren't that interested in a toddler they don't know, I'm not really interested in anyone but my toddler when I'm looking after her. People loudly sigh and tut in a passive aggressive manner, and stop me in the street to give me unsolicited and crap 'advice' - probably because I look younger because I'm short, but I'm in my 30s. I'd bloody love a lack of interest.

You are right, hydrangea, there is an element of performance that is necessary to keep young children's attention. I know that the more interesting I make it, the longer I can draw out a meal, the more she will eat etc. Or the longer she'll be happy in our seat on a train journey. It's part of what makes it so tiring.

I learnt a new phrase the other day "performance parenting". I didn't know something like that even existed. It always takes a bit of a "performance" to keep a child's attention. It's ridiculous how judgy people have become.

I am so happy to see this thread too. It's summing up everything I have been thinking while browsing active threads in recent weeks.

Sparrow, I am from NI and I completely recognise what you are saying about this seeming more like a UK/England phenomenon (I live in London, obv from username, and this is not something I worry about when I am with my kids at home at all, yet here I am constantly aware that people probably think I'm being a huge twat all the time, just for existing, and no matter which 'style' of parenting I am doing at that moment).

I have the temerity to do things like commute with my two toddlers on the tube, at rush hour, up to 4 days a week. My DH does the same, and if we are separated on a busy tube with one child each I can literally watch the difference in treatment that we get. He doesn't worry at all about taking up space, people offer him extra space, everyone grins at him and the lucky child on his knee really indulgently, they chat, complete strangers give him FOOD even! Meanwhile I bow and scrape to thank the person who has given me a seat (or even some days the person who would have got my seat if they had been quicker to board seems the most put out of all!) and spend the journey praying for quiet and that anyone my really friendly, outgoing children might say hello to wont be a huge dick about it. If we are commuting together, DH wants to just casually jump on to whatever train, wherever. I insist on going to the 'quiet' end and waiting for a relatively quiet train so there's less chance of my inadvertently irritating someone by existing. It's so depressing.

The other thing that really annoys me about this is how internalised it is for lots of mothers/parents. On threads where things like this comes up, so many posts just sound like everyone expects its totally natural to find children irritating and that they should be seen and not heard. I can, with my hand on my heart, say that children in public have never irritated me, even when I was young, free, single and had no kids in my life at all. I've always either just happily ignored or even (god forbid) grinned and said hello to people's children in all kinds of public situations, it's never cost me a thought. Maybe this was the result of growing up in NI, but I find the attitude to children where I live in London not only grim, but also just completely unexpected. I had no idea people were wandering about feeling angry about this all the time and being horrible to everyone.

That's a good point.
I have started telling my children they are people too, and that in the same way they shouldn't push past people it is not acceptable for people to push past them.

I've started noticing this and it's so rude.

The UK does seem to have an issue with the idea that children are people too - and by association, parents (and so especially mothers).

It's like the mother is a person, but the children aren't and therefore a mother/buggy/toddler should somehow squeeze into the space for only one person and any more than that is unreasonable.

I've stopped being anything more than strictly reasonable. My kids are pretty well behaved (and give them an ipad and they're no problem at all) and as I live away from family and friends, they're going to be with us if we go out. They are as entitled to eat/travel as any other human being and I'm not going to apologise for reasonable behaviour, not when there's a couple of business men in the corner loudly talking, or a couple on their way out, or people on their way back from shopping taking up room with bags/suitcases/whatever.

People on here often call that entitled parenting, I just think it's recognising that children exist, and aren't less important just because they're smaller.

I would have assumed that anyone who was smoking in public whilst heavily pregnant was probably likely to let rip at anyone they thought was judging them

You wouldn't be wrong, fucking hell maybe I was/am(?) intimidating then. Which I suppose is exactly the same reason people wouldn't do it to a man.

Miffer I don't believe all men are so unaccustomed to social cues that they would completely miss it

Oh I definitely don't think that men get judged the same. I was thinking more that as we raise girls to care more what people think of them part of that is inevitably being on the look out for the social cues that show people are disapproving.

A society tends to be shaped by the powerful people. If the powerful people don't associate with children then surely that has an effect on how children are seen by that society?

So being a woman out with a child evokes a cultural signal of inferiority

No it does not. Class distinctions in the UK are alive and well.

I don't doubt a woman's or for that matter a man's , class signifiers get taken into account but a sweeping statement that being out in public with a child evokes a cultural signal of inferiority because upper class children have or used to have nannies is over egging the pudding.

To expand on the class thing - it feels like in the UK child care is seen as something well bred people don't do - children are out of sight until they're fit to be seen in public (ie not children any more). Upper class mothers of old wouldn't dream of being out with a child. So being a woman out with a child evokes a cultural signal of inferiority.

While I totally agree with there being a misogynistic element to this, it's also tied up with cultural practices. I'm from Ireland and live in England. The difference in attitude to children between the two countries is enormous. In Ireland children are wallpaper, everyone accepts they're just there and no one takes much notice of them, generally. It's generally acknowledged that kids are cute and lovely but also ridiculously hard work, there is a lot of sympathy and fellow feeling, possibly due to the fact that very large families were common until recently. The idea that people would watch and question 'parenting' hasn't quite caught on - being a parent is like being a woman, it's just a fact about you, not something you do. In contrast I feel quite 'watched' as a parent in the UK and there's a sense that their behaviour reflects on me in a way that's up for judgement by other people. It feels tied to class I to me in some way. Of course throw in the fact that I'm a woman and a mother and I can't do right. It has a significant effect on mothers IMO. In Ireland it's possible to just live your life with your children tagging along - you just bring them around with you and no one takes any notice. But in the UK you are restricted because you know you're going to get looks and judgement. I tend to gear a lot of my activity towards child-friendly stuff for that reason. My cousin's in Ireland don't - they just get on with things and expect the children to fall in with it. There are far fewer child oriented spaces in Ireland - why would you spend a hellish afternoon in softplay when you can go to the pub with your friends and just let the kids run around?