On a packed commuter tube carriage, I'm sitting in the "priority seat". It only just became available when we reached a station, and I was glad of the chance to sit down and it was closest to where I was standing. Currently ill with a bug and feeling like death, not that that is hugely relevant as I'm not pregnant or disabled to qualify for special treatment. If I hadn't sat there, someone else would have and nobody else appeared to be a "qualifying person".
So, a mum and little girl get on. Train becomes less packed. Girl looks about 8 yrs old, shoe size 1-2 (I'm good with shoes), and has a scooter. My instinct was to offer the girl my seat, but I dithered and the woman next to me offers her seat to the child, and the mum declines as they are getting off the next stop.
When I was a child, my mum made us get up to offer an adult a seat, regardless of whether said adult was vulnerable or in special need. This was the social convention because in those days you deferred to the older generation. When we were babies or toddlers my mum would have been given a seat and we would be on her lap. We would rarely have been offered a seat of our own. I can't remember at what age we were made to stand but probably from about 4 or 5.
So what is the cut off age or condition now? This girl was quite capable of standing, yet possibly because I have small children, and as a society we now defer to children's wants and needs far more than when I was a child, my first instinct was to offer her my seat.
I dithered with indecision paralysis, so lost the opportunity. Then I started to wonder if I actually should have offered it or not. Over to you, wise old MN.