There comes a moment, a few weeks after you give birth, when your baby outgrows their Lilliputian clothes and you’re obliged to replace ‘newborn’ with ‘0-3 months’. At which point, usually while still absolutely steaming with hormones, you find yourself sitting on their bedroom floor, staring at these teeny garments, trying to decide if you’re going to keep them (have another baby) or give them to the charity shop (start leaving leaflets about vasectomy around the house).
Historically, this was a major decision for you, but one which had almost no relevance to anyone else. But as the birth rate steadily declines, and the UK is set, for the first time, to have a greater number of deaths than births, these personal choices start to become something different, something meaningful on a macro level. There are now articles, podcasts, documentaries, essays and academic studies attempting to solve the sudden and widespread ambivalence about having babies, and the fact that those of us who do have babies are increasingly likely to stop at one or maybe two at an absolute push.
Happily, I’m able to save everyone a lot of time and money, for I think I have discovered the cure for the birth crisis: lower standards.
When my first daughter was born, I was a fully paid-up member of the Good Mother gang. I had attended antenatal courses, read books and watched endless online videos. I understood that the only acceptable way to nurse a baby was to have them attached to me at all times, to exclusively breastfeed until the child was driving and to eschew help in favour of endlessly playing together. Nursery of course was to be avoided at all costs (homeschooling would be ideal). As the child grew up, I knew that sleepovers must be verboten lest they spend the night in the house of a sex offender and grandparents needed to adhere to my list of rules and boundaries if they wanted any unsupervised access to the child. Basically, as long as I was able to completely sublimate every single one of my needs or desires, I’d be absolutely fine.
My first husband left when our baby was a few months old, at which point I found myself in a special subset of women: single parents, parents of children with complex needs and parents of twins. The people who get a free pass to cut corners, who are not bound by the rules of Good Parenting, but are allowed to use formula, have additional help and occasionally actually seek respite from parenting.
As I went from breastfeeding to formula, attachment parenting to sleeping in our own rooms, baby-led weaning to baby porridge and jars of puree, I realised that I was suddenly having a really nice time. I loved singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ in a draughty church hall all morning, because I knew that by 7.15 p.m. my daughter would be bathed, knocked out by a massive bottle of formula and asleep in her own room, leaving me to drink a glass of wine. It was brilliant.
When I confessed that I was sending my daughter to a childminder three days a week, I might as well have admitted to putting her up a chimney
I remain shocked at the number of women, presumably made of stronger stuff than I am, who did – and continue to – meet the seemingly impossible standards that modern parenting demands. When I confessed to my friends that I was sending my daughter to a childminder three days a week from nine months old, the reaction was such that I might as well have admitted to putting her up a chimney. When I admitted to leaving my daughter with my mother for a night so I could go on a dirty weekend to Brighton, the response was the same as if I’d said I was abandoning her with a phone and a Deliveroo account.
Being a perfect parent inevitably seems to come with a side order of martyrdom. I try my best to avoid so-called ‘mumfluencers’ online, but it’s unavoidable and in those spheres it is simply an accepted truth that if you have children you will be perpetually exhausted, overworked and simultaneously overstimulated and incredibly bored. And if you’re making your own organic baby food, attending baby massage classes and holding them for every single one of their naps, then yes, it is unavoidable. But with lower standards, it doesn’t have to be that way. Write names in the back of their clothes instead of sewing them, let them get bored and find an activity instead of planning something intellectually stimulating. Accept that dinner occasionally comprises two Babybels and some grapes. For god’s sake never, ever, ever iron an item of children’s clothing.
I have a three-year-old and a newborn and I am happy, creatively fulfilled and getting a reasonable amount of sleep, because my only metrics for success are that they end each day alive, fed and having been outside. Once you remove all the pressure and expectation, parenting is actually – whisper it – really good fun.
It’ll be at least a couple of decades until we know whether my ‘lots of paid childcare, quite a lot of Disney on the telly and a bath every other day’ method has left my kids traumatised. But whether or not it’s worked for them, it’s worked sufficiently well for me that when I looked down at my second daughter’s newborn clothes there wasn’t a moment of hesitation. Back into the loft they went. Low-standards parenting is so genuinely enjoyable that I’m entirely willing to do my bit to solve the birth crisis.
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