Save me from parental choice

Despite every objective measurement that demonstrates today’s children are safer and more privileged that any previous generation, their parents seem more fearful and anxious than any parents before them, even those who faced times of real peril - like during World Wars I and II. It seems there are no greater fears than imaginary ones.

Oddly enough, the cause of all this parental angst, I suspect, is the very thing parents say they want so much more of: parental choice.

Let’s just take a look at some of the choices that face today’s parents. First, they get to choose whether or not they want to be parents at all and as the continual increase in the age of first-time mothers shows, spend years debating the possible pros and cons. So long, in fact, that by the time they decide, their fertility has often declined to such a point they must then choose whether to let nature take its course, or embark on the emotional roller coaster that is fertility treatment.

Then, when and if they do get pregnant, they must decide whether to have all the plethora of tests that are now recommended for pregnant women, particularly those who are over 30, some of which carry with them the chance of causing miscarriage. I have spent many anguished hours with newly pregnant friends facing that difficult decision.

Even if all goes well, there are more difficult choices to be faced. Will you choose to know the child’s gender before it’s born, or not? Will you have a home birth, a birth at a birthing centre or at an ordinary labour ward? Do you want access to pain-relieving drugs or are you hell-bent on a natural birth?

Now, more and more women are choosing elective caesareans, though why anyone would choose to have abdominal surgery is beyond me. Will you give birth in water, standing up, on all fours, on a birthing stool, or with feet in stirrups?

Who do you want to support you at the birth? Your partner, obviously, but how do you choose between your best friend, your sister and your mother, particularly when you know someone’s nose is bound to be out of joint. Oh, what the hell, ask them all. Some parents are even including older siblings in the “miracle of birth”. A good way to make sure you never get grandchildren, if you ask me.

And once you’ve got the cast lined up, what about the entertainment? People spend months planning exactly what food, music, familiar objects and other paraphernalia they are going to take with them. Far be it from me to suggest that once that first real labour pain hits, you won’t notice much else from then on. And speaking of suggestions, everyone who has ever given birth - and a whole lot who haven’t - will be determined to put their two cents in no matter what you choose.

Once the poor little mite makes it into the world - usually in the manner of their own choosing, no matter what their parents may have decided - you have to choose a name. People start making lists the day they see the pink line on the pregnancy test but usually don’t make up their mind till they’ve actually seen the baby. How any newborn looks anything like a Saffron, a Pearl, a Tex or a Hunter, I cannot imagine but obviously some do.

Then you take it home, will you breastfeed and for how long? Will it sleep in your bed or in its own? Will you leave it to cry or rush to comfort? Will you feed on demand or on schedule? When will you give solids? Is a non-organic carrot going to give it cancer? Cloth nappies or disposables? Canned baby food or homemade? Vegetarian or omnivore? Will you immunise or not? When should you potty train, leave baby with a sitter and the big one; when should you go back to work? And for all these choices there are a thousand opinions, all different, all plausible, all sure they are right.

Then, as the child grows, if you do go back into the workforce, what sort of childcare do you choose? Expensive and private, a nanny, perhaps? Long day care, occasional day care, family day care, the lady next door, or, like many parents, a cobbled together schedule of grandparents, neighbours and paid care?

And, whether your child is in childcare or not, do you hothouse? Do you restrict TV, spend hours with flashcards, get them into kindy gym, toddler’s music lessons and baby ballet? Or let them run around the backyard with their nappies off playing in the mud, while you watch from the sidelines with a well-earned glass of cask white (the 21st century’s version of mother’s ruin)?

Eventually, they are old enough for school, and this is where the big guns of parental choice really start to make their presence felt. Will you send precious (or Pearl or Hunter) to the public school down the road, or to the prestigious prep school where all the girls at mother’s group are sending their children? What about Montessori, Catholic, Jewish or fundamentalist Christian? Or will you home school, having decided other children are just far too dangerous for your little genius?

And will you start after-school coaching and when? How young is too young for Suzuki method or Kumon? And if you choose not to send them - because they already kick up something fierce about swimming lessons and ballet and little athletics and they do have rather nasty black circles under their eyes - will they be disadvantaged? Are they - oh, horror of horrors - in danger of being Left Behind?

And, even if you do choose the nice little public school down the road, the pressure is only off till Year 4, then you must decide if they will sit for the Opportunity Class Test. And, if they sit it but don’t get in, then you must decide if they stay at the nice little public or will you cushion their (your) disappointment by sending them to that prestigious private school you can’t really afford?

By Year 6 the pressure to establish once and for all whether you are a good or a bad parent has reached crisis point. Do you choose single sex or co-ed, public or private, comprehensive or specialist? Again, you must decide whether your child should sit the Selective Schools Test or not, and or any number of private school scholarship examinations and Selective Class tests for various public high schools. Imagine the shame if your child fails to pass any of those - particularly when you’ve blown all that money on James An College coaching. So maybe it is easier just to send them to the private school you hated so much when you were a girl. At least you can pass muster as a good parent at middle class dinner parties and, of course, school reunions.

But parental choice hasn’t finished with you yet. Will your child go on exchange or not? Should they learn another language? What about the piano lessons they hate? And should they really be hanging out with all those boys? When can they go out on their own in the evening? What time should they have to come home? Is it really true that all the other Year 8 parents let their children stay out till 2am?

If you suspect drugs or cigarettes, should you search their room? If you find their diary should you read it? If they swear at you, slam doors, hit their little sister should you toss them out? If they exist on chips, burgers and coke should you stop their pocket money? Should you give them pocket money or make them earn it? To mobile or not to mobile, to ear pierce or not to ear pierce (quickly moving on to tongue pierce or not to tongue pierce), to bare midriff, to grow hair long or shave off, to goatee or not to goatee? The list is endless, and this is without even mentioning angst over subject choice, both for the School Certificate (so not-important anymore, Mum) and the (cross yourself quickly) HSC.

Even once that is all over, the choices go on. When should you let the boyfriend (or girlfriend) stay over? When do you let them have a glass of that white at home? When do you let them have a party at home?

Now that I look back at it all, with one girl heading off to university and the other about to sit her school certificate, it seems to me that all that angst was for nothing. I could have made a whole lot of totally different choices (we chose drug relief at childbirth, cobbled together childcare, public over private, co-ed over single sex and let them get their ears pierced at 13) and they would have turned out just the same. Maybe the choices we make have very little to do with our children, and everything to do with how we want the world to see us.