Parenthood is a lifestyle choice

There was this bloke who wrote into Metro the other week recounting a tale of how he, a disabled person (the exact nature of his disabilities were not divulged), had bought a first class train ticket. He didn’t absolutely have to travel in first class, it was possible for him to travel in standard class, but he choses to do so because it’s easier for him to get around the first class cabin than it is the standard class cabin. First class rail tickets cost a fortune, but to him the benefits of such a ticket were worth it.

On a recent train journey he shared the first class cabin with a young mother with a child in a push-chair, who was boasting to an apparently unrelated fellow passenger about how she had received a free upgrade from the train staff because she had a child in a push-chair. This enraged the author of the letter, because this woman had received a free upgrade to first class due to self-inflicted inconvenience brought about by her decision to have a child, whereas his disability was most certainly not acquired by choice and yet no such preferential treatment was extended to him.

Frankly, he had every right to be enraged. It’s rapidly becoming a common perception that parents are somehow “disabled” because of their offspring and are thus being afforded luxuries such as “parent and child” parking spaces outside the entrance to supermarkets, fast-track priority boarding on aircraft (presumably so the child can practice the crying that it intends on doing for the whole flight) and now, apparently, free first class rail ticket upgrades.

Let’s make no mistake here, with very very few exceptions, the decision to have a chid is entirely voluntary. It is something that you inflict upon yourself, you’re making a rod for your own back, both financially and practically, and your offspring should be nobody else’s responsibility but your own. You should not be entitled to special treatment at the expense of others, especially those who’ve chosen NOT to contribute to the planet’s vastly unsustainable population growth. It was your choice and if you’re not up to dealing with the consequences of your decision then you perhaps should have not procreated in the first place.

Having to support other peoples’ kids through funding child benefit is galling enough, but to be told of by some busybody in a supermarket car park for parking in a parent and child parking space when no other spaces are available is a step over the line, in my opinion. Also, is it really that unreasonable to park in such spaces after 9.00pm when all children of the age that would possibly benefit from the extra space either side of their mothers’ Renault Scenics should be in bed? I don’t think so.

My mother fared perfectly well when myself and my younger brother were young without parent and child parking spaces or any other concession. This was also in the days before large, out of town supermarkets with giant car parks; my mother had to go to the Sainsbury’s in Woking town centre and park in the multi-storey car park, where the lifts rarely worked and when they did they were always jammed full of people. Did she complain? No, because she was thankful that she could do the weekly shop in just one store. To hell with the parking arrangements.

It seems that modern parents these days think that they have it hard, as if they’re the first generation of humans that’s had to procreate, and that everyone should lend them a hand to help cope with their insurmountable, self-matyring task that they feel has been forced upon them. The truth is, quite like their pampered, ignorant offspring, they don’t know they’re fucking born. Having children is a lifestyle choice, and just like every lifestyle choice it comes with its costs and disadvantages. I was going to ask if there were special parking spaces for fat people, but since most fat people consider themselves disabled these days one might argue that there actually are, but that’s a whole different, yet strikingly similar, argument.

If I had my way then parents would be made to bear the full cost of their children. There would be no child benefit; indeed it would be replaced by a tax on third and subsequent children. The planet’s population growth is unsustainable in almost every country and yet governments absolutely depend on it in order for their economies to work, since most welfare states are essentially giant, long-term pyramid schemes, which require ever increasing numbers contributing at the lower levels in order to work. One day that’s going to come to a cataclysmic, apocalyptic end, at which point the availability of parent and child parking spaces will be the least of anyone’s worries.

So shut the hell up when I park in your sacred car parking spaces, and stop blocking up the aisles of Sainsbury’s Local with your fucking 4-wheel-drive push-chair containing what is quite obviously an able-bodied but fucking lazy five year old. Don’t take your kids to a restaurant of any standard above McDonalds until they’ve learnt to behave themselves in public and not sit in their chair and scream through their meal. Stop spending your child benefit on lottery tickets, I worked hard to give you that money that you perceive to be free; and don’t let your fucking uncontrollable kids sit on the escalator in front of me, blocking my path while you coo and fawn over them and tell them how cute they look together “like that”. I’ll wager that you let your kids go out on October 31st and bang on strangers’ doors demanding money and sweets too, whilst the rest of the year round engaging in precautions bordering on paranoia concerning their health and safety, most likely causing great inconvenience of some description to everybody else.

Think of the children!? No, that’s your job. Deal with it yourself. I make my bed a different way, you don’t get to lie in it just because you don’t like the way you’ve made yours. Not my problem. I didn’t ask you to have children.