Hostility Taints World of a Crying Child

As I boarded the plane, I realized I had become the person I always feared.

“Excuse me,” I said as I made my way down the 747’s aisle with my 6-week-old baby in my arms. “Excuse me, excuse me.”

I could see by their faces that other passengers were praying: Please , God, please, don’t let her sit by me.

I wanted to tell them: I know how you feel. I used to be like you. And maybe you’re right.

Who do I think I am going out into the world with a baby?

Who indeed. Nothing has surprised me more about having a baby than the attitude we (and I include myself here) hold toward parents and children--at best indifference; at worst, hostility.

We’re all for “family values,” but we seem to forget that a family usually means children--and not the jolly infants of sitcoms and commercials, but chaotic, messy, demanding babies and children who refuse to act like grown-ups no matter how much we dress them up to look like them.

I say this knowing that I could be a poster child for family values. My pregnancy was carefully planned, and since my daughter’s birth 10 months ago, I’ve been able to arrange my career so that I work at home.

I have all the advantages, and still it’s tough.

If you have any doubts about whether our culture thinks little about children (or for that matter, anyone who is “different”), look at our city’s architecture: ladies’ rooms with nowhere to change a baby and too cramped for a woman to nurse; glass office doors too heavy to hold and department store aisles too narrow to negotiate while navigating a stroller (or a wheelchair).

I didn’t understand the problems of access to buildings until I spent one drizzly afternoon circling USC’s 67-year-old Doheny Library, trying to figure out how to get inside with a stroller. Finally I found a side door with a small sign: “Ring if you don’t have a key.” I rang. And rang. And rang.

Finally, an employee poked his head out the door, scowled at the stroller and proclaimed: “You’re not handicapped” and slammed the door.

In case UCLA alums are feeling smug, I also spent an impossible afternoon hiking out of a campus parking garage in which the elevator didn’t work--imagine the pleasure of hauling a stroller, diaper bag, briefcase and baby down four flights of stairs.

In my life before children, I had cultivated a horrified look I reserved for parents who changed their children’s diapers in public. Now I know that in a public restroom there is rarely a counter or even a moderately clean floor on which to change a squirming baby.

A male friend tells how after spending an afternoon with his daughter at the Los Angeles Zoo, he opted to let his 3-year-old daughter duck behind a secluded bush rather than subject her to the men’s bathroom or risk her going alone into the women’s room.

“Shame on you,” scolded an older woman who happened by as the little girl was finishing up.

We live in a culture where it’s easier to call in late to work because we have car problems than it is to tell our employer that we need to stay home with a sick child.

We’re a culture where, according to a recent study, women who choose to stay home for six months never catch up to the wages they would have earned had they not taken maternity leave.

In America, nine out of every 1,000 children die before age 1, twice the mortality rate in Japan. A 2-year-old in Mexico City is more likely to be fully immunized than a similar child in the United States. More than 8 million children are not covered by health insurance. And although America boasts some of the most sophisticated medical technology in the world, our children still die at a greater rate than children in 21 other countries.

The beginning of a solution is even more basic than supporting a good educational system, more basic than parental leave, even more basic than available low-cost pediatric care.

Yes, clearly these are important.

But first, we must learn to tolerate the toddler who has a temper tantrum in the grocery store, the infant who whimpers during a church service and the parents who, desperate to join the rest of the world, have braved a dinner out with a 4-month-old.

Only when parents and children are valued and have a place in our culture--the true meaning of family values--will we be able to tackle all the other issues.