Why our society is not adapted to parents (and children)

“Be a parent”, they say. “Have kids”, they say. But do they give you the right conditions? If these last few months—even years—have taught us anything, it’s the answer: no, they don’t.

Society dictates our behaviours, our desires, our goals. It is hard to detach from them and sort out which ones are ours and which ones are not.

We have beautiful speeches in France about being a parent. But our society is not at all adapted to parents and children.

Here are just a few examples to illustrate my point:

We ask mothers to get back to work two and a half months after giving birth (which is brutal),
Parents live in the stress of finding a daycare for their kids, and when they find it, they stress about having chosen the right one,
When kids are being loud—like EVERY kid in the world— parents tend to stress out about disturbing others,
Schools are meant for a certain type of child, and infrastructures are not always adapted. We’ve seen this in very cold—and recently—very hot weather;
All infrastructures are not adapted, either to children (or women, and therefore mothers): bathrooms (everything is too high), transportation (no kids-friendly installations), public places…

And when there is a problem in school or daycare? You ask parents to step up and keep their kid. But employers want parents to work as if they didn’t have kids.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids, I love my family, and I believe I have found a balance in all this mess. But how can you not be stressed as a parent in these conditions? Politics are asking us to have more kids, for economy’s sake, but they don’t care a bit about our children’s comfort—and parents’.

You have to find a way not to go crazy. We are raising tomorrow’s society and, instead of helping create a sane environment so they grow up to be sane people, we are throwing them out in the world and praying for the best. Climate change? They will have to deal with it when they grow up. It’s not like we weren’t told. By every scientist. For five decades. Schools? There have been scandals after scandals of sexual assaults by people who are supposed to protect our children.

We have contradictory demands: children should be cared for, free to express themselves, but they need to be quiet out in society, and not ask for too much when in school because of staff shortages. We have to keep them safe but when mothers press charges against abusive fathers, they wait year after year to often not find justice. We should work to keep our society’s economy growing, but not care for the people who will contribute to the economy tomorrow (and, in France, pay for our pension). We need to be available for work as much as possible, but still make enough time for our kids in order to be “good parents”.

People are being treated as pawns. We can’t work and be parents at the exact same time. We need time to work and time to be parents. Because when we do both, we can’t do it properly. We’re guilt-tripped over getting to work from home, but how can you answer a professional phone call—or worse, video-conference—and still be there when your child needs you? The Covid crisis made companies think we can work and take care of our children at the same time, and do a good job at both (or at least maintain a certain work rhythm and not go crazy): this isn’t true. We need companies to adapt to parents and not parents to adapt to companies. We should make it easier for parents to be parents in a society driven by the economy, because—if we want to be cynical about it—children are a huge part of economic growth.

(And we need people without kids to be more patient with kids and parents, because who is going to take care of them when they grow up? Today’s kids. It’s a choice not to have kids, a choice that should be respected by everyone, but it’s also a choice to have kids, and it should be respected by others—a choice necessary for society to keep going.)

But what we mostly need is for politicians to step up and take real measures to help parents. It might look like a lot of investment, but in the long run it will be profitable for all parties. Like global warming, it will cost us more in the long run to do nothing and encourage people to continue on the wrong path we are on today than to act now…

So, what are we waiting for? Or should I say: what are you waiting for?