Deadbeat parents

In this age of the cult of personal proclamation of otherwise undistinguished and indistinguishable little people, it is of course heresy to suggest that occasionally they should perhaps be prepared to pull their head in for those around them. Outrageous, for example to expect that a nurse (who works in a paediatric casualty department) should cover obscene tattoos on his arms and head so as not to frighten children, otherwise how would we appreciate him as an “individual”. He might even need (heaven forbid) to distinguish himself by deeds rather than by skin mutilation.

Most people would however be sympathetic to parents reigning in their personal need for self expression, validation/proclamation/(insert Deepak Chopra phrase here), for the sake of their children. But alas this is not so, as we will sadly demonstrate.

I like Richard Hammond, and I like his absurdly tall curly-haired mouthy jumped-up, northern, council-estate friend, Jeremy Clarkson, I like the way they make fun of stupid people (although perhaps not any more). I like to read the Top Gear magazine, although less so since they started showing the cars” that porn stars drive”. I like that they get to drive expensive cars fast and often and to scream whilst they do so. Teenagers with wrinkled skin and paunches. Apparently, Clarkson sits in a bedside vigil at the Leeds General Infirmary, which more than makes up for sending a father of two on such a fools errand. At times such as this the consequences of “friendship” become painfully real. The friendship that Clarkson offers is outwardly extravagant but essentially vacuous and meaningless, devoid of love it is merely back-slapping camaraderie.

But why would anyone voluntarily pilot a contraption to 480 kmph, why indeed would they consider it if they were the father of two tiny children. I realise that everyone has a “right” to self-expression, to freedom, to make choices for me, to discover my personal space, to live my life out loud etc., but that does not include (I presume) a child’s right to be an orphan. Whilst we will witness another spiral of gratuitously indulgent public grieve-groping, I suggest that you spare a crocodile tear for daughters who may not have a father, or a father who sits in a chair staring blankly ahead, for the rest of their lives.

In the cash strapped NHS the public also has a “right” to lavishly fund the consequences of adult indulgence, by providing an ICU bed, and a lifetime of rehabilitation for a celebrity, which implicitly means denying it to a less famous person, whose illness may be conspicuously less voluntary.

This is the era where mothers single-handedly summit Mount Everest, with death defying bravado, whilst their children are temporarily fostered out to family. It must be a wonderful feeling to know that a slip of the foot, or a loose ice sheet is the only thing separating one’s children from a lifetime of foster or state care, and membership of a demographic whose social markers could not be worse. It’s reassuring to know that society and government are always there to pick up the pieces of one’s failed venture into adult responsibility.

Better to discover one’s sexual identity, or to pursue one’s career even if one later admits that this results in the extreme psychic distress of one’s children and even in their later suicide.

Recently a colleague of mine, who is also a senior lawyer, decided to have children via IVF, after a decade of devotion to her career. At the age of 41, she was well above the age of easy natural conception. At 26 weeks the infant was born prematurely as the ageing placenta could no longer provide nutrition for the infant. She relays to me that the doctors have told her that the child is likely to be blind, at least partially paralysed, and will need a lifetime of care.

The traditional view of parenting and responsibility to one’s family and to society are extraordinarily quaint in a contemporary culture that asks what the world has to offer the individual. We value personal proclamation over personal responsibility, of indulgence over duty and of the culture of perpetual teenage over adult wisdom.

Children have rights too.