Why the mayor should rid the city of kids.
I have to admit that one of the best things about New York right now is that many terrorism-rattled "family" types are packing up and moving to the hinterlands beyond our fabulous city. They believe they and their children are somehow safer out there, even though the FBI includes the average shopping mall in Middle America on its list of "soft targets" these days.
I say let the whiners believe what they want, as long as they head out of town pronto and take their spoiled little brats with them.
While some have moved far and wide, increasing numbers of others are relocating from Manhattan to the suburbs immediately surrounding it, joining the commuting hordes, sneaking into town to watch a show at night on the weekends, then slithering back home to the kiddies. During those Disney days of Giuliani's quality of life campaigns, Manhattan was a place where many of these folks wanted to raise their kids. They took the children to slick new playgrounds and ball parks, sent them to expensive private schools and walked them to play dates with other kids in the high rise down the street.
But since reality bit big-time on Sept. 11 two years ago, many parents have been heading for that bit of unreality out yonder, bailing out on this city in the first moment of distress. I wrote about this trend in the first few months after 9/11, when the New York Times reported on the moms who were calling it "scary" here?petrified wives of stockbrokers and the like?and moving their families off to Stamford, CT, and other supposedly safe suburban locales where teens shoot one another in the high school cafeteria.
Even as new blood flows into the city from around the world, the exodus of the family types to the 'burbs and beyond seems to be continuing, at least among people I know. And my feeling is this: Let's slam the door shut on their way out, thank you very much. But please, throw all of those putrid giant strollers at them first!
The kid thing is something many of us talk about a lot, though never in mixed company (read: in front of people with offspring). I have friends I've recently come out to regarding my displeasure with having their children around every time I see them. They were pretty shocked when I told them, and even more so when I revealed that those of us who are kid-less often talk about how absolutely dull, annoying and depressing those with children can be.
In Manhattan, the tension between the child-free and the child-full?whose ranks swelled in the internet boom years?has recently escalated, as reflected in an episode of the wearisome but still entertaining Sex and the City this past season, which itself caused many a water cooler argument the next day. In the episode, Sarah Jessica Parker's single, childless and happy Carrie Bradshaw buys a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes that cost several hundred bucks, a price tag that shocks puffy Tatum O'Neal, who plays a Tribeca loft mom who is trying to be hip while also dealing with her toddler's spit-up.
The tubby mom can't understand why anyone would spend so much money on shoes, especially considering what it costs to raise kids these days. She tells Carrie about how much more "mature" she's become now that she's a mother; she has little sympathy for the fact that Carrie's expensive shoes disappeared at her party (she makes people take their shoes off before walking on her carpets so no germs confront her nasty, unruly children).
Meanwhile, Kim Cattrall's delightfully whorish Samantha is told by a waiter in a Soho restaurant that she must not talk on her cell phone, as it might bother other patrons, even as she's forced to hear and watch a cultish, swooning mother feed her screaming baby at the table across from her. The kid eventually hurls a glop of food at Samantha's face, something we'd all secretly like to do to those parents who drag their kids to every damned place in town.
I'm all for people doing whatever they want with their lives?and that includes gays and lesbians who want to raise kids and partake of the boredom and shmaltz of the great American family?but please do it on your own time, in your own space. Why is it that in this city you now cannot smoke indoors, but are allowed to tote along a vomiting and ranting small human with you to any public place? If we're going to have policies to protect us from second-hand smoke, can't we also put some limits on second-hand parenting?
Yes, yes: I have nieces and nephews that I adore and with whom I love spending time. I enjoy playing with them, teaching them, laughing with them. But I spend time with them when I want. They're not forced on me in every setting imaginable in the city that for many of us represents an escape from the doldrums of American family life. It used to be that kids were kept at home with babysitters at least part of the time. But these days many parents want to foist their children on everyone around them. At any moment you might be sitting on a plane next to a railing two-year-old, or have three out-of-control toddlers blocking your path in a store while their father is trying on a belt and their mother is chatting on her cell phone. The parents look at you with a sheepish grin that's meant to say: "Oh, well, this is what kids are all about, cute little things." And all you want to say back is: "Please get your fucking child out of my fucking face!"
That's why the latest trend that has families emptying their lofts and moving to the 'burbs and beyond is welcome as far as I'm concerned. Now, if we could only get Bloomberg to pass some laws on keeping them out of the restaurants.