Before I was married and had children I would always say that people who weren’t married should not give advice to people who are married, and that people who don’t have children, shouldn’t give advice to people who have children. Now that I am married and I have a child I can tell you that my belief has only hardened. I know that is controversial. I know some of you might want to slap me right now. I am worried that some of you may even thing I am coming across a bit Andrea Leadsom. But this is not a smug parenting thing. It is not an us versus them: it is simply the fact that parenting looks very different from the outside, and that unless you have been in the trenches, you have no idea what it is actually like.
There are some anomalies: live-in nannies, childcare professionals and the like. But if you don’t have extensive childcare experience, and you don’t have any children of your own, then don’t tell me how to raise my child. You would be surprised how much this happens. There is one specific person who criticises or makes a negative comment about my son, and how my husband and I are raising him, every time we see them. It takes everything I have to not point out to this person that they have never been around a child in their life and should therefore STFU. It is not even that this person has a point. Each criticism is something they have to seek and is nonsense: a comment on how our son is dressed etc.
General unsolicited advice is infuriating at the best of times, but when it is people telling you how to parent it is especially annoying. Being a parent is hard. There is no day off, no breaks, and certainly no sick days. I once worked on a film, a West End play and organised the launch party for Frost all in one month. It was brutal and relentless, but it was still nothing compared to parenting. To go back to my point about parenting looking different from the outside; before I had a child I would hear a baby crying, or be in a restaurant wondering why people were just letting their children run around. Now, there are still some days where I think what are you doing? (because I am human), but the thing is, that parent has probably done everything they can to stop the crying baby. The parents in the restaurant are just so tired they can’t move. You don’t know what lead up to that point or what that person is feeling. They are not doing nothing, they have already done what they can.
So don’t tell people what there child should be wearing or eating. Don’t tell them to shut their child up. The child has just as much right to be speaking as you do. Don’t be that person rolling your eyes because there is a baby crying on the bus (like I was!), because until you become a parent, you have no idea how hard it is and if you have one of your own you will feel very guilty indeed.
So should people who don’t have children be allowed to tell you how to raise yours? No. I am trying to swear less now I am a mother so I will use an acronym: that person should STFU.
