Greg Bruce shares a personal story highlighting the complexities of parenting roles in public spaces. Photo / Getty Images
It’s one of the thorniest dilemmas in modern parenting. Greg Bruce is right in the thick of it.
My wife and I were standing with many other parents by the roped-off running chute near the end of the recent Weet-Bix Tryathlon when a soccer ball rolled past us and into the path of some oncoming runners. When I heard a nearby adult say “Dudes!” in a disapproving tone I at first assumed it must have been one of the soccer players’ parents, so it was with great shock and enormous embarrassment that I realised it was my wife.
“You can’t say that!” I whispered, blushing furiously.
“Why not?” she said.
“It’s someone else’s kid! You can’t tell off someone else’s kid!”
“It’s a health and safety issue!” she said. “Someone could get hurt!”
That claim was ridiculous, bordering on ludicrous. We were standing on a lush patch of grass, softened by recent rain, and the only people who have ever even claimed to have been hurt falling over soccer balls on soft grass are professional soccer players seeking match-winning penalties. No child at the Weet-Bix Tryathlon that day, I told her, was going to get injured falling over a soccer ball.
She told me that not only was I wrong about that, but that I knew I was wrong about that. I replied that she was wrong about that, and we went back and forth like that, fruitlessly, for far longer than was helpful.
A few minutes later, the ball again rolled under the rope and on to the course. I felt my body tense in pre-emptive embarrassment. I thought about running away, but before I could, my wife turned to the boys and emitted a loud “tsk”.
She didn’t say anything more, but she didn’t have to. The “tsk” was enough. I was terrified on their behalf.
She later told me the boys either didn’t hear her or didn’t care, because they continued on with their game (I had been too embarrassed by her behaviour to even look at them).
Not long after, we left our spot to go to the finish line to look for our kids, and that should probably have been the end of it, but of course it wasn’t. The debate ignited and reignited several times over the next few days, with neither of us giving way. We both knew with great and furious certainty that we were in the right. We brought it up with several parent friends of ours, but I assume they were all too afraid of my wife to tell me I was right.
This article was my wife’s idea. She suggested it, I assume, because she believed people would take her side and I would be forced to accept I was in the wrong. I agreed to write it because I believed the opposite.
When I pushed her on why she felt it was her job to express disapproval to other people’s children, she said:
“It takes a village to raise a child.”
“But in this case you’re not part of the village,” I said. “You’re an enemy villager.”
She disagreed strenuously. She told me the Tryathlon was a community event, staffed entirely by volunteers, and that we were therefore obligated to help out, to ensure the wellbeing of all attendees. She accused me of being individualistic. She accused me of being happy to “watch a whole stream of children fall flat on their faces in a massive pile up”. She said my attitude was akin to saying “That kid can go and drown in the ocean as far as I’m concerned.”
At that point I had to interject. I said the crux of the situation was not about whether we are obligated to stop children getting hurt, but about the potential harms resulting from various actions and deciding between them.
I asked her more than once if she was happy for me to quote her in this article, because I was worried about the potential backlash against her. Not only was she happy to be quoted, she said, but she told me I was the one who should be worried. She said: “I just don’t see how you think you’re going to come off well.”
We both believed the most important thing was protecting kids, but protecting them from what? Her: The threat of serious injury to their bodies resulting from the combination of a soccer ball and grass. Me: The threat of serious injury to their sense of joy, wonder and adventure, resulting from the combination of strange adults and disapproving noises.
It’s possible, I guess, that we were both wrong, and that any injury to those kids, either physical or psychological, has now been far outweighed by the damage to our relationship resulting from this petty private argument dragging on so long and now so publicly. But the stakes are too high for either of us to back down now.