Children are the great levellers

The other day Rosemary and I went to a drop-in we used to go to a lot. We haven’t been for a couple of months for various reasons, so most of the people we were used to seeing weren’t there, though there were some familiar faces.

I noticed a mum with a newish baby sat on the sofa and thought she looked familiar, but couldn’t quite place her. A little while later I realised she was someone from my class at school, about twenty years ago. And without a second thought I went up to her and said hello and asked about her baby. She also has a little girl about Rosemary’s age and two other older children. We chatted a bit about other people from our class and who we’re in touch with (or on Facebook with, as the way these days), but mostly we talked about children and babies.

The thing is that this was a girl I was pretty much scared of at school. She certainly wasn’t someone I hung out with. We might have bonded a couple of times when I caved to peer pressure and teased one of the weaker teachers. But for the most part I avoided her and she avoided me. She was one of the ‘hard’ girls and I was snooty swot. Without children in the picture I don’t imagine there is any way I would have gone up to her in the street and said ‘Hey! Do you remember me?’.

But when you have children (particularly young ones, I think, though not exclusively), you become part of this new club. A club that encompasses pretty much all mums and most dads. A club that spans all classes, all ethnicities, all education levels and all ages. It doesn’t matter whether you live in a council flat or a mansion, whether you stay at home or work, whether your children go to the closest state school, the fancy grammar, the £2000 a term public school or you home educate, you will always have something to say to another person in this club.

And that’s one of the reasons why parent blogging is so fantastic – and becoming ever more popular (are you a member of British Mummy Bloggers, yet?). We come from a wide spectrum of backgrounds and have differing opinions on many things, but it’s pretty much guaranteed that there will be something to touch each one of us in some way in most every parenting post we read.