If there’s a topic guaranteed to spark fury like no other, it’s parking. From permits to drivers blocking us in, to someone ‘stealing’ your space, there’s nothing that brings Brits closer to blows – not even Brexit.
For one mum in Manchester this week, however, a row over a ‘parent and baby’ parking space at M&S escalated into something more.
Chloe Connolly, 32, said she was accused of “misusing” the space after someone left an angry note left on her windscreen that read: “Where’s the car seat? Be considerate to people who need these spaces.”
The mum, who was shopping with her five-week-old son Avery, and still recovering from a C-section, posted several photos to a local Facebook forum, saying: “I shouldn’t have to justify myself but here is my car seat! My shopping and my pram wheels! If my car seat was in the car what would my child have been in!”
I’ve watched similarly heated discussions taking place on Facebook walls – one pal who doesn’t have kids posted a picture of a parent-and-baby space outside a local supermarket and remarked how “baffling” she found the size of them.
When she wrote that, her post garnered more than 100 responses. Some were sympathetic, pointing out that cars are a lot wider now than they used to be, and that modern children’s car seats can be quite difficult to get in and out. Others were more negative, saying they “resent” that those spaces are often left empty, and adding that they feared the wrath of the “entitled parent” were they to use them inappropriately.
But here are the facts: If you’ve got young children, they need special car seats – that’s the law. We wrote about them here. And strapping reluctant and squirmy children into those seats can be a little like trying to tame a large and slippery fish: you need lots of room, lots of muscle, and one or the other of you will probably end up soaking wet (from water, tears, snot or vomit: who can tell?)
And there’s something else about these spaces that might not be so evident – they can actually be a lifeline, or an antidote to loneliness.
“If it weren’t for parent-and-baby spaces, I don’t think I’d have managed to make it inside a shop at all."”
When you’ve just had a baby – and for me, it was particularly difficult after my first child – it’s like stepping into a whirlwind. It takes two (or three) hours to leave the house, and even when you do, you’re panicking about all the things you’ve left behind. You can feel as though you’ve achieved something massive if you even manage to have a shower that day, or get dressed.
With a new baby comes a whole load of new paraphernalia, too: from car seats to prams to changing bags and muslins, rattles and wipes and nappies and dummies, all of which you learn to wrestle one-handed. And crikey, sleeping babies in car seats are heavy.
If it weren’t for parent-and-baby spaces, I don’t know that I’d have managed to make it inside a shop at all. Yanking my 8lbs son 200m to the entrance a few weeks after giving birth would’ve taken extra ounce of strength and stamina that, on just two hours sleep, I simply didn’t have.
Plus, I’ve written before about how desperately lonely it can be on maternity leave. One of the things that helps, truly, is getting out of the house – even if it’s just to the supermarket. And once you get there, you feel like running rings around the car park, or sounding a bell, because you’ve achieved something.
It might not be much – it might only be milk and bread – but it feels huge. That is... until the baby starts crying, or needs changing, or feeding, when you’re halfway down aisle three; or the times when your child is having ‘a moment’. You know? The type where people stare, and scowl, and cover their ears while your baby son or daughter recreates Mercutio’s “a plague on both your houses!” speech from Romeo and Juliet. One of those tantrums.
I once had to breastfeed my daughter in public in the Costa Coffee attached to a huge Tesco, after she’d pooed all over her clothes and I didn’t have a spare set. After that memorable experience I was unspeakably grateful that I could leave and get to my car in two seconds flat, where I promptly burst into tears.
So, the next time you’re tempted to sneer at the parent-and-baby space, please: spare a thought for the parent who’s using them. Because they’re probably struggling, a lot more than you know.