“Don’t Hit My Back!” Children on the Road and Frustrated Commuters

While mothers flood online forums with frantic queries about what essentials to pack in their first-aid kit and whether prams are allowed in the cabin, other holidaymakers nearby brace themselves for the chaos of flight. Recently, things have gotten rather peculiar. It used to be that sympathy was demanded for any parent struggling with a cranky child, but now some even suggest airlines set up near-segregated sections, as though to keep calm and carry on apart from each other. How did this start sneaking into our lives?

Wishing you a truly delightful flight!

At what moment did it become all the rage not to box yourself off from life simply because you had a child? Keep up the job, maintain a buzzing social circle, attend events, and jet off on travels as often as fancy strikesno matter the sprouts age. Our mums never led such dazzling lives; frivolity was hardly part of their code. I can hardly conjure an image of a mother with a babe-in-arms at a London eatery in the 60s, even less so in subsequent decades. That would have seemed outrageousa curious sort of happiness, in any case.

No matter how you dodge the reality, long-haul travel with a child is stressful for both sides. Ensuring some comfort takes real effort. That is precisely what some shy away from. As soon as the British public catch a whiff of holiday spirits, its as if the rules come apart and children are left to graze free, everyone else left to cope with wild luck.

Everyone, of course, expects an oasis of calm in the air. No one is keen to spend two hours boxed up in a ruckus, especially after handing over a hefty pile of pounds sterling for a seat. Passengers pick apart things as trivial as legroom for the sake of stretching out. What hope for tranquillity, though, with a five-year-old in the row behind, experimenting curiously with how far your seat can spring? Not once can I recall a neighbour turning with a warm grin and helping the child pretend the seats a billy goat.

The dying breed of nursery.

Once, I tried to be gracious. When a young woman with a less-than-one-year-old sat down next to me, my breath hitched. But fortune had more in storeher family had somehow multiplied in all directions: babes at the front, tots at the back, stretching out with their belongings, shouting across seats, passing bottles and dummies from row to row. I half-expected to be handed an adoption form. Frankly, it was wretched. Theyd ask me to hold this or that without a single please, and, more than once, I nearly got scalded by a surging flask of boiling tea. Utterly marvellous. There was nowhere to escapeI thought to leap straight out the window.

On another occasion, rattling through the countryside on a train, I spied an odd scene. A mother corralled her four-year-old daughter into wholesome activities for the full twenty-six hours rattling towards Manchester. She was clearly determined her child wouldnt disturb anyone. Yet, the results were mixed: darling, lets wander here, lets wander there, look at the view! and lets have a drawfollowed by forty loud minutes of chattering artwork and a zestful selection of all manner of crayon colours and dogs and cats, as though theyd redecorate the whole carriage. Not sure which disturbance is more unsettling.

How not to wind up in the dock, arguing parents ought to bolt indoors until their offspring come of age? If a childs so angelic as to sketch silently for hours before dozing off, nose to a crayon-furred dogsplendid! But do such cherubs exist?

And that’s to say nothing of the babies who wail with every take-off and landing and all the endless leagues in between. If once it was a rare event, now its a trio or a full quintet, each trailing sisters and brothers who prance and squeak up and down the aisle. One staggers out of the cabin at almost the same tempo the plane soared in.

Mind, Im no card-carrying Childfree. Ive endured trips with a little one in towby necessity, honestly. But my patience failed me for tending a tot on a so-called relaxing break. Holidaying was only possible once my child was old enough for counting and, quite frankly, for stern instructions: Sit tight here now, hands to yourself. Wait patientlyno scribbling. But most parents dont see it that way. They bring along a full arsenal of educational amusements, release their children into the wild rush up and down carriages and cabins, because, after all, developing bodies need to moveand that, apparently, is that.