This is no country for young kids

Plenty of places in Ireland pay lip service to child-friendliness, but the reality is often very different. Parents from around the country share their experiences with Edel Morgan

I WAS kneeling on the hard, cold toilet floor of a gastropub in Dublin city centre changing my one-year-old’s nappy. I hadn’t noticed any “children not particularly welcome” sign, but that seemed to be the general message. Apart from the lack of a baby-changing table, the kids’ menu was “just sausages”.

On the way home from a previous day out with my three small children, a succession of buses refused to let us on board because they already had their quota of buggies. When we finally got on one it was packed, and the designated seat was taken, so I spent the journey warning my live-wire sons, aged five and three, to hold on to the handrail. All day I’d been dependent on the kindness of strangers to open doors and help negotiate steps. By the time I got home I was so exhausted I just wanted to lie down in a dark room.

If you’re thinking it all sounds a bit dramatic, and an example of the insular concerns of someone in the parent bubble, then I’m guessing you’ve never had to deal with the logistics of taking small children out in an urban setting. Many of the parents I spoke to said they tend to stick to places they know are easy to negotiate. All but one have had bad experiences travelling on public transport with their children.

Galway parent Barbara Dunne, who is co-ordinator of Steiner na Gaillimhe parent and child group says it can be tough getting around the city with a double buggy on bad footpaths, with cars parked where footpaths are lowered, and narrow doorways. “You quickly get a sense of where it’s okay to go and where it’s not,” says Dunne, who has three girls aged 11, four and two. She says she’s had difficulty getting a double buggy through the doors of Galway City Museum, and she wouldn’t even consider going into certain shops. Members of her parents’ group have seen buggies abandoned outside clothes shops. “Most of the group have some sort of backpack or carrier, which they use 80 per cent of the time. It’s also a lifestyle choice and helpful for breastfeeding. The buggy is a secondary option.”

There are a lot of places that pay lip service to being child-friendly but show an astonishing lack of imagination or thought. Hotels and restaurants that assume Irish children eat only chicken goujons and sausages – or, if they are really adventurous, pasta Bolognese. Shops, public amenities and restaurants that target families but don’t provide a buggy store or baby-changing table – or if there is one it’s only in the ladies’ toilets, because it’s assumed men don’t change nappies.

You get to know the subtle, insidious signs that children aren’t welcome: aisles in shops that are too narrow for a baby buggy; stools that are too high for toddlers; tables pushed so close together there’s no space for a buggy.

Ireland’s level of family-friendliness has improved, but largely on the back of legislation requiring access for disabled people. John Graby, director of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, says that while we’ve come a long way in the last decade, people’s attitudes towards children often depend on where they are in life. “I have a two-year-old grandson, and suddenly I don’t mind toddlers and babies any more, but I did five years ago. It’s also about being a child-tolerant society, but I’m not sure we are yet. In the past 10 years we’ve focused on things such as ramps, kneeling buses and bigger toilets, and people with children have benefited from that, but we need to make buildings accessible across the board, which is the aim by 2015.”

MOTHER OF THREE Marie Keating, who is a member of the Parents Network, a voluntary group based in Waterford who discuss issues affecting parents, says we need to work harder at being an inclusive society. She says Irish cities are built for adults – “and children are expected to fit around that”. She believes the planners think more in terms of sustainability than family-friendliness. “I’m still hauling my six-year-old daughter over sinks to wash her hands, to the detriment of my back, because they are set at quite a high level. I find very few shopping centres have sinks or toilets for children.”

Keating, whose youngest child is two, says there has been a huge increase in the number of public buildings providing baby-changing facilities around Waterford, “but the idea of having a baby-changing area only in the ladies’ toilet is totally discriminatory.”

Dave Dunne from Dublin has two boys, aged three and 20 months. He won’t go into a baby-changing area in a ladies’ toilet to change a nappy. “I’d go to the gents and try to do it in the pushchair. A lot of places assume it’s going to be a woman changing the baby.” He says that where facilities are provided, the public sometimes misuse them. “Last night I went shopping in the local supermarket, and there was one parking spot left for mother and babies and a 50-something woman with no kids took it.” When she was tackled on it she said, “I’m having trouble with me neck”.

Fiona Hanaphy, also from Dublin, says spaces in car parks are usually so tight it’s an ordeal getting her girls – aged five and two – in and out of the car without hitting cars either side. Several parents commented that unless it’s a designated family space, there’s often no room between parked cars to put a baby buggy when you are trying to take a small child and their things out of the car. Hanaphy doesn’t use public transport and says Dublin Bus “is not really child-friendly. You can’t guarantee the times they are going to turn up. You could be standing a long time, and you won’t get people standing up to let you sit down. So if it’s packed you have to fold down the buggy and leave it downstairs and then try to find a seat upstairs. The Luas is easier because it’s on one level.”

In Ireland she only goes to places she knows she can get around easily, such as Dundrum Town Centre, which has a dedicated baby-changing and feeding room and “a fantastic creche”, and Ikea for the creche and “good cheap meals”.

Meanwhile in Finland, where she travels regularly for work, “they are very child-focused and really rate quality of life very highly, and the attitude is that if something needs to be changed then it is changed”.

WEXFORD-BASED Sinéad Fortune has three girls, aged six, four and two. She believes we are far ahead of some continental European countries in terms of lift access in buildings and baby-changing facilities, but agrees the Scandinavians have a lot to teach us.

She also has a Finnish connection – her brother lives there with his wife and two children. “The train system there is fantastic, and they have play carriages with miniature playgrounds, miniature libraries and slides. They think nothing of travelling for five hours on a train to see his wife’s relatives in the North Pole. Even dining carriages have places children can play. The beaches there have changing rooms and shower facilities, and every garage along the road has a toilet. The footpaths are really wide, so they are great for a buggy and you feel very safe. In Wexford some areas are pedestrianised but when they’re not you can be up and down off the footpath.”

She has had mainly positive experiences in restaurants here but says Ireland is “so not breastfeeding-friendly – people just don’t want to know. I was feeding one of mine in Shaws restaurant, and was being very discreet, when a middle-aged man got up and left his food on the table. I suppose if I was confident I’d ignore it, but that just put me off.”

For us to catch up with the Scandinavians, Marie Keating says the Government will have to do more than just pay lip service to being pro-family.

“It makes it look like it’s supporting families, but our political system is so male-dominated we’ve lost out on certain things. They don’t see the things women see who are at the coalface, and there’s a disconnect between community and what is going on in Dáil Éireann.”