I was lying in the lower bunk of a small bed reading a book about the virtues of eating fruit and vegetables when my four-year-old son turned to me and asked: “Daddy, if I got lost how would I find you?”
It completely bowled me over, the very thought of him on his own and unable to find his way back to us. "I will come and find you. Daddy will always find you," I said, which I think reassured him.
Anyway, we went back to the story about Lola, who insisted she liked to eat orange squigglets from Jupiter and green drops from Greenland but simply would never, ever eat a carrot or a pea.
It is every parent’s worst nightmare, to use that tired old phrase, to lose a child, whether permanently through death or the momentary loss of a small child in a large crowd. That awful fear is fuelled by the unique bond between parent and offspring. You would do anything for your children. Another tired old phrase, but true.
A blanket guarantee is issued to your son or daughter the moment they are born, or even before they are born. No matter what age they are, or what trouble they might be in; no matter how much they might annoy you at times; no matter how allergic you are to them at certain times in their lives, Daddy and Mammy will always find their child, help them, advise them or just give them a great big hug. Above all, parents make sure their kids are safe. That’s the first rule of being a good parent.
Horrific attack
I felt very much in parent mode when I read a recent article in
The Irish Times
by 22-year-old Rosanna Cooney.
[ She wrote powerfullyOpens in new window ]
about a horrific attack she endured in Spain. Having left a nightclub alone, she was attacked by a man she had never met before.
She described how he dragged her to the ground, “kicked my face in, broke my nose, sliced my lips, fractured my skull, blackened both my eyes and stamped his footprint on to my cheek”.
Any right-thinking person would obviously be disgusted by what happened to her. They would try to send positive thoughts for her recovery, hope that her attacker would be found and taken off the streets, and would applaud her decision to use powerful words that bring to life so vividly an incident that would normally fester in the end-of-year crime stats.
As a fellow human, and as a man, after reading Rosanna’s article I felt anger towards individuals who would carry out such attacks and the society that produces such monsters. Anger, too, that somehow it makes all men, rightly or wrongly, feel ashamed that a man could do this to a woman when the typical demeanour adopted by the majority of men is defined by respect, equality and humanity. Here’s hoping, you might say. But we all have wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, grandmothers and close female friends in our lives, which makes Rosanna Cooney’s experience all the more repugnant.
Yet I also immediately thought about my own kids as they make their way into a world where such things happen, randomly, without warning, yet with life-changing consequences.
How do you advise your children or ensure they can avoid such incidents? You can’t lock them up and make them afraid of the world, thinking there are bad people lurking around every corner who might attack them. You could say to them that there are bad people in the world but there are more good people. But the constant niggle is that there are indeed bad people in the world prepared to do bad things to you.
Blanket guarantee
The blanket guarantee you issued in the maternity ward means you will always advise your kids
how to avoid danger and the bad people wherever possible.
Rosanna wrote that she would “not tell girls not to walk alone. I will not tell them to be careful, to live defensively and travel only in herds. This is no answer, only kindling to a fire of fear, lit in the first stages of adolescence and fuelled by the diesel of vulture-like news reports of violence against females. The power of masculinity relies on control and discipline of the body in public and private spaces.”
She is 100 per cent correct: control and violence are two sides of the same coin and it is quite clearly the responsibility of men and the parents of men to change male behaviour, rather than removing girls’ and women’s right to go about their lives free from fear and rules. Rosanna Cooney has expressed this better than I can.
I don’t have any daughters, but if I did I would tell them not to walk home alone at night. When my sons come of age, I will tell them to be careful too and not put themselves in danger if it can be avoided, without making them afraid of the world. Parenting is a constant balancing act. Most importantly, I will always tell them to make sure their female friends are safe and not left to walk home alone. Maybe instilling this kind of respect in men towards women will go some way towards ending the shameful levels of male violence against women. Twitter @paddylogue Michael Harding is on leave