9 hours ago
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Some new academic research into parenthood has caused quite a stir, by revealing that having children doesn’t make you happier. Some were outraged by it, others vindicated, debate ensued about whether it’s even children’s job to make their mums and dads happy, or the other way round. And in the cacophony of opinion, something got lost. Happier, schmappier: what the study failed to mention is that having kids turns you into a boring loser. I know, because I am one.
Your chat withers and dries up the second your baby is born. First you’re dull about sleep and feeding schedules, earnestly answering polite, cursory inquiries with long, detailed information, in a manner as welcome as replying to “How are you?” by actually saying how you are. Then, as your child grows up, you mistakenly assume the rest of the world shares your fascination with their every move, achievement and allegedly hilarious outburst. You suffer a kind of conversation blindness, no longer noticing eyes glazing over, incapable of reading the room.
Worse than this affliction, you become heavily invested in stuff you never would have imagined possible before you had kids. This was perfectly evidenced by actor and Loose Woman Denise Welch this week, who took to social media to shame Brent council about her son’s refuse collection. Caring that much about your offspring’s bin is parenthood in a nutshell.
In an instantly iconic X post, she wrote: “Hi @brent_council. You haven’t emptied my son’s bins in 3 weeks. Any attempts at due process has failed. He tried to talk to a collector who called him a c***!! Can you let me know how we move forward!!!!”
Whether it reacts as quickly to those without half a million followers we’ll never know, but Brent council replied saying it was “very sorry” and promised to “look into this as a matter of urgency”. Music to any mother’s ears, as what could possibly be more urgent than this?
Welch good-naturedly reported that now it had served its purpose, she was going to delete the post. The cherry on the cake here is the fact that one of her two sons is Matty Healy from the band The 1975. The notion that she was fighting this bin battle on his achingly cool behalf is so wonderful we should probably all just give ourselves the gift of believing it is definitely true.
À la Denise’s Due-Process-gate, I’ve often found myself behaving as a mum in a way that would have been inconceivable to me before I conceived. I once braved heaving, drunk crowds in central London on the last Friday night before Christmas, to try to find, strictly speaking, and with all due respect, some junk.
This was because my son had ignored all the new, aesthetically pleasing soft toys he was bought as a baby, instead making the object of his affections a raggedy old lion his great uncle had picked up at a charity shop. Brian the Lion was scruffy and bedraggled; his eye fell out more than once and had to be superglued back in. This big cat had clearly been around the block. But my boy loved him, so BTL became a VIP. I even put leave-in conditioner in his mane to try to make it less matted.
When my son was five, Brian the Lion came with us into town, to see one of those afternoon kids’ plays that seem like a good idea when you’re booking them months in advance. It wasn’t until we got home that we realised BTL was awol. We’d bought a book at the merch stand after the show, the only time my son had released him from his tight little grip. Had there been poachers about?
I rang the theatre and was told he wasn’t there, but life without Brian was unthinkable: my boy was bereft. And so I got the bus and tube back into town, weaving my way through tinsel-adorned festive revellers, re-tracing our steps, desperately hoping against hope. Apart from light snowfall, all the ingredients of a magical Christmas miracle were firmly in place, but unfortunately this wasn’t a movie. Instead, I’d played the starring role in a fool’s errand.
I got home at the same time as my nextdoor neighbour, and as we opened our respective front doors, I recounted my ridiculous mission, expecting her to laugh. She didn’t. She told me that when her now 17-year-old son lost Stripey, his toy tiger, back in the day, she and her husband had put posters up all over the area offering a reward.
I was still a boring loser, of course, but comforted by not being the only one. Among parents, apparently, when it comes to lions and tigers and bins – oh my – we are all Denise Welch.
