10 Mar 2024
Cat and rabbit mum Laura Bill explains why she’s content with animals and doesn’t want to create any little humans…
I don’t hate kids. I’m a qualified teacher so I obviously don’t mind them…I care about their learning and I find their ideas fascinating in the classroom. But I just don’t understand why anybody wants little people in their home as part of their family, like 24:7.
What makes somebody living a perfectly lovely life want to bring other human beings into the world; especially now our world is so broken and complicated? And expensive?Let alone the absolute responsibility of growing a citizen from the womb to trying to get on the property ladder and even possibly beyond. There isn’t even a comprehensive and genuinely helpful course out there that covers the whole 28 years or whatever it is before they are sort of an adult. And even then I hear parents say things like: “They will always be my babies.” Will they?
To be fair, I am kind of glad my mum holds vaguely onto that sentiment because there are times when I have needed her to lend me fifty quid or talk me through how to poach an egg over the telephone.
Stuff like that is cute, I think, but it’s the first 17 or so years that sound utterly horrific to me and I am in no way regretful that I have not had to experience it.
I am a proud mum to four cats and a house rabbit called Phyllis – it means green leaf, in case you were wondering. See how fascinating it is for you to hear about Delilah, Vernon, Millie and Stanley.
How when they yawn in my face it sometimes smells of tuna. How cute it is when they lie on my head in the night. When they went outside today and whether I had to wipe their muddy paws when they came in. And don’t get me started on training four house cats to use a cat-flap when we moved?!
Would you like to see hundreds of photos of them all looking exactly the same in each shot because animals have minimal facial expressions and no change of clothes? Thought not.
I genuinely feel blessed to have my babies and I try and limit my info sharing on social media because I also know that nobody really gives a shit. They don’t. And I am okay with that.
Some parents of human children are also like me and limit their child waffle because – well – who cares?!
But some…they cannot stop telling the world about Tallulah’s ballet lesson, Frank’s improved spelling certificate, how many times Fred was up in the night being sick and in the end he had to come into their bed just so they could try and get some sleep!!! This is all self-inflicted!! What did you think it would be like?
The school run is possibly my number one reason for using contraception. I simply cannot – and never have been able to – get my head around having to make four journeys a day by foot or car in all weathers including at the crack of sparrows and then the slump of the afternoon. And this only seems to be a minimal four trips if you have one child at one school.
What I’ve noticed is that some poor mums and dads have kids at different schools, often in opposite directions and they may even have one who has to be driven miles to a spot where they then get on a coach to school on their own. The posher the family the more school runs they seem to have to do. (Cannot be scientifically confirmed). Then conveniently nestled around those journeys are a whole host of other ones to piano, karate, violin, jazz, modern dancing, tap, cadets, Brownies, Gang Show rehearsals, badger-watching society at 3am and that’s not including the drop-offs at school for forgotten PE kits or food technology cooking ingredients to stop detentions.
Genuinely needing a lie down just thinking about all this.
I pop to the vet now and then and occasionally to a pet shop but most things are available on Amazon. And if they ask if they can have a sleepover, it is just going to be a straight no. No backchat either.
And the shoes! How often do children need new shoes?! All the time seems to be the answer. They have outgrown them before you’ve even paid them off your credit card. You can’t be annoyed because their feet are growing but seriously what bad design was that – to make feet grow at such a speed. Nobody apart from the CEO of Clarke’s can be happy about it.
Literally every time I see my friend’s toddler she is in ‘new shoes’ which cost about sixty quid for a tiny pair of sandals or trainers.
Then there are dressing-up days like World Book Day coming up. Expected to produce a costume at 8am with five minutes notice and you can only find some kitchen foil and a toilet roll. They end up wearing their own clothes and some stripy tights and going as Pippy Longstocking. Yes, I see you, you fraudsters (If only because that’s what I did one year as a teacher on World Book Day).
Next year you’ll have to overcompensate by getting Timothee Chalamet’s actual Wonka costume re-sized to fit your sprog which you will also need to remortgage your house for. But at least it’ll look great on Facebook.
Let’s talk about breakfast with children. For me breakfast is a couple of low-sugar Rich Teas stuffed in my mouth in the car.
Laying on a whole sit-down banquet for five providing four different types of cereal and picking it out of the nooks and crannies of the kitchen before the horror of the day
begins is not something I would enjoy doing.
Then there is also being vomited all over when kids are unwell. I hear they can puke on your bed or actually on you at the most inconvenient of times.
One of my friends told me the other day and I quote here that she was “just glad that it was on her and not on the carpet which is very difficult to get sick out of”.
What in the world?! Another friend of mine once told Facebook that her baby had been sick in her mouth. How do you parents cope with the ill thing? And the frequency of the ill thing? Children are evidently massive germ bags and how much harder is all the other stuff when they are poorly?
A lot of parents seem to get the lurgy when their offspring also have the lurgy. Who is there to do all the awful stuff when everybody is ill because you can’t just give up, can you? You can’t stop feeding them. Cleaning up. Washing their clothes.
As a child-free ill person I can just sleep it off, take loads of Lemsip and eat crisps and cake until it goes away in front of Netflix.
Another thing that amazes me about the whole parenting this is the sheer amount of stuff they always need: swimming stuff, Christmas stuff, birthday stuff, party clothes, gifts for their friends, Brownie uniform, toys, stationery, loads of different coats, winter stuff, summer stuff…a lot of things that cost a lot of money and the list never ever ends.
It does appear as if they take all your money and you can’t even feel happy about it because it’s something so dull you’ve bought like a car seat or a new bed. Every aspect of parenting life just looks so overcomplicated and, if I’m honest, quite mundane at the same time.
Take extreme weather. Extreme weather with kids must be awful, Snow, ice, rain, wind, lightning, heatwaves there is no weather a kid can’t make feel worse. I see them in the street with their mums, dragging along behind whinging because “it’s raining”.
I hear the nightmare of excited screaming to go outside in literal freezing temperatures to build a snowman which is supposed to be some kind of fun. And obviously also has to be shown off on social media.
Then in the heatwave they have to be pinned down to slap suncream on them every half an hour which also has to go to school, labelled and they have to have had training on how to apply it themselves, from the age of four. My husband can’t even put his own suncream on at 53 so good luck with that one…
My final observation is the lack of gratitude parents get. You spend every waking and non-waking minute devoted to these small or teenage people and their every whim.
Are they OK? Are they going to enough activities? Have they got all the things they want? Are they kind and happy? Are they nourished? Are they on their computers too much?
Are they talking enough about their feelings?
Do they have enough friends? Should they all be up there consuming 75 bags of Haribo before sleep?
Am I am a bad mum for not wanting to spend £60 on pink plastic that will inevitably end up as landfill in a year’s time? Did I get the teacher a good enough end-of-year present?
There is an awful lot to think about and more. I honestly don’t know how you do it. But it’s a good job you do. Just don’t expect me to do the same.
