His Mother, Old Biddy

Amazing what perspective does for the direction that minds take in assessing positions pro and con just about anything. People with children seem to feel that everyone will adore their darlings on sight, just as they do. And generally they are quite correct in this assumption; most people do enjoy the sight of those precocious little dears, and quite appreciate the emotions of their parents.

Everything has its limits, however, and there is a time and a place for everything.

Perambulating in a public park, witnessing parents attending to their children's every joyfully demanding whims is one thing; it is an assurance that life and generations go on, as they must.

Planning a night out and carefully making reservations at the restaurant with the reputation that you've always been curious about trying, anticipating a quiet evening of good food and conversation in a fashionably adult ambiance does not pair well with the presence of a cranky child.

The recent brouhaha over three righteously-enraged sisters who had planned to attend a birthday celebration with their mother and the darling infant of one of the sisters, and who had been gently dissuaded by the restaurant-and-wine-bar owner, is a telling case in point. The sisters, offended by recommendations that they not bring tot along, have brought a suit against the hapless restaurateurs to be heard by the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Feeling that it is their constitutional right to have the freedom to impose upon the owners of this new restaurant, Taylor's Wine and Food Bar in Ottawa, the burden of witnessing the quiet elegance of their establishment turned into a baby-wailing scene, while other customers have their expectations of an evening out for relaxation and pleasure disrupted. Never, perhaps to return.

Faced with the threat of the Rights Commission finding them in breach of guarantees of freedoms - although theirs is a private establishment and surely as such they have the right to establish rules they wish to have recognized for the greater good of the business and the pleasure of their clients - which will cost them dearly in legal fees and reputation, what are they to do? Lobby for the dismantling of human rights commissions.

The issue has gone beyond merely being reported in the Ottawa Citizen, having been picked up latterly also by the National Post. And the reactions and responses of two columnists with that national paper are instructive. Columnist Barbara Kay with her rapier wit and intellect, posits that it is not reasonable to impose one's children upon innocent bystanders, or restaurant-goers as the case may be.

Telling stories about her own agony as a young mother raising a young boy with a picky appetite and a stubborn character whose unrestrained lapses into wilful and disruptive behaviour caused her and the child's father no little amount of wearying bother at those times when he was introduced to eating out. Difficult enough, doubtless, pleasing a child with a monotonous, uncurious palate at home.

Sharing the page with her is that very same boy, now grown to manly adulthood, himself now the parent of a young child, who takes umbrage at the very thought that he and his spouse might be questioned with respect to their social intelligence when taking their darling into a restaurant. For his part, he describes having taken their infant into a pub-restaurant at mid-day when a gaggle of "old biddies" took offence.

The columnist-mother describing the agony of attempting to placate the churlish child refusing to eat what was placed before him, and the familial disagreements that followed to the great entertainment of other restaurant-goers. And the now-grown child, equally certain that his preferences must be credited, that it is his indignant right to impose upon others; nothing has changed in his world-view.

So much for the achievement of maturity; once self-obsessed, intransigent and uncompromising, always thus.