Modern Parenting

And unexpected questions about The Big Question.

I like to think of myself as a cool mom (who doesn’t).

I’m a modern parent. We have a modern family. I parent four children regularly, one of which I gave birth to. The other three are Joel’s and share his various wonderful and questionable traits (sweet, loving, smart and neurotic in varying doses).

I am a member of a WhatsApp chat with my partner and his ex-wife called ‘Co-parents hand-heart-emoji’. We send respectful (and only occasionally pass-ag) messages about scheduling cock-ups and kids’ uniforms being at the wrong house. Also, many cute pictures of cute kids being cute. My partner and I sometimes get child-free time, which we often spend lying very still so as to conserve energy, like dormant shrubs in winter.

My son’s dad doesn’t live with us but my son goes to stay with him fairly regularly and we are (now) amicable. Last time, we all had a drink and some food together at the hand-over. My ex-husband spent twenty minutes rhapsodising about Bali to my partner, instructing him to go there and banging on about how wonderful it is. They had a beer together. The kids see us all being cool with it. And they’re cool with it. It’s very modern.

Another aspect of this modern parenting business is talking about where babies come from — or more specifically, in the case of our family, where babies don’t come from. Because we have definitely maxed out at four.

I believe in immunising my son against the kind of body guilt and shame he is battling in the form of a hefty cultural headwind of latent Jewish and Irish guilt (from my side) and latent Burmese reticence (from his dad).

So, on the suggestion of a mate who works in public health and knows about these kind of things, I got my son a book called ‘It’s So Amazing!’. The So Amazing things in the book are the monthly Egg Journey and the great Sperm Race. It’s essentially an adventure book for kids, in which the main characters are single cells, battling against improbable odds. There are even little cartoons of an egg tapping her foot impatiently and checking her watch, waiting for the sperm to show up. It’s a wonderful book.

Anyway, there is also, of course, a full page cartoon of two people getting busy under the sheets and a lot of explanation of how adults have sex because it feels nice and also sometimes because they want to make a baby. See again: Modern Parenting.

My son: “Well, lucky you and Joel don’t do that.”

Me: <lingering silence>

My son: “Because then you’d have to have another baby.”

Ah.

Me: “Well, honey, we do. But it’s ok, because Joel has had a special operation called a vasectomy. It’s where the doctor snips the little tube that the sperm travel down. Some men do it when they decide they don’t want to have any more babies. It means that his sperm don’t go on any adventures anymore.”

He makes a well-fancy-that face of mild interest and turns back to the book.

Anyway, the book has his undivided attention because it’s about to get interesting. The sperm hasn’t showed up so now it’s time for the egg to peace out. We discuss menstruation in frank and unembarrassed terms and I kiss him good night, aglow with parenting success. One small step for womankind is raising a boy who doesn’t think periods are gross, I think, with just a touch of grandiosity. This, my service to humanity.

A few days later, and Friday night finds us out in the nearest large village, having a curry and watching the footie at the pub. We managed to get a good table even though we missed kick-off. So we are right in front of the screen, with the rest of the pub behind us. Not loads of people, maybe only twenty or twenty-five but everyone convivial, chatting to different tables and, when they hear my accent, gently ribbing me about the US’s inevitable defeat at the hands (feet) of England. Which is fine as I have spent the majority of my adult life in England and love the England squad just as much as everyone else who grew up watching them lose repeatedly.

My son is there too, eating crisps and just generally enjoying the buzz of being out way past his bedtime.

If you watched the match (England v USA, final score 0-0), you’ll know it was one of the more boring games of football to ever grace World Cup screens. Neither team seemed to do very much at all for the entire 90 minutes (plus stoppage) and most players seemed unsure what to do with the strange round object that appeared repeatedly at their feet. I spent most of the time chatting to a very friendly young couple behind us, she a nurse, he a Tech recruiter, who told me they had left the UK and moved to Amsterdam when Brexit happened (which I just fucking love, how brilliant is that).

By this point, we were the only tables making any noise. The lethargy of the protracted 0-0 score had lulled everyone else into a hushed stupor.

The match had long since ceased to hold my son’s attention. The rest of the pub was quiet, the match utterly uncompelling.

My son turned to Joel.

As an aside, something you should know about Joel is that he was raised in a VERY Christian household. He has ten, yes TEN, siblings and, though he is a fully-fledged atheist now, his upbringing and also just the fact of being British tend to militate against the type of candour and frankness that come naturally to my NY-born self. He is a very polite human. He is also an introvert. In short, he is just very British.

There was a pause in our conversation with the table behind. My son took advantage of the gap, he knows better than to interrupt, and hailed Joel from across the table. We will never know what triggered his thought process. If he had been ruminating for days or whether something had newly occurred to him. Whether it was an attempt to build camaraderie or offer support or what.

And, in the serious but piping high tones of an entirely unselfconscious 8-year old that carried from wall to stone wall of the old pub, asked him a question for the ages.

“Joel, have your testicles stopped producing sperm?”