Good Enough Page 22
Three years have passed since that first taste of party excess and things haven’t gotten any easier. Since my circus hell, I’ve been to the odd party held in bowling alleys, living rooms and local parks, but increasingly our invitations have been to toddler parties that have had massage angels pamper the adults; blaring ice-cream vans (effectively putting an end to the universal parental lie that ice-cream vans only play music when they run out of ice-cream); coffee vans; $400 fairy entertainers (for just two hours of face painting assistance); jumping castles; and in one case, a petting zoo on the balcony of an inner-city high-rise apartment. The one resounding theme at all of these events? The look of anxiety etched on the mother’s face as she worries whether she’s done enough to stay in the game.
‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ says my friend Zoe every time we walk into yet another designer munchkin function. ‘Sometimes this feels like we’re all just part of some dog show, like we’re being judged all the time.’ She has a way with words, old Zoe, but she’s pretty bloody accurate because if we’re honest, we’ll admit children’s parties have essentially become the gold-standard for how our parenting skills are judged. Yes, you parent every other day of the year but no one sees how brilliantly you do things behind closed doors. No one witnesses your daily triumphs in everything from getting your child to use the toilet, eat their greens or tidy their room. But on their birthday? That’s your moment not only to shine in front of all your hostages – erm, esteemed guests – but also to prove to yourself that you are a much better mother than anyone else. Ever. (C’mon, we’ve all thought it.) As a parent you’ll agonise over the politics of the guest list (can I just invite her closest friends, or do I really have to invite every child from childcare?); you’ll sweat over the location and whether it’s interesting/impressive enough; and then there’s the Martha Stewart Syndrome of having to make a complicated, yet mouth-watering cake (from scratch, definitely no packet mix) in the shape of a fairy castle. Of course you’ll also have to provide decent food and plonk for your adult guests, and enough prizes of value for the kids’ games because if you haven’t got the memo, things have really changed since we were kids.
I don’t know about you, but back in my day it wasn’t a proper party unless it ended with a large portion of the kids sobbing hysterically. Either they were the last one standing in musical chairs (and there’s your first dating lesson right there, kids: if you leave it too long, there will be no empty chairs left for you), or they didn’t get the one deeply coveted prize in pass the parcel. No one could go sobbing to their mums, of course, because they didn’t often attend kids’ parties back then (certainly not for primary school aged children, anyway) and before you knew it, it was time to walk home before the street lights came on. Now of course, musical chairs has been banished because it’s seen as cruel and Satanic, and pass the parcel has a present in each layer so every kid playing gets a prize. ‘Woo! You’re all winners,’ one of the many mums in attendance will yell as she rigs the music to stop for each and every child. And then finally, once the adult guests have stopped Googling similar suppliers for their own kids’ parties), it’s time to hand out the party bags and reveal their contents.
And if you thought the party was competitive up until this point, it’s about to get much worse because within this one little bag, your guests are going to form a picture of your whole lifestyle so you’d better get it right. Fill it with lollies and small plastic toys from a $2 store and you’re quickly written off as a shithouse trailer park mum. Fill it with dried apple, goji berries and a bookmark made by ten-year-old farmers and purchased in some ethical fair trade shop, and no one will ever talk to you again. According to researchers who research, erm, how much people spend on their party bags, the average spend per bag has now hit the ten-dollar mark. That means if you’ve invited ten children to little Lilibeth’s birthday party, that’s one hundred dollars you’ll be spending on their takeaway gifts alone. ‘Sometimes, it becomes so much about impressing the parents, that the kids are completely forgotten in the process,’ says one social analyst, and he’s spot on. I recently went to a three-year-old’s party at an imposing mansion on Sydney’s North Shore where the parents were served Veuve Clicquot all afternoon long and not a single scrap of food was provided for the kids. Tipsy mums and dads had to rifle through their handbags to rummage for blackening bananas and Tic Tacs to stop the little ones from crying out with hunger. Then, at the stroke of midday, the mum led us to the front gate where she handed out the party bags (full of lollies) to each kid and promptly slammed the gate shut behind them. That’s one way of having a cheap soiree and getting guests out of your home on time!
Although you’d swear this is just a problem for those surrounded by nothing by soulless, cashed-up trolls, it’s actually become wide spread, reaching far into all socio-economic demographics the Western world over. One poll conducted recently revealed one in ten admitted throwing a party just to impress other parents, while another showed nearly two-thirds of parents admit to feeling uneasy about what other people will think of their child’s party and make themselves sick with worry – so much so that according to a survey that ran in a parenting magazine, 47 per cent of parents were said to be considering hiring professional party planners for their children’s next birthday. Yeah, it would be easy to point the finger and laugh at them, but remember, these parents aren’t blowing a gasket over a $200 backyard bash. Industry planners are going on record to say an increasing number of many Australian parents are now spending up to $10,000 on their little prince or princess’s party, with first birthdays fast becoming one of their biggest earners. I ask my friend, a leading event stylist, about this one night at a work function. ‘Oh honey, that’s nothing!’ he says wearily, downing the better half of a gin and tonic as he speaks. ‘Most of the clients I deal with spend closer to $20,000 and for some of those kids, no matter what we do, nothing’s ever good enough.’ Ouch.
I honestly don’t know how things turned out like this. My own birthday parties were often undertaken in our living room under a thick smog of my mother’s two-pack-a-day habit. If I was lucky, Mum got me an ice-cream cake made entirely out of ingredients I’m fairly certain caused cancer in lab rats. One year, after a couple of months of begging (and quite possibly, a short stint of secondary emphysema), I was finally allowed to have a McDonald’s party, to which I wore a hot-pink angora jumper teamed with a short tight mini leather skirt and white ankle socks, making me look like some kind of LA-bound midget hooker. And for my tenth birthday, I reached my party zenith, for that was the year my parents splashed out and took me and some of my close friends to a cafe for chocolate mousse and hot chocolate. To this day, it goes down as one of my favourite childhood memories – no jumping castle, entertainer or contortionist in sight. Just Mum, Dad, friends and chocolate mousse. Bliss!
It turns out I’m not the only person fed up with the competitive nature of birthday parties. In the US, a group of concerned parents have formed a community group called Birthdays Without Pressure in an effort to raise awareness about the situation. Their website is loaded with awesome reading material including some classic real-life examples of when children’s parties go very bad. One parent received a child’s party invitation requesting gifts with a minimum value of $35. Blessedly, the sender of the invite did include a note that explained the previous year her child received gifts that were valued around the $10 mark, which didn’t even come close to covering the costs of having a party in the first place. I mean, what is the point if you’re not going to be loaded with expensive gifts, right? Another mum contacted the website and complained ‘half parties’ were fast becoming the norm in her neck of the woods. ‘What is a half party?’ I hear you ask. It turns out half parties are held if you’re in the unfortunate position of having a winter baby, thus winter party, and in the US, winter can get mighty frosty. Winter baby has a half party in winter to mark the all-important day, and then mum and dad give the little shit a full-on party come summer
so they don’t miss out on the good stuff. Honestly – what ever happened to serving up a good strong cup of cement and telling them to harden the fuck up?
So yes, after all this madness I am going to buck the trend and go back to five kids under a tree. I’ve had the Scout hall, the designer party and an eat-and-spew-a-thon at Luna Park for Cella’s third birthday. By my calculations, it’s been a slippery slope and this year can only be the year of the tree. I’m out of the race, and I like it.
How to keep your children’s parties under control
If you’ve had your own share of circus parties and caricaturists (don’t laugh, it might have happened), as mentioned above there’s a group for parents just like us – Birthdays Without Pressure (cehd.umn.edu/fsos/projects/birthdays/). This US website largely blames our supersizing consumerism and competitive nature for the trend but concedes parents may also be afraid their kids’ party will fall below the bar, while others try to compensate for their guilt over being too busy or overscheduled. Their advice? You take a step back and take a simpler approach.
Ideas for family birthday rituals
Rather than concentrating on impressing other kids’ parents, think about ways you can keep your little one’s birthday celebrations meaningful and family-centric. The folks at Birthdays Without Pressure recommend the following ideas:
* Host a family-only party most years with an extra party with friends occasionally.
* Have a party with family only and just a couple of close friends.
* A tradition in which the birthday child selects the menu for family birthday dinner at home.
* Another tradition in which the birthday child selects the restaurant for the family meal celebration.
* Waking up the birthday boy or girl with the whole family singing ‘Happy Birthday’, with their choice of birthday menu.
* During the birthday dinner, each family member shares something they especially love about the birthday child.
* Taking family holidays around the child’s birthday so it’s a two-for-one deal.
* Incorporating one-on-one traditions such as taking your child out to a special place each year.
Of course if your child is still hell-bent on having that all-out ‘Barbie Princess Catwalk’ party, it might be time to have a little chat to them. Birthdays Without Pressure says that sometimes, as parents, we plan the party we want or what we think everyone expects, but not necessarily the party our children hanker after. They recommend asking your child the following questions before planning their next party:
* What was your favourite birthday party?
* What was fun about it?
* What was not fun?
* What do you remember most about it?
* How many kids do you think you should have at a party?
* What was fun about a friend’s party?
* What are your favourite games to play at a party?
* How many presents would be enough?
* How many kids would be enough?
I decide to send my daughter to a public school (sort of)
I am 16 weeks’ pregnant the first time I am hit with The Question. ‘So, which school are you sending the little one to?’ A seemingly innocuous question to the untrained ear, it’s actually loaded with meaning, and how you respond will reveal everything about your social standing, from which way you vote to how much money you pull in. Standing in the baked goods section at my local Woolies with motherhood months ahead of me, I still don’t know any of this, of course. What I do know for sure at this moment in time is this: there’s something weird happening with my breasts, I need to pee for what feels like the 20th time today, and if I don’t eat sugary goodness soon, I’m going to upturn entire displays of doughnuts and sourdough in a fit of hormonal rage. Taking this into consideration, which school my unborn baby will be attending is quite possibly the least of my worries.
But the stranger with the trolley won’t let up. ‘Have you decided yet? Because time is really ticking, you know.’ She smiles at me through game-show hostess teeth as she says this and I immediately feel as though she’s trying to entice me into a cult. ‘Actually, no’, I want to tell her, ‘because this is my first baby and a life beyond childcare walls is inconceivable to me – hell, holding an actual live baby is still inconceivable to me.’ I don’t say any of this, of course. No, I just try not to gape at the clearly batshit-crazy lady and stammer, ‘Er, I don’t know really . . . the local one maybe?’ I mean really, I’m almost embarrassed by the position she’s put herself in. A baby on school waiting lists before they’re even born? Whoever heard of such a thing?
At the mere suggestion of the ‘local option’, Crazy Lady reacts as though I’ve recited some kind of evil incantation and turns an interesting shade of red under her immaculately applied foundation. I can only assume she’s mulling over the possibility that the pregnant woman standing opposite her might be the kind of person who would seriously consider or – gasp – maybe even prefer a public education for her child. She physically recoils at the thought and looks at me like I’m the one who might require sectioning. ‘Oh,’ she says in the same manner you’d use if someone you loved dearly disappointed you. Kinda like, ‘Oh . . . I’m really happy you’re going back out with that arsehole who cheats on you with your sister,’ or ‘Oh . . . no, of course I’m happy you blew our house deposit trying to triple your money on the pokies.’ She makes some announcement about forgetting her radishes, leaving me to stare at the back of her head as I hoe into a Chelsea bun I’ve not yet paid for.
I barely have time to digest the damned Chelsea bun when the topic rears its ugly head again, only this time the expectation is a little more clear. ‘So which waiting lists have you got your baby on?’ asks a random mum at a work function. Not which school she is going to, but which private school, as if any other option is well out of the equation. This time, I’m a little more prepared. ‘I’m actually not sure yet,’ I tell her honestly. ‘We’re discussing our options.’ At least in this open-ended scenario, she won’t ask me to put my mouth on the gutter and stomp my head in if I give the incorrect response. ‘Oh, darling!’ she exclaims, ‘If you wait much longer, you’ll never be able to get a spot at a school that matters.’ She begins to list schools deemed acceptable but she could be weaving daisies in my hair and yodelling Seekers songs at me for all I care because I’ve already checked out. Shouldn’t I be concentrating on reading breastfeeding books and doing parenting classes? Will my child end up in prison because I sent her to the wrong school? I thought childcare lists were the problem right now, not high schools. Clearly, this subject needs a bit more consideration than I originally thought.
For the record, I’ve always maintained I would never send our future children to private schools. I went to a public school in Sydney’s less-than-salubrious western suburbs and I absolutely loved it. We didn’t have a pool or go away anywhere fancy, but we were instilled with a strong work ethic and a fanatical obsession to succeed. In fact, most of my classmates have gone on to do wonderful things: they are doctors, financiers, lawyers, business owners.
Sigh . . . having said that, I’m pretty sure that although my public school education hasn’t stopped me from achieving everything I wanted in life, I’ve had to work a lot harder than my colleagues who are mostly private school educated and highly connected to get where I am. In fact if I’m going to be brutally honest, I can still remember how I felt when I was first starting out in the media – interviewers I was eager to impress would stumble over the Mitchell High School, Blacktown, element of my CV. ‘Mitchell . . .’, they would say, leaning into the sheet, as though trying to decipher some ancient hieroglyphics. ‘I can’t say I know it.’ ‘Yeah, it’s public . . . [long pause] . . . out west,’ I would admit, my statement eliciting a response that’s a mixture of shock, amazement and embarrassment for me. ‘Oh’ (there’s that ‘oh’ again). Some suggested ‘lightheartedly’ I should leave my school off my CV and make something up, while a couple o
f others advised I look to using someone else’s mailing address instead. Sheesh, I would think as I left the room, CV tucked tightly under my arm. You’d swear I’d listed kittens, long walks on the beach and meeting new people (and then killing them) in the hobbies section. The question now is, do I really want to make life harder for my daughter if I have the means to make it easier, or is this what one would call a character-building exercise? I just don’t know.
In any case, it turns out sending our child to our local public high school is not as easy as I thought. I like to plan things waaaay in advance so one day when I’m looking into the matter I find that although we have a good school a five-minute drive away, it doesn’t fall within our catchment area. No, our ‘local’ high school is in a suburb a good 20-minute drive away, or at the very least, two bus trips. ‘This is ridiculous!’ I yell at the Department of Education lady over the phone when I call to plead my case. ‘How can I force a 12-year-old to travel all that way, when we have another school so close by?’ She sighs loudly on the other end. She must hear this argument 100 times a day. ‘Look darl,’ comes back the voice which sounds as though it gets through 25 Winnie Reds a day, easy. ‘You can fill out an Out of Area application form explaining to the school why your child can’t possibly attend your local catchment school, but I don’t fancy your chances – there’s been a bit of a baby boom in your area over the past year or two and they’ll all have the same idea.’ Hardly, I think. People are moving to the private school system in droves. In fact, 34 per cent of Australian students now attend Catholic or independent private schools, a figure that has surged by a whopping 21.9 per cent over the 1998–2008 period. This probably has something to do with the fact that our government has neglected the state school system, which now only receives 68.6 per cent of education expenditure (by way of comparison, the worldwide average is 85.8 per cent, while in the United States, government schools receive 99.2 per cent of overall education expenditure).