A tale of two city parks

We've been spending a fair bit of time in London's Bloomsbury recently and, when our need for a swing, a loo, a climbing frame, a sandpit, a bench shaped like a train, a cafe or some goats and chickens overcomes us, we head to Coram's Fields, a park that you are only allowed to enter if you are with a child. If those facilites don't sound enough for you, consider this - once, about a year ago, I even spotted Damian Lewis there.

Before I had a child I was desperately jealous of the friends who got to hang out there, not because there aren't other parks in London I could go to, but because when friends got together there for a day out it was just so excluding. Now I can go, I'm a bit ambivalent about the place. Because although in theory it has everything you want in a park, including a well stocked children's centre with a drop in play session for the under fives complete with craft materials, judgey staff, polite notices and children with ridiculous names, it seems wrong to have a park solely for people with children. It gives across a Daily Mail-esque message that all adults without children who wish to go to a park are paedophiles, and, conversely, that everyone with a child is not a paedophile, both statements being untrue of course.

The other day we went to the park next door to Coram's Fields, Brunswick Square Gardens. It has more flowers than Coram's Fields, and flowers, along with pigeons, are my daughter's favourite things at the moment, having usurped ducks and dogs. The sun was shining, the daffodils were trumpeting spring and the plane tree in the middle, which according to the Camden Council website is "the finest example of a London plane tree to be found anywhere in Camden" and listed as a 'Great Tree of London' by the charity Trees for Cities, was resplendent. One thing was missing however, for though it looked lke a park and smelled like a park, it wasn't the slice of society that parks usually are - for there were no children, and it was rather sad.

It's not just parents who should be interested in parenting

I'm back in the freelance market again after my maternity leave and, yawn yawn cliche cliche, I pitched an article to the family section of a newspaper. I liked the pitch - all about the rise of parent bloggers, but got a swift rejection from the editor. They try, the editor told me, to avoid articles about parenting, because the section is about family, not about parenting, and that they want articles that people can relate to whether or not they have young children.

Fair enough - they can publish whatever they want to publish - but I am quite surprised that they think parenting is only of interest to people actually doing it at that moment. Sure, the colour of your child's poo or their weaning habits may only be of interest to you and your partner, and perhaps an involved grandparent, but the wider issues of parenting go much further than this.

After all, who gets the blame if there are riots? Parents. Who is responsible for ensuring teenagers eat, drink and fornicate sensibly? Parents. Who needs to encourage children to ensure they get the skills necessary to contribute to society, economically and socially? Parents of course. Parenting isn't a niche issue - it impacts on us all, and I don't believe that only people going through it at the moment have views on it. I enjoyed reading about parenting when I was a child, when I was a childless 20-something and now. I imagine I will in the future.

"What we are looking for are stories from the other end of the spectrum, when families are grown up and the really interesting things in life have happened to them," the editor wrote back to me. And I am interested in these things too, but that's because I am interested in all types of human relationships. I am not old, but I am interested in stories about that part of life too. I am not adopted, but I find stories about adoption fascinating. I have discovered no deep dark secrets that I am willing to share, there are no famous people in my family, I think I know about all my siblings, no one has hidden any treasure and, luckily, there have been no great disasters. But I want to read about all of these things when other people write about them.

It's not to say my article should have been commissioned. Freelancers know that for every commission you get you also get twenty rejections. Indeed that is the job of an editor. And the joy of blogging, I am finding, is that you can write what you want without having to persuade anyone else to see merit in it in order to have it published. But I do resent the suggestion that being a parent and having young children is only interesting to those going through it at the time. I do believe it takes a village to raise a child, and I expect everyone in that village to be interested in how it is done, just as I am interested in their lives, whatever stage they are at.

Harumph.