I was listening to a fabulous podcast called Child by India Rakusen. Really worth listening to. Episode 24 is about how we in the West have swung from 1920s total disregard for children’s emotional wellbeing, to the advent of intensive parenting (attachment, gentle, helicopter, tiger) for which most of the emotional labour is expected to come from the mother, to the detriment of anything else in her life. India concludes the episode wisely, stating that children will not only do just fine but will develop more resilience if they learn early on  that their parents love them but their life ain’t gonna be one long smooth free ride. This whole attachment/gentle parenting thing sounds adorable but if you train your child to be so utterly, helplessly, interminably dependent on you, its mother, you essentially become a slave to a mini despot. Sounds pretty standard, right? Waiting for that baby to learn the difference between night and day, accepting the broken nights; before you know it you’re waking up with a toddler lying perpendicular in your bed, not being able to move them because such a position change risks Armageddon. All because some flawed study showed that babies experience a wee bit of short term stress from sleep training? Look,  I’m a midwife, I can do prolonged sleep deprivation, for like 36 hours. Not 36 months. Luckily, I’m French and we teach our kids to sleep which benefits both parties in the mother-baby dyad. I thoroughly recommend Emily Oster’s book, Crib Sheet: she’s checked out all the research, she’s followed the data, she concurs. If you’re going to be an emotionally attuned angelic slave, you’re probably gonna need a decent night’s kip. If you’re going to spend your waking hours negotiating with your toddler, you need sleep.  What you also need is military training. Which is why I found it interesting that Denmark are introducing conscription for women.

Apparently Norway and Sweden have been doing this for years. Israel has been doing it for decades. Call me crazy, but I kinda like that.  Don’t get me wrong, I am even happier with the no-military- service-for-anyone status quo that we have here because I can only imagine how much I would have disliked spending any amount of time in the army. I also know for a fact that my brothers, who only just missed out on having to do their French military service, were not overly enthusiastic about the prospect of doing it either.  I’m sure it’s not all bad, you know,  the teamwork, the camaraderie, but ugh, too much outdoorsy stuff for my liking! My point is that if a country does demand conscription, it shouldn’t be just for men. Women are allowed to serve  in most armies, and the research unanimously states that this is a good idea. If women are (obviously) good enough to volunteer, why on earth wouldn’t they be equally conscripted? Besides, if women were routinely conscripted, I before there’d be fewer wars as we’d be all like: has anyone tried calling them? Y’know, before we nuke them, maybe we could chat over a cuppa? This dilemma was brought to my attention in a completely different context. I was listening to a podcast (probably women’s hour, let’s face it!) discussing sexism in South Korea where women are so badly treated once they become mothers (especially if they have the audacity to return to work and, gods forbid, ask for flexible hours) that many of them simply refuse to procreate.  Anyway, those who complain about the status quo get treated to the usual vindictive backlash by some pretty exhausted men who are expected to work their behinds off to support the confined-to-the-home-yet-not -terribly-grateful mother of their children. These men often comment that it is unfair that they are the only ones doing military service. Bear in mind that their neighbours to the North are not exactly friendly. Technically, they are still at war with each other.  Conscription is therefore potentially dangerous, and some might argue that women can’t be expected to cope. Well, (and look, I’d be the first to say that they aren’t perhaps the best role models right now) tell that to the Israelis. What I’m trying to say is that perhaps if South Korean women were routinely seen to kick @r$€ in the army, their men might finally understand how little the “fairer sex” need to be cosseted at home. Of course training women up to deal with a mini tyrant would be awesome for mothers the world over! Because toddler taming (which often ends up being the mother’s job) is all about getting your precious progeny to behave in a way that won’t cause them or anyone else grievous bodily harm, even though said toddler has all the advantages because they can and absolutely will wreak havoc if displeased, and your only options are damage limitation and clearing up the inevitable post tantrum mess. You have all the best weapons but you’re not allowed to use them. That’s army training 101: how to never use your nukes thereby de-escalating a crisis, yet maintaining the charade that next time, if pushed, you absolutely will. Your toddler has an arsenal of dirty bombs all of which s/he will not hesitate to deploy. Of course in the army  you can deploy other weapons but this is frowned on nowadays when parenting. Worse, you’re barely allowed to raise your voice. Gentle parenting has deskilled parents because discipline simply isn’t a thing anymore. Army training, however, would give us a competitive advantage! Remember the motto? Army: Be the best. If the army can teach its recruits to make beds with crisp hospital corners, to shine shoes and buckles til they gleam, to eat whatever mess it serves in its canteen,  and how to wield power in a firm, predominantly non-violent, minimally-negotiable manner, well these are surely transferable skills which all parents need! It all boils down to acquiring and passing on a modicum of self-discipline. I’d be the last to self-identify as a discipline guru (had I mastered that art in my early twenties I’d have aced both my dissertations) and I’d even argue that too much self-discipline is painfully boring.  But I’d argue it can be learned and should be taught. In moderation, obviously. If we’re to lead by example, we don’t want to act like the kind of dictator that we’re discouraging our little darling from becoming. Plus I’d argue that self-discipline requirements vary over time. The challenge is knowing how and when to up the discipline without overdoing it. As a new mum, I vividly remember how difficult that was. Up til that point, I’d had just about enough self-discipline  to train as a midwife (the dissertation nearly broke me) and do the job competently enough, even get to the gym reasonably regularly. I was functioning pretty well as an adult. Now I was a mother, I had to function on a whole new level. Pretty much all mums have this eureka moment; I’d say fewer dad’s do. They often get to carry on adulting.  Parenting requires a game changing amount of self-discipline because we cannot afford to run out of nappies,  we can’t miss that doctor’s appointment that we somehow managed to schedule at 0800 this morning when we should have been sleeping; we have to find a nursery so we can go back to work; little junior has grown out of his adorable 0-3 months wardrobe;  which holiday destination is baby friendly; oh but wait, junior needs a passport… it’s exhausting. But it’s the easy bit. So you’ve dug deep and found reserves of self-discipline, but now you have to teach it. On your own. No training. To a toddler…  Teaching kids is not an easy task though; we all learned the hard way when we all became teachers overnight for nearly a year back in 2020.  Gentle parenting can seem like the answer: not teaching discipline  and accepting the consequences. Frankly, why bother if no-one else is. Fathers who operate as weekend babysitters (not all fathers, to be clear) certainly don’t bother. It’s easier and more fun to be the good guy. Grandparents delight in spoiling their little angels. Nursery staff aren’t paid enough. Neither are teachers. But discipline takes teamwork from all the above. Mothers are screwed if they become solitary bad cop (it’s relentless,  it’s thankless, you’re constantly trying to implement unpopular rules that no-one else enforces); and screwed if they give in to gentle parenting because mighty few toddlers come with adequate behaviour, basic self-care and independence as standard. And somebody has to fill in those self care gaps to keep said toddler clean and safe until they finally can finally be arsed to do it themselves. Which they won’t because no self-respecting toddler acquires these qualities without a certain amount of coercion.  Seriously, their first word is invariably “no”. Look, I’m all for the ‘reflection’ step (formerly known as the naughty step but apparently we don’t call it that anymore…) if it works for your child. Lucky you! Not all children will meekly accept banishment and enforced reflection. It didn’t work for Firstborn Son or Middle Child. Not gonna lie, Only Daughter was a dreamboat baby who had the sleeping, the eating and the potty training sussed without epic battles of will. Maybe cos she’s a girl (but then you have to deal with girl puberty which sucks), most likely because third time lucky! So it only works if you can reason with your child. My boys didn’t respond to bribery, let alone reason! Star charts were pure wishful thinking on my part. I never successfully coaxed Firstborn Son to eat a vegetable using the power of reason. He did not care. I had to make sure he was hungry at mealtimes. There were no alternatives to what I had lovingly prepared. (I should add that good eating was celebrated and rewarded!)  It took Middle Child rather longer than I’d have liked for him to transition out of nappies, but invoking his better self to keep his big boy pants clean and dry certainly wasn’t what potty trained him. He did not care. I did raise my voice. Angrily. (Again, good bowel and bladder outcomes were rewarded). Maybe it would have been easier to dole out beige food and change stinky nappies until they decided they were ready to finally accept reality, but I’m really, unapologetically, not that kind of mother. I’m not sure if my somewhat military attitude towards parenting has shortened my (inevitable) period of domestic servitude, but I may have laid the groundwork for very basic self-discipline, and that’s a start.