The World's Children
During one of my pregnancies, I was doing my groceries, standing in the aisle with my trolley when a man with a briefcase walked past. He stopped and turned back to me and said, "I just wanted to tell you you are doing so well. SO well." He nodded his head as if to agree with himself, and then said again, "Well done! You're doing great." I smiled with stifled laughter as the complete stranger, with suit and briefcase, walked away down the aisle never to be seen again. Some people might have thought that was odd and creepy, but I loved it. He saw I was pregnant, he saw I was grocery shopping and he was proud that I was managing, knowing it wasn't easy. People often seem to have a vested interest in pregnant women and children. Most ladies have stories of perfect strangers coming to rub their tummies when they're pregnant, and striking up conversations, and many ladies find it most annoying. Similarly, you will often find people having an opinion, wise or not, on how you should be disciplining your children, or whether your baby should be wearing a hat, or what you should be doing with your child at any given moment. For me, that has never been a problem. In fact, I find it quite enchanting that there seems to be a collective interest in the world's children, and a collective sense of ownership. If we drive past a car with the kids unstrapped and bouncing around, we're sure to tut-tut in disgust. When we see young teens wondering the malls unsupervised, we shake our heads at their parents. How lovely that we have an inbuilt sense of responsibility for the entire generation of children; that a stranger would reveal their heart of wanting to protect our children by voicing their opinion about our child-raising; that they would demonstrate the affection they feel by wanting to touch the unborn child in our bellies. We need to embrace raising our children in community, rather than our default being to withdraw and disapprove of people taking an interest in our families.
