Parental Privilege

When Isobel was first born, I feared I'd develop an irrational jealousy of her. I have since found that while I have developed this jealousy, it isn't of her. I'm jealous over her.

She's now at a fantastic age. She's seeing everything with new eyes and understands the world a little bit more each time. She grins from ear to ear.

We play all day, while her dad, Matthew, intermittently zones out watching telly. She clings on tight when I pick her up and plays with my hair and necklace, sometimes pulling it impressively hard for someone her size. I wonder if that's something her mother has taught her to do to blonde women.

In public, people smile at me. “How beautiful is your baby!” I'm sad she's not mine.

At the play centre, we find an area called Pre-Walkers for Isobel. We want to go in the ball pool, but despite the 'Under 5s Only' sign, there's a group of big kids and we don't want to get caught up in the crossfire of coloured plastic missiles.

The Pre-Walkers section is secluded and I show Isobel and abacus with numbers, letters, colours and farm animals, which provokes the wide toothy grin.

Some older kids hop into our zone and crowd the space and a skinny little blonde girl sparks up a conversation with Matthew.

A weathered-looking mother or grandmother gazes over. I will her to call her noisy busy-body child away but she just looks at me suspiciously and returns to her group of friends who are sitting in a cluster about ten feet away.

Matthew patiently engages in conversation with the child. She wants to know Isobel's name.

Why does she make me so uncomfortable? I realise that it's because she's an imposter too. Maybe she has a little brother or sister, or maybe she wishes she did. She's in training to be a mother already, ugh.

While I envy certain aspects, as a general collective, I dislike parents. Not my own, they're fantastic, although as human and flawed as all of them are.

Parenthood is an exclusive club. The people in it have done something wonderful for the future of the entire human race. They have evolved a little bit more than all the rest of us, and they have parental instincts, which just make them right.

They are bringing up the future, which isn't a service to themselves, but the world, and this entitles them to “parental privilege”. Parental privilege is what gives parents the right to say “I know best”.

It entitles them to push their buggies in front of cars to halt traffic, it allows them to pull over on corners and junctions without indicating or do whatever they feel they need to do.

As Isobel's non-mother, I don't cross the road unless there's a green light. Matt rolls his eyes from the other side of the road as the lights change again and another channel of traffic passes. There had been plenty of time, but if anything had happened...

I am afraid to lift Isobel above my head, while Matthew throws her in the air and catches her – her favourite game.

I keep rigidly to her diet and schedule, or else it will be my fault she's constipated or doesn't sleep.

He gives her whatever he can find to shut her up and it does the trick.

I watch her with terror tottering on her chubby feet as she holds herself up against the coffee table. On his watch, I hear him pause the games console to pick her up as she screams. “She's fine. She's got to learn these things.”

It's obviously something I'll understand when I have kids of my own, isn't it.