03/02/20 The Jubilee Line between Stratford and Waterloo
On my way to meet a family friend at the theatre, I take the jubilee line tube out of necessity. I’ve brought with me John Stuart Mill’s ‘Subjection of Women’ to read on my way but as I try to focus on Mill’s cries for female liberation and condemnation of entrenched male superiority, I find myself distracted by two women seated opposite me in the carriage.
I hear them before I see them, their loud Spanish voices mingling with before inevitably overpowering, the reggaeton beats playing through my earphones . Intrigued (primarily because I’m nosy but partly because at this point I’m impressed with the passiveness of everyone else on the tube), I look up and am greeted by the sight of two women and their two children, chattering loudly. Each of them is gulping from an open can of 'Stella' between bursts of conversation (the women, not the children), whilst simultaneously trying to hold on to their respective buggies (empty thankfully, as at one point one of them rolls away halfway down the compartment and has to be rescued by an innocent bystander).
I love this type of parenting and I can’t tell if it’s their relaxed Hispanic disposition or if, as women and mothers, these two are maybe just a little bit wild. I smile to myself as I reach my stop and leave the pair still gossiping between themselves, admiring their multitasking capabilities and blatant disregard for expected social maternal etiquette.
Screw Mill, is this not the future of feminist parenting?
I hear them before I see them, their loud Spanish voices mingling with before inevitably overpowering, the reggaeton beats playing through my earphones . Intrigued (primarily because I’m nosy but partly because at this point I’m impressed with the passiveness of everyone else on the tube), I look up and am greeted by the sight of two women and their two children, chattering loudly. Each of them is gulping from an open can of 'Stella' between bursts of conversation (the women, not the children), whilst simultaneously trying to hold on to their respective buggies (empty thankfully, as at one point one of them rolls away halfway down the compartment and has to be rescued by an innocent bystander).
I love this type of parenting and I can’t tell if it’s their relaxed Hispanic disposition or if, as women and mothers, these two are maybe just a little bit wild. I smile to myself as I reach my stop and leave the pair still gossiping between themselves, admiring their multitasking capabilities and blatant disregard for expected social maternal etiquette.
Screw Mill, is this not the future of feminist parenting?
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