August 24, 2006

My girlfriend Michelle has an exquisitely beautiful young blonde daughter. Heads turn. Did Shakespeare's Ophelia just wander by? Jaws drop. But little Tennyson is autistic. She is too old for a stroller but the fatigue that comes with her condition means that sometimes she needs one. Amazingly, this causes problems.

Grownups stare at Tennyson. She's too old for a stroller, they say loudly. Sometimes Tenny gets overexcited. Because she cannot speak, her shouts are bewildering. This beautiful child must be spoiled rotten, grownups conclude, and are so abusive to Michelle that she sometimes ends up in tears.

There is no float for autistic kids in the local parades, although there are floats for everything else. This Easter there was a float called Pug Rescue and it was populated by grownups and their precious pug dogs dressed up in expensive clothes. These dogs eat treats from the local bakery for doggie num-nums and play with toys from special doggie stores.

Tennyson's family, like other families who have to cope with autism, has come close to bankruptcy paying for the special therapy that is standard for autistic kids. "Get a human cause!" her father shouted out as the float went by. He was not popular with the crowd on the sidewalk.

My neighbourhood is mad for dogs, but for children, not so much. The signs along the boardwalk right by Lake Ontario say dogs must be leashed, intended for the safety of children and adults. Every sign has been spray-painted over. This was done by prosperous, white, middle-aged adults who have "furkids." That means dogs that are fed, dressed, housed and spoken to like children.

Small children are afraid to venture onto the sand, where huge hounds bark and pounce and fight. I now call my neighbourhood Dogville, which annoys the dogowners no end. They think I'm being sarcastic. They're right.

For hygiene and safety, the city does not allow dogs in restaurants. The local paper asked readers to comment on whether dogs should also be banned from patios. And the hate came spewing out.

"I would much rather dine with people's pets rather than some people's children. At least pets have a reason to behave as animals."

"I'd rather dine next to someone's pet than their children, a smothering cloud of perfume or a cell phone conversation."

"I would much prefer lunching with pets than lunching around someone else's children. When that happens, I move or leave."

I'll come right out and say it. Canada is not a child-loving nation. I'm not sure we even like children. It took decades to persuade the Liberals to create a national child-care system, which meant that single parents could work rather than go on welfare, that those children were fed well and learned to socialize with other kids, that they felt safe. The Harper government killed it, and Canadians scarcely whimpered. We complain about the cost of education and treat teachers like dirt. Why?

Al Aynsley-Green is the Children's Commissioner for England. He wonders whether his pet-loving nation cares for children at all. It has a "deep ambivalence" towards them, he says. Libby Brooks is the author of a new and extraordinary book, The Story of Childhood: Growing Up in Modern Britain, a collection of interviews with children. She quotes Aynsley-Green on the conundrum. Adults are "investing enormously in the young people with whom they [are] intimately involved, while remaining equivocal about other people's children - especially those growing up on the margins."

We do love children, but only our own. This blinds us, I think, to the fact that we really don't like the "human young who serve an extended apprenticeship" to adulthood. Ostensibly, we worry about our own kids to the point of ruining their lives. They can't play outside, walk to school alone or have free time. They must be constantly tested in school and kept safe at all times. But the lives of other people's children are as opaque to us as our own childhoods. We don't understand them and don't remember ourselves.

Teenagers are perfect straight-A students or they are beyond the pale - great big inarticulate thugs in hoodies if they're boys, and belly-baring hateful tarts if they're girls. Parents whose daughters go missing should always be aware that if they hint to the police that the child was unruly or a previous runaway, the case is seen in an entirely different light. Make her sound perfect, for her sake. It's almost a form of racism against non-perfect kids. And who has a perfect kid?

It is astonishing to me how easily adults forget how loathsome, heartless and criminally stupid they were at that age. Parents and teachers put up with us. Why can't we do the same for them now? Why would so many people rather have a dog?

Canadians let government day care die. Yet there is a dog treat bakery in my neighbourhood, where I know there are kids going to bed hungry. As you did, perhaps. And that's why you're programmed to hate kids now. You absorbed the contempt of others.

Maybe I should buy dog treats for underfed children. Or one of those purses from Holt Renfrew that, unbeknownst to sane customers, is a carrying bag for those little yappy-type dogs favoured by lonely people. Maybe they could put their school books in it.

It seems only fair.