Motherload

I had a most compelling conversation the other night with a close girlfriend. A term swam into the discussion that I haven't heard used in years: Bohemian. It cristallized a thought that has been bubbling away at the back of my mind for the past few years: that it has become impossible to raise a family in a creative, bohemian, or eccentric way. There seems to be no alternative, or middle ground, between hyper-commercialized, preternaturally childcentric helicopter parenting, or fundamental neglect amounting to child abuse. I think one of the (many) reasons why I question parenting at the moment is that it is so suffocatingly dull, not because children are dull, but because what's expected of mothers is. I was in the school playground giving my children their daily snack of nuts the other day, and another mother, usually very friendly, barked at me: "Nuts? Did I hear the word nuts? Don't you know that you are not allowed to bring nuts onto school premises?" I had