Writing -- Baby Talk: City perils

The following article featured in a weekly column on parenting in the Women on Wednesday supplement of The Evening Echo, one of Ireland's leading regional daily newspapers. It appeared in the 20 October 2004 issue.

We rounded the corner by the GPO and were met by a forklift-cum-dumper contraption hurtling along the footpath. It was laden with heavy paving stones destined for the frenzied refurbishment going on in the run up to Cork's tenure as European Capital of Culture. The driver was in a hurry, and hardly noticed us as we skipped nimbly out of his path. My heart skipped a beat as my mind filled with images of what might have happened if we'd had the children in tow.

You try and keep your children near you when you're walking around the city, but there's always the off chance that one of them will make a break for it and run a few paces ahead before dashing back to grab your hand. Had they been with us, and one of the twins had chosen that particular moment to break free, there's no way the driver would have seen her.

Cork has been one enormous building site for what seems an eternity. Visiting the city centre these days always involves an encounter with at least one piece of heavy machinery and negotiating countless bumps, lumps and fissures in what used to be a pavement. Legions of workmen are attacking the streets, desperately trying to meet deadlines and sometimes with scant regard for passing pedestrians.

Of course it's great to see Cork getting a facelift, and few would deny that she was badly in need of a makeover. But while the work's is going on her streets are an unappealing prospect for parents with young children. Let's face it city centres tend not to be the safest places for kids at the best of times. You're always on edge, always looking out for traffic and trying to keep the children close to shield them from the unyielding tide of pedestrians. By their nature cities tend to be frantic places, full of busy people who are usually in a hurry to be somewhere else. Consumed by the melee, few even notice the frightened three or four year old clinging desperately to a worried parent's hand. Add the host of new dangers associated with the ongoing work and Cork city centre is no place for the little ones at the moment.

It's funny how parenthood changes your perspective on things. We were in Sydney when that city's preparations for the Olympics Games in 2000 were in full swing. The whole of the city centre and a fairly large chunk of the suburbs were being subjected to one kind of development or another. Without any children to worry about all of this work was nothing more than a minor distraction: it detracted a little from the city's aesthetic appeal and caused the occasional inconvenience, but by and large it was inconsequential in terms of its impact on us. We hardly gave it a second thought.

If we'd been there with the children things would have been very different. Having children changes your view of the world. It's as if when they are born a "parent filter" is permanently grafted onto your retina - it forces you to see everything in terms of its affect on them. Things that were inconsequential before suddenly take on very real significance because of their potential affect on the little ones.

Cork will soon be a much more agreeable place to take the children. Once all of the work is finished and large swathes of the city centre become traffic-free the prospect of taking them along will be a lot more appealing. Until then I think we're better off leaving them behind when we head into the city.