The most-quoted line of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre is "hell is other people." But the Gallic brainiac got it only half-right. For a lot of us in middle-age or those about to join that club, Sartre’s statement would be more accurately expressed as "hell is other parents."
This universal truth transcends gender, class and race. It’s not the protected characteristics of a fellow parent that grinds my gears or makes me recoil in horror from small talk or joining in the "fun." It’s their parenty-ness. I’m quite capable of taking a dislike to parents outside kindergarten. School-gate moms. Touchline or courtside dads. At ballet or drama classes. Like Dirty Harry, I can hate anyone.
Maybe, for young parents, it’s different, but by the time a parent reaches middle-age, they have spent a good portion of their life weeding out all the selfish and irritating people they met in the first half of their existence. There is a kind of Darwinism to middle-age, where you evolve away from bad buddies and useless acquaintances because you think, "Life’s too short, why am I giving my time to these people?"
You’re still stuck with relatives you’d like to get rid of but can’t, and they give you enough trouble without having to manage unreliable or needy old friends as well.
So, being forced together with fresh sets of adults at this stage of life undermines your grand plan for getting older, which is supposed to involve more time to do the things you love, less stress and fewer psychological entanglements.
I know other parents feel the same way about me and I don’t take it personally. I’d be even more suspicious of them if they did like me. Liking me is a sure sign of bad judgment.
But at least other dads are honest. They don’t really like me or have any interest in my life. When I’ve been forced at metaphorical gunpoint to talk to other fathers, I make it my business to ask them what job they do, where they grew up etc., on the basis that my wife will beat me if I don’t. They never, ever ask me about myself. Which proves I’ve been right all along. The best thing to do is not to bother.
Moms are more complicated. Women confronted with a gang of other women routinely act like girls in school and then complain to their husbands or partners that the other moms are acting like girls in school. That's only been made worse by seemingly endless numbers of toxic WhatsApp groups. And that’s why I hate other parents most of all. It reminds me that most people never grow up. The schoolyard and classroom—with all its cliques, backstabbing, bullying, power plays and rumors—is constantly being reconstructed and reenacted every time parents get together.
At school, you were forced to sit with three or four people you liked and another 28 you didn’t. Your own child’s nascent social life, from kindergarten through to high school, drags you back into this circle of hell again. As a parent, your conversational entry point with other parents is that you have children. You have no more in common with them than any other random bozo.
I guess my bad attitude (just call me "BA") has been noticed, much to the embarrassment of my wife. After attending a parents’ quiz night to raise money for my daughter’s middle school during which I answered 90 percent of the answers and won us the prize (a rather unimpressive bottle of wine) I must have really annoyed one of the other parents on our quiz team. The next week, she thought it appropriate to tell my wife—flatly—that she didn’t like me.
Perhaps she thought I was arrogant. Perhaps she was annoyed her husband isn't as smart as me. But whatever the reason, she told my wife she didn’t like me: to her face. This mom must have assumed my wife would tell me what she’d said, which meant, each time I saw her subsequently, she knew that I knew she didn’t like me.
This was my prejudice about other parents in a nutshell. I literally don’t care who they are, what they think or what they do, and yet somehow they find a way to draw me into a psychodrama. What happened to minding your own business? Who benefits from one parent telling another parent she doesn’t like her husband? Like Al Pacino said, "Just when I thought I was out, they suck me back in!"
My coda is that, after all this time, I have finally found something approaching peace with the problem. My youngest daughter plays rugby, and the other parents I meet there are all lovely (well, mostly). I suppose, if you play the machine enough times, eventually you will hit the jackpot. Maybe I'm not so bad after all. Even I can be saved.
George Chesterton is Newsweek’s Director, Publishing & Subscriber Strategy.
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