Who was (being) the kid in the senate?

I watched with much interest the incident on the news about an Australian senator, Sarah Hanson-Young's infant daughter, Kora, being forcibly ejected from the parliament chambers. (Full story here) I was reminded of Somerset Maugham's short story about a bus condcutor and a lady with a Pekinese dog - the former asking the latter to get off a late-night bus, citing an obscure "no-dogs-on-buses" rule. (Although this sounds like I'm an avid reader, the only reason I know about this story is because this was an English lesson in high school.)

Update: That story was not by Somerset Maugham. It was "All About a Dog" by A.G Gardiner and is available here.

This was interesting to me for many reasons, one of which is the question "Can parents take their kids to work place?" And I'm not talking bring-your-daughter-to-work days. "Are you a fighter/commercial pilot?" "Do you control the operation of a nuclear power plant?" "Do you fire guns at enemies trying to infiltrate into your borders?" "Do you perform open heart (or any other) surgery?" If your answer to any of those questions is a yes, then the answer to the first question is an obvious no. I mean, you can't take your kid to work with you. If on the other hand, you had answered no to all the above questions, then the answer is, it still depends. Having a kid around when you are trying to get some work done - even if you hold a 9-5 desk job that involves no interaction with heavy machinery, wild beasts or members of the general public, is a distraction in general. It is an inconvenient situation not only for the parent but for the kid(s) too. There can be no two opinions about it. Parents, in many cases can avail the various options available these days - day care centers, maids, child care leave, work from home, to name a few, to take care of the child while they discharge their professional duties.

The second reason why my interests were aroused was because, as kids, we had to tag along with our father on many days to his office during our annual summer vacations and unscheduled school holidays like strikes, study holidays before exams, etc. We were at that age when we were too old for our day care center but too young to be left alone by ourselves at home. In the mid-80s, there were not available in Chennai, flexible day care centers or summer camps. We did not have the luxury of being packed away to grand parents' houses: we had never seen our maternal grandparents and our paternal grandma had to be taken care of by someone. Those were days before the age of computers/internet and hence working from home was not an option for anybody. And since our mom used to work for a bank, we ended up, as a last resort, in our father's office, a much quieter place, on many many summer days. On some days it was just the one of us and on others we'd both mark our presence. We tried to be as transparent as kids in vacation can ever be. I must say we were reasonably successful in that we were never asked to be evicted from the office. If he was embarrassed, which I'm sure he was on many occasions, our father never showed it. He did this for a couple of years until one of his colleagues, bless her soul, offered to let us be at her place, just behind the office building, along with her kids who were under the care of a maid. Raising kids when both the parents were employed used to be a much more daunting task than it is these days and our parents went through a lot to bring us up.

Coming to this specific situation, I don't think the parliament chamber is the right place for a toddler to be. Even a well behaved child could definitely be a distraction when you are deciding/debating on issues that will impact the entire population of your country. And it is something that she should have avoided at all costs. I don't know about Australia but the Indian parliament or any state assembly house for that matter is definitely no place for kids for the same reason that X-rated movies are not for kids. Enough said. I'm still unclear why the senator took the child in, given that a child care center was available on the parliament campus - a smart move that should be emulated by other countries to enable politician mothers to play a better role in law making, knowing that her kid is safe and being cared for. That said, the situation could definitely have been handled a lot better in my opinion. The adorable child, aged two, was doing fine when the Senate president decided to have her evicted. May be he could have waited till the voting was over to make his point. Instead he chose to have Kora taken away, which led to her crying and the issue becoming more dramatic and bigger than it already was, leaving me wondering which was a bigger issue: the kid in the parliament or the senator who was being the kid. Which was why I was reminded of the Somerset Maugham story whose title I still can't remember.