A puppeteer picks the strings of his dragon puppet. A girl on a tricycle thunders down the hill with speed and glittering eyes. It feels peaceful in Central Park, people relax, the trees are red, yellow and quiet. Then suddenly there is the boy. Drawn pale, shoulders stiffly up, his cheeks wet with tears and snot. Seven at most. I bump my friend, get up and walk to the boy. His utter dismay, as if he had just run out of a burning house, squeezes my own throat. I squat. „Hi there, did you lose your mommy?He nods in a daze and starts chattering.
People look at us with concern, wavering themselves – whose responsibility is this kid now? I ask if I can pick him up. „Yes, please.” There we are, the three of us, a perfectly normal family for new passers-by. My friend points to a playground down the road and asks if he was playing with his mother there. He nods.
We move uncertainly in that direction as I try to communicate with my body language that we are on a quest, that he is safe with me, and that I am not kidnapping a child. Arriving at the playground, I see a woman in a gray fluff sweater near the light blue climbing frame – totally devastated. Intuitively I point to her. “There’s mommy.” She dashes towards us and hugs the kid in her arms.
‘Thank you so much guys.My boyfriend and I look to the left in surprise. A large, somewhat awkward man apologizes. He often runs away, continues the father. We point to where we found his son, shake hands, say goodbye. We get a pretzel to recover from the shock. There’s a knot in my feminist belly. ‘Did you lose your mommyyyy?‘ it echoes. Why didn’t I ask if he had lost his father or just his parents? I am ashamed. For years I’ve been riled up on Instagram about media articles that talk about “mothers” when they mean “parents.” A HEMA spokesperson who argued on NU.nl during the pandemic that the store was crucial: “We sell baby equipment and mothers cannot wait weeks for a new romper.” (Fortunately, fathers do.) Recently an article on NOS about the importance of maternity care for women with money problems. The word ‘father’ does not appear in the entire article, while maternity care is not only there to assist mothers. (Not to mention gay couples with adoptive babies.)
After such critical posts on Insta, my inbox is always filled with anecdotes: mothers who are called by school when the child is sick, even though dad is emphatically on the call list. Consultation offices that keep their eyes firmly on the woman. (Financial authorities are tight-lipped.) And so on.
The stern media critic says: journalism has a responsibility, because it seeps into our culture. This humble feminist mutters after it: with the best of intentions, we sometimes re-produce what we’re agitating against. However, media has an exponentially larger audience, which unconsciously absorbs what it says. I especially wish I did it differently with the little boy. My friend puts an arm around me and cheerfully says sardonically, “Better next time.”
Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen writes a column on this site every other week.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of October 24, 2022