My spring break began last Friday, so I went down to New York for a couple of days. For the most part this had its usual salubrious effect on my psyche. I always note the constant change in the city, and every time I'm back I see thing slipping away. But there was one thing I particularly noticed: there are children EVERYWHERE. It really began to get on my nerves. I was staying in the West Village. Two of the four businesses on the corners of Bleecker and Christopher are designer kiddie boutiques, at what was once the epicenter of adult sexual freedom. My host, who has been living in his apartment for 30 years, has neighbors who keep the excess kiddie crap (tricycles, strollers, etc.) in the hallway and who say that since having children in the city is so difficult, they have the right to commandeer shared public space.

Now, I was born and raised in Manhattan. In fact, I was born in the West Village (I was actually born in a hospital, but that's where my parents were living). And shortly after I was born, my parents moved uptown precisely because the West Village was NOT child-oriented. Of course, I realize that having kids is what people do and people have the right to have children wherever they happen to be. But they do not have the right to to turn wherever they happen to be into a giant nursery. There are spaces that are more family-oriented than others, and either one moves to one of those spaces, or one accepts that raising children in the adult-centered space one always enjoyed makes one (and one's children) marginal.

The defining moment for me was on Sunday afternoon when I went to Three Lives & Co., one of the great (and few remaining) small independent bookstores in the city. It has not only an interesting selection, but a really contemplative and unhurried atmosphere. But this couple had come in with their two obstreperous children. SInce there was nothing in the store to interest them, they entertained themselves by trying to chat up all the customers, making banal observations at the top of their lungs, and harassing the store's very quiet old dog. There was no idea that these kids were not entitled to take over any space in which they happened to be. And the parents feel entitled to have this unimpeded adult urban life, yet demand that wherever they happen to be become their children's playroom.

I think this is a huge problem, this inability to recognize that public space needs to be shared, and I think parents are the worst offenders. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You need to communicate to your children that there are times and places when they are insignificant, and if they are too young or too spoiled to understand this, then you aren't welcome at these times and places either.