Apart from the ultra cool back-packers ignoring me, Australia has always been wonderful. People seem to generally like having children around. In London it is rare to see families out late in the eveing enjoying dinner together, but I was so happy to see families all out together in cities such as Brisbane and Sydney. I traveled via train a lot in Australia and I was dreading it due to experiences I have had with rude and unhelpful staff in the UK, but the Australian train staff were bending over backwards to help me, it was actually embarrasing at times. I found New Zealand to be very family friendly as well, I had a wonderful time from the get go with NZ, my son was made welcome everywhere, we had a campervan and stayed on a lot of farm sites and he was always invited to go round helping the farmers, it was lovely.
Iceland was pretty easy as well, they really seem to value thier children there and take a real interrest in them. The culture seemed very child centered.
China was a breeze to travel with a child in, I was so nervous about taking him there, but again people couldn't do enough to help me and seemed to enjoy talking to children.
My husband works in the Netherlands during the week and I always love taking my son over. If we are haivng a conversation with my husbands dutch friends, they always make sure to include my son instead of ignoring him. His friends there seem much more family orientated than this work mates in the UK.
One place I found to be very child unfriendly, and this came as a real shock, was Rome. I blogged about it last year, my son seemed to be a real annoyance to the entire population! He was pushed and shoved, walked over when he fell down. One evening, I was told by three resteraunts that they did not allow children in because they made too much mess and noise (these were not posh places either, just little cafes across the road from the Colesseum). I was always told that the Italians were very child friendly. I know I only experienced one city, and some of the people being so rude would have been tourists, but it was relentless and totally ruined our time in Rome.
Morocco was very strange. Not many places were welcoming to children at all .Or women, but my husband was with us for that trip. It seemed to be a very 'us and them' kind of society (we were staying in and around Taroudant mainly). I can't quite descibe it, but with the families we stayed with, there didn't seem to be much interraction between children and adults at all. I think it is because we went to quite a lot of rural places, where the parents were working so hard to make ends meet, just to feed thier children, it can't be easy to interract when you are physically exhausted everyday.
I stated that I wouldn't be surprised if home ed was banned in the UK soon - this is because of a goverment review into it at the moment. The gist of it is, that the goverment suspect home education is a cover for child abuse, so all home educated kids must be inspected and questioned without a parent present. Parents in the UK are bullied to conform to the goverments whims, they hange their policies on Sex education so much that in one area they are giving pretty explicit sex education classes to five year olds, and in other areas, families are being investigated by social services becasue a child of the same age knows the correct names for reproductive body parts and teachers have suspected abuse.
There are just so many examples in day to day life, you cannot do wrong for doing right anymore. Parents seem to get the blame for everything. Mothers get the blame for society going down the pan for going back to work, but mothers that choose to stay at home but have to claim benifits get vilified as well. There are so many more examples that I cannot think of right now. I am sure your friend is not exaggereating with the things she tells you!
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