425. Family room — women only

I recently wrote about our weekly trips to dead malls with the twins. For the most part they’ve been pretty new and have great family facilities.

Sadly the same cannot be said for all malls.

The last one that we visited is a very old mall, it’s been around for a long time but it’s been refurbished so it’s quite nice.

Unfortunately the family room is for women only. There’s a big sign telling you that.

I must admit that I find it pretty disappointing.

Now I don’t want to get into a debate about sexism, because it’s obvious to all that we could find many other examples of women being discriminated against in much worse ways.

I’m just astounded because of the impracticality and lack of compassion of it all from the child’s perspective. Plenty of fathers, uncles, grandfathers will visit the mall with children and they have nowhere to make the child comfortable.

At the end of the day it’s the kids who suffer, not the man, after all the child needs to be changed so people will find a way, whether it’s on a chair or the sink in the men’s room. But that’s a horrible experience for the kid.

My understanding is that the family room is women only so that women can breast feed in there in privacy, and that’s great, but surely you can section of some areas with a curtain or even a side room for breastfeeding? I know other malls do that.

Anyway, at least I know not to go there alone with the twins. I just feel for the other kids whose parents don’t know.