Notes from Underground
Subway riders love babies. So why do they hate pregnant women?
by Lynn Harris
June 14, 2007
I did speak to one younger woman named Nanci, a friend of a friend, who has given up giving up her seat to pregnant women. Why? Because, she says, she is "afraid of them." As Nanci tells it, one grateful pregnant woman followed her off the subway to thank her, found out she was between jobs, and wound up at her apartment that evening. "By the end of the night, she had signed me up for $200 of starter soap and brushes for Amway," says Nanci. "It took me a year to get her and her double-diamond clones to leave me alone."
But back to the main question. Why the stroller, but not the seat? Well, let us recall that the New York City subway, bless its grimy, grumbling heart, is (to mix metaphors) a black hole of manners. People will hip-check you to get by, but then stop short and STAND on the escalator. They will, in a near-empty car, ride right in front of the door, and not budge to let you in or out when it opens. They will barge onto the car before you are off. They will sit next to you and clip their nails, or eat sardines out of a can. The Ascot Gavotte, it ain't.
Then why so solicitous about the strollers? Because, I think, in a rock-paper-scissors sense, children beat subway. (I know: carrying the stroller is technically about helping me, but it's the child who, as we say in the biz, puts a face on it.) Kids in their prams: they melt the hearts of the harried masses. Even the white, male, harried masses.
But with no actual baby in tow, pregnant women, it seems, still count as women — not personal Children beat subway, but subway beats women.assistants to those help-worthy cherubs. Could that be why some people are less than solicitous when it comes to the seats? One expert — the expert, really — seems to think so. "Miss Manners does not generally supply reasons that people are rude, because they would only fly back in her face in the form of excuses. And goodness knows she is tired of hearing the male declaration that such rude behavior is an acknowledgment of equality (as re-enforced by the rude female tactic of treating small courtesies as large insults)," syndicated columnist and author Judith Martin told me. "However, this does seem to explain why some people are polite to children, but not to expectant mothers."
Add the subway to the mix, and forget about it. Children beat subway, but subway beats women. If I have my way, my daughter will be offering up her seat before she's out of the Maclaren. But in an ideal world, someone else will beat her to it.
©2007 Lynn Harris and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Lynn Harris is an award-winning journalist, author of the comic novel Death By Chick Lit, and co-creator of the venerable website BreakupGirl.net. She and her husband live in Brooklyn with their toddler, Bess, and baby, Sam, who are polishing up their Vaudeville act.
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