Since moving to Australia more than 13 years ago I’ve been baffled by the following sequence of events: I sit down for dinner with acquaintances, wait in front of the local primary school to pick up my children or stand on the sideline at my son’s football game. We start the usual friendly chit chat, and invariably the talk turns to either a) the price of real estate or b) the agony and utmost importance of choosing the right private school for our precious offspring.
The very first time it happened I was pregnant with my first child. I had one of those lovely encounters with a woman about my age asking me if this was my first pregnancy. I said yes and expected her to share tender memories of when her own toddler, who was playing nearby, was born.
But no, the first thing – the very first thing – she asked was if I had already thought about which high school I woud be sending my child to, which by that stage was a barely discernible bump. And then she proudly announced that her little girl was already enrolled in a prestigious Catholic school. She actually just said the name of the school with that meaningful pause inviting comments of social envy masked as appreciation. When I failed to oblige and instead voiced confusion as to why I had to worry about my unborn foetus’s high school already, the conversation suddenly lost some of its warmth and animated spirit.
And after moving into a lovely and affordable rental apartment on Sydney’s lower north shore, I soon found myself confronted by the regular concerned query about when we would be getting on the property ladder. Without fail I would be asked to give my opinion on the merit of moving to the suburbs as opposed to buying something smaller closer to the waterfront, and to admire someone’s clever renovation of their townhouse that would increase its value and secure a deposit for the next strategic move in the real estate market.
Now I love my children dearly and am concerned about their wellbeing and educational progress, and I do care about our financial security. But there just seems to be no escaping the ubiquity of these topics. And it’s not only the frequency of the conversations, but also the passion and almost religious ardour with which they are exchanged. I mean, is there really nothing else that we can get fired up about in Sydney? I can come up with a long list off the top of my head – Nauru, social inequality, the casual racism and misogyny perpetuated in some Australian mainstream media and around backyard barbecues – I could go on, and I often do, probably to the annoyance of many attending these social occasions.
I’m not saying we have to discuss politics at every turn (even if I do think our society would be much better for it). We can talk about your favourite book, or why Morrissey should have stopped making music 10 years ago, or even the 5:2 diet for goodness sake. But stop telling me that the three-bedroom house you bought just a couple of years ago almost doubled in price, or how important it is for your child to attend the right school with the right social environment to “thrive”, to be “stimulated” and “challenged”, and how imperative it is for their future career to be immersed in the appropriate social circles from day one – something that seemingly can only be achieved in an expensive private school.
Initially I put my irritation and aversion down to a lack of knowledge of how things work here. Maybe it was true and renting our apartment for years was wrong. Maybe I was doing my children a terrible disservice by exposing them to the public school system. Maybe they would later blame me for being unfairly disadvantaged and robbed of their rightful opportunity to be successful – and happy.
But eventually I understood that even if we would eventually buy property or decide which high school to send our children to, there was no need to go on and on about it. There are so many other topics worth discussing, so many reasons to connect and exchange ideas. Tell me what you’re most proud of, what you fear, what you’re truly passionate about or what you wanted to be when you were a child. Tell me about your parents, about your favourite food, or what you would do first if you were prime minister for a day.
But stop talking about real estate and private schools. It’s boring.
