Is there any reason why I should respect YOU?
Are these strawmen really necessary? I don’t give a fuck who you hang out with. But recognizing the reality that there are people in this world and that your agism is simply crass and rude goes a long way to becoming a civilized person. You expect two year olds to be civilized and yet you refuse to be civilized yourself. Part of being civilized is accepting that two year olds are socially inept.
I agree that it’s inappropriate for a child to scream in a public place. And there are inappropriate places to take the child. My daughter has this awful book given her by one of my wife’s aunts. It’s called, “Urban Babies Wear Black”, and it’s this really pretentious book about babies going to all kinds of inappropriate places like museums, the opera, art galleries etc… There are plenty of kid friendly activities, children’s museums and the like. And that’s where kids should go.
But conversely, babies cry, and babies are human beings and you live in a plural polity. Expecting babies to be segregated from your existence is entitled and simply not very realistic. You’re going to come across babies on occasion, and sometimes they will be obnoxious and they will scream. Part of the responsibility of being an adult on your part, is that you suck it up and deal with it. Otherwise you are simply a whiney and crying baby of an advanced age.
As for changing a baby, if a restroom is available, yes that’s the appropriate place to change them. But your argument is against uncivilized behavior and is not a reflection on parents in general. Just like I don’t walk up and scream ‘fuck you’ in people’s faces randomly, there are certain dictates of decorum. Essentially you and I are saying the same things. We are talking about levels of decorum, and I agree there are appropriate ways to deal with a baby, just as there are appropriate ways to comport yourself as an adult whether you have children or not. My argument is that much of the childfree rhetoric is not appropriate behavior for a mature adult.
This isn’t true. You were the one who first called attention to the ‘childfree’ calling them radicals, use of the term PC fanaticism, the decision to define themselves in that manner odd, that there was a common chip on their shoulder, and had already come to the conclusion that what undergirds the childfree is a kind of bigotry that treats children as consumer products. This was all stated well before the discussion got raucous. Here. Here. Here.
From the other thread:
Post one instance of a CBC person in either these threads who has claimed to be oppressed.
Some people find it awfully hard to realize that a child – even a baby – is a person, not an object.
Right, but the essence of entitlement is thinking that because you had it that way that everyone does.
I cannot simply go out and purchase an extended family situation like yours. They don’t sell it at Wal Mart.
If you have something to say about the topic then come back to me. This cruft does not interest me. I’m done trying to justify my right to start a thread. I have a right, the thread is started, now discuss the topic or don’t.
In your opinion does childfree as an ideology lend itself to anti-natalism. Is anti-natalism bigotry? Do children deserve to have the same rights and respect afforded to adults? If not, at what age does a human become a person?
Then perhaps you should have thought twice or three times about having kids. There is an old saying: Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part which I think should be applied to parents. Because you don’t have the resources and infrastructure to do things properly doesn’t mean someone else should be drafted into doing it for you or suffer needlessly for it. If your child is uncontrollable leave him or her at home until they can be civilized or be prepared for people to hate your guts and wish both of you were dead. Consider yourself fortunate that no one acts on those impulses. I love my dogs, but when we leave the yard, they are put on leases. And one of my dogs is a retired search and rescue dog that has contributed more to improving human life on this planet than any child ever could.
So because there are people out there with unrealistic expectations about how I raise my child and think that I should conform to their whims I should not have kids due to the fact that society is no longer organized around a traditional tribal model?
Like for really real?
I have no problem supporting my kids. It’s YOU who has the problem. Why should I care about your problems?
I have the resources and infrastructure to do it properly. I just don’t have the resources and infrastructure to emulate an externally imposed ideal by some misanthropic dude I am talking to on the internet. My daughter is fed, gets medical attention, has a social life and is generally happy. Society and my family operate just fine without appealing to archaic forms of child-rearing as some sort of ideal.
And this is the demonstration of your bigotry. My child is well-behaved but you are saying that even so, I should not have had children because my life doesn’t conform to some sort of idealized past experience that YOU have, even though your experience is pretty far from the mainstream, whereas my experience is the mainstream.
Please explain to me why YOUR sense of entitlement should be a factor in my decisions?
You are using the excuse that your inability to provide your child with an extended family as a license for allowing your child to misbehave. If your child is well-behaved, childfree people have no problem with him or her. When children misbehave we believe their parents deserve scorn and all other means of social disapproval. It is as simple as that. As long as you care about the opinions of other people, you are going to have to accept the fact that people will form negative opinions about your decisions.
Furthermore, why should your decision to have a child, based solely on YOUR ENTITLEMENT ISSUES, entitle you and that child to gobble up so many of the world’s resources (it’s not like you offered to offset the carbon footprint your child is going to case, by eliminating your own), cause my property taxes to increase to pay for public schools and infrastructure while you get a tax break for having a child, and generally make life more uncomfortable because of crying, screaming children.
No I’m not. That’s some bullshit you just made up. Like I said, bigotry.
Except I do take care of my children. And as long as you behave like an entitled brat when you should be able to behave like a real adult, the rest of us will continue to heap scorn upon you.
Be that as it may though. There is no excuse for wishing death upon children. It’s disgusting anti-life bigotry and should not be condoned or tolerated. If you condone and tolerate it then you have nothing of value to tell me about how I should raise my children. I do not take the opinions of psychotic fanatics into account as to how I should raise my children.
Based on what you are telling me right now it’s pretty obvious to me that your upbringing was not complete as it has left you bereft of certain necessary coping skills and the inability to separate your own internal monologue and hatred of children from the reality of real people who you are interacting with.
That is not to say that extended family situations are not positive environments, but they can just as easily be toxic. Idealized philosophical fantasies are not applicable to the real world. People who were raised properly understand this.
And here it goes.
Thank you for providing the perfect case study for my thread. I appreciate it. Here’s what it comes down to. Children are not people. They are resource consumers as opposed to the ‘people’ who choose not to have children.
What entitles YOU and YOUR parents to gobble up the Earth’s resources?
Do you offset the carbon footprint of your car? Your house? Your pets?
That’s the bottom line. Childfree is a political ideology that believes that children are not people.
Are you for real? Your dogs have contributed more to improving human life than any child could? 
I rather suspect you are deluding yourself over your parent’s ability to never take you in public as a baby.
Why exactly should we prioritize you over mswas’s kid?
Clearly the circumstances of his sequestration have created a deep and abiding misanthropy.
It’s funny that he thinks his dog contributes more than ‘any child could’ though his dog was once a puppy and wasn’t contributing anything as a puppy, and when it worked as a rescue dog there was a person who managed that dog, so whatever rescue that dog participated in can also be credited to the ‘child’ that grew up into an adult and worked with it in the rescue operations.
I was wondering that myself, but I didn’t want to waste my time wading through this thread again (once was more than enough). Any other Dopers want to do the dirty work? I think I’ve claimed that people don’t always mind their own business, but I don’t think I went as far as claiming oppression of my people at any point (the “my people” thing is a joke, by the way, for the humour-impaired - hyperbole for effect, I believe this one is).
It appears you lack the necessary coping skills to deal with the fact that some of us do not think children are special snowflakes that should be worshipped and adored. There is nothing said on a childfree board that could not be found on an anti-metalhead, Star Trek, or partisan political board (left or right wing). I find it odd that you consider my perfectly normal childhood and the childhood of millions of children throughout history (seen occasionaly, but not heard) an idealized philosophical fantasy.
I’m a tax paying citizens that’s contributing to society. Children are a burden on society until they can contribute; therefore, they should always come second to adults. But what childfree people are fighting far is simple equality, not a “prioritization” over children.
I don’t think having an extended family is something that should be looked down on. I just think it’s clear that this extended family did not raise you as properly as you claim because people who have been raised properly can cope with the fact that children sometimes cross their paths and sometimes are noisy. That’s the bottom line, you can’t cope, you’ve said so yourself. Now you are defending the right to say hateful and bigotted things because other people say hateful and bigotted things in other venues.
The dog and it’s handler didn’t do any of that as a puppyor a child, but as an adult handler and and adult dog. Adults contribute. Outside of the odd genius, children only consume and use.