Sorry, that’s a non-starter. The key is mutual, reasonable accomodation. Your needs and wants do not automatically trump those of others.
Why not? You are practically saying that its preferable for the parent’s wants and needs to automatically trump others. They want to go to a restaurant, and want to take their child, and want to be able to sit there even though the child is acting up. How is that not trumping the rights of others?
Because the parents, acting responsibly, can minimize the impact on others of their child; and most parents in fact do. The actual problem is with the rare exceptions who do not.
What you are saying is that they should not even be given the opportunity, because they should not be there at all.
In short, you are proposing an absolute rule for what reasonable people can solve through mutual accomodation and politeness; as is usual in such cases, the “rule” is worse than the problem it addresses; unrealistic to enforce, not actually wanted by many.
The OP’s situation: those parents acted as though their wants trumped the wants of others. I am not proposing any rules (let alone absolute).
What reasonable accomodation would have been appropriate in the case of the OP?
Maybe. My parents didn’t take me to a restaurant until I was four years old, and then it was just a Burger King. After that, it was either fast food, or greasy spoon diners; they were considered the only child-friendly establishments at the time. If my parents wanted a nice meal out, they got a babysitter or took me to grandma and grandpa’s house. This was back in the early 1970s.
I don’t remember seeing very young children or babies in anything more upscale than a greasy spoon until the mid-to-late 1980s. Maybe toting babies to a fine dining establishment is a more acceptable now. What kind of restaurants are we talking about here? Since Dopers don’t eat at mid-end chains, are we talking about screaming babies in places like Charlie Trotter’s and the French Laundry? A neighborhood Indian restaurant? If you’re complaining about a screaming baby ruining your dining experience, and it’s a Denny’s we’re talking about, well …
I wasn’t referencing the OP. I was responding to PoorYorick, who mooted not having kids at all in any restaurant.
The OP already mentioned two reasonable things the parents could have done, and chose not to: pacify the baby with a bottle, or take the baby outside until it calms.
In short, the OP was pitting parents who do not reasonably accomodate others. As such, I have no quarrel with it (though I do think on this board the actual incidents of this are much exaggerated).
What I have a quarrel with is those who go beyond that, and start making suggestions that kids whould be removed from public spaces altogether because they might annoy others. That’s when a reasonable annoyance shades over into unreasonable demands. No-one has the right to preemptively demand others be removed because they (or their parents) might be assholes.
How do you expect children to learn restaurant manners if they never go out to one? Part of parenting needs to be taking children out to various places and teaching proper behavior. Yes, that includes removing a baby quickly if they start to yell, but simply never taking a child out until they are 4 or 5 is asking for trouble all around. A toddler can be carried out fairly easily - a screaming, running 5 year old can cause quite a bit more havoc.
It depends on the restaurant and the time. We don’t take our 1 year old out to dinner because he tends to start getting fussy around 7:00 and needs to wind down at 8. We don’t take him to bars or fine dining restaurants. However, it seems to me that if a restaurant has high chairs for a kid then it is probably child friendly enough that the presence of a small child shouldn’t surprise you. If my kid starts fussing, we’ll take him outside and let him walk around until he settles down. However it seems to me that most mid range chain restaurants are geared for families. They have kids menus and crayons, and are usually noisy enough that you can’t hear a crying child at another table very clearly.
That said, there is no way I’m taking him to a movie any time soon. Maybe after he’s five, he can see child friendly movies, but nothing that is adult oriented.
And that is why my first post said that the parents are bores. But that I don’t think its good business in all instances to correct those particular guests’ manners.
Children learn restaurant manners at home, of course, at their own table. I never took my kids to non-family restaurants until the youngest was about 6 or so, which measn the eldest was 8. They behaved well,a s I would expect or I would not have taken them – other than having the knife and fork in the wrong hands of course. It does not “ask for trouble” to wait until a child is old enough to handle a situation before putting them in it, that’s just nonsense.
As someone who is admittedly intolerant of children, I say bring your children to age- and child-appropriate restaurants* and TEACH them proper behaviour. The problem with this is all the parents who have it in their heads that their children are welcome everywhere, everyone should adore them the way they do, and they have no responsibility for correcting any antisocial behaviour.
*There are plenty of places for this that aren’t high-end, $50 a plate dining rooms that don’t even have food a kid would eat on the menu.
This is exactly it. If they can’t behave right at home, then what makes anyone think they can behave somewhere else?
I assume that they don’t care if their kids behave in public or not. They probably parked across two spots in the parking lot, too. 
Now all my buttons have gotten pushed today - let’s get 'em! 
So in answer to **Yoorick’**s question, basically what everyone else said. Not everything is for small children, and if you insist on bringing your little ones to grown up places, make sure they behave themselves. If they don’t, take them outside until they simmer down. No one wants to have a side dish of endless shrieking with their meal.
I was responding to PoorYorik, who said specifically, “restaurants and movies are off-limits, either until you can get a baby sitter or until the little darling gets some social consciousness.” Not just non-family restaurants, but all of them. By the time your kids were 6 and 8, they’d had training at home, training at family restaurants, and training in school (unless you homeschool) on proper public table behavior. Without the latter two, would their behavior in a fancier restaurant have been as good? Perhaps not.
Hey! Where else do you expect me to park my 2009 Ford Behemoth? Besides, all those spots marked with a “C” are for patrons with children, right?
Sometimes when you’re out with a kid, everything just goes to shit. The twins were a little over a year old and we took them to a nice family type restaurant. Unfortunately we waited just a little too long to feed them and they were crying. We did everything we could…took them outside to calm them down, got them crayons, sang songs…nothing worked. They were starving. We waited and waited for our food. The waitress wouldn’t bring them a bowl of plain pasta because “other people were there before us”. So people were pissed. And babies were crying. It was a mess. So we got them to wrap up our food when it finally came and we skulked out.
We should have left the minute we realized that the crying was not going to stop. But we were hungry too so we stuck it out. I felt really bad for the people who were upset and we certainly never did it again. In fact it was never an issue again. Thankfully my kids learned early to behave in restaurants because I refused from the get go to spend my life in MacDonalds.
Miss Manners has said that you make like going out to eat is a fun adult thing to do, and they cannot come until they learn how to behave, with practice at home. It may work, I wouldn’t know, I always behaved well in public, as did my child, but maybe thats because we are only children or its genetic.
OK, OK, I used a bit of hyperbole – I didn’t mean to imply that ALL parents should NEVER take ANY children to ANY restaurant EVER. I have a 3-year-old granddaughter that I wouldn’t have any problem taking to a fairly high end restaurant because she’s one of those rare children that age who can sit quietly for a couple of hours at a time (my 5-year-old grandson, on the other hand, is another matter; he’s still a bit feral). I realize, however, that there is always the possibility that I might have a good meal ruined by having to leave the restaurant early if she acted up. My personal desire for a restaurant meal does not trump your expectation for a bit of quiet.
The point I was trying to make is that parenthood entails a few sacrifices, including the ability to attend fine restaurants and first-run movies for a while. Seriously, I thought this was a no-brainer, and I get a bit depressed thinking that this might not be obvious to everyone.