Of course not - he’s too busy running down children.
That’s a relief.
How else is one to acquire a decent collection of Jehovah’s Witnesses?
I wonder if a big part of the problem might be that there are actually fewer children nowadays than there used to be. I could be wrong, but my perception is that currently, people tend to have only one child, or none at all. Back in the Wonder Years, it seems, every kid had three siblings, forty-seven cousins, and at least a hundred other kids in their community. Okay, slight exaggeration, but the way people tell it, back then, you ran around outside all day Saturday and all afternoon after school going “Yang yang” (tm Robert Paul Smith) and only came in for dinner. And adults got desensitized to this, and only noticed major transgressions.
It seems that these days, to be a child is to be a minority. And as always, a minority is a scapegoat. First, what children there are, are not allowed to play outside. If you want to socialize your kid, you have to make a big production of inviting one other kid to your house, or taking your one kid to another only child’s house. As such, only other parents are subjected to your child. The childfree/less, meanwhile, spend 23 out of 24 hours happily forgetting that there are creatures under the age of 13 in the world, and it’s only when they have to go to Wal-Mart or McDonald’s that they find themselves face to face with OMG A CHILD. It harshes their mellow, and they conclude that the parent is allowing the child to act like a monster, when in fact, they’re only acting like a kid. But people don’t live in communities any more, so the effect is jarring to the childless/free.
I could be wrong. I hope I am.
I know a woman who has 9 children and 2 more on the way. Believe me, when you’ve got folks like them running around, it evens out if everybody else on her block only has 2. There are a bunch of kids playing outside right now, I can hear them. If they are screaming in their own yard, I don’t have a problem with that. That’s what happens when you live in close proximity to other people–you hear their business. It’s when they are screaming in JC Penny while I’m trying to have my glasses adjusted that I have a problem.
As far as the OP, it’s certainly unfair to say that those of us who choose not to have children for any reason are less valuable to society because of it. I contribute less because I haven’t created a spawn to take my place when I kick the bucket? I’ve paid my taxes all these years and made plenty of contributions to my community, and will continue to do so. To say that my life is less fulfilled or isn’t as good a “human experience” as someone who chooses to have children is bullshit. I enjoy my life. I enjoy not changing diapers or being up with a screamy ball of screamyness at 3 in the morning, I enjoy not worrying about grades that aren’t mine or messes I didn’t make.
I, personally, have never started an OP complaining about children. I don’t say DAMN I HATE KIDS every time I see one on the street or at the store. They don’t ruin my day, they don’t harsh my mellow or kill my groove or any of that stuff. If they are screamy enough, I might tell their parents they ought to muzzle them. But generally speaking, I’ve never met anybody like in the OP, who bitches about it constantly. Contrary to what **Left Hand of Dorkness **implied up thread, I don’t act self-righteous about it or build an identity around it. My hatred of children doesn’t affect anything when I’m driving down the road, or clocking in at work, or feeding the dogs, or buying doughnuts. I don’t think that people like the ones described in the OP actually exist.
Did the kid open the gate and ignore the beware of dog sign? If not, then you are incorrect. My family would be moving into our new home after we sold yours.
Rilchiam, it might be that for some folks who truly dislike kids. But in all honesty, it was only when I was never, ever around kids except at the store or dinner that having seemed like a decent idea. When my friends from high school started having them, the thought very rapidly lost its appeal.
I think a lot of people don’t like being around kids because of being more sensitive to certain frequencies than others. That high-pitched fire-engine SHRIEEEEEK!!! thing that really little ones tend to do? To some people, it’s endearing. To me, it feels like somebody slamming an icepick into my eardrum over and over and over and over and OVER again. It’s physically fucking painful, and if it goes on for very long I tend to wind up with a migraine. As a result, although I rather like quiet kids, I absolutely loathe the shriek-y ones. I’ve known some childfree folks who have a similar reaction and others who don’t, but every parent I’ve ever told about has looked at me like I just claimed their kid was a Gorgon.
Everybody is entitled to a meltdown now and then, and kids typically don’t have the resources to hold it together till they can have theirs in private. That’s fine. But for the love of all that is holy, the people taking care of the kid need to be making some effort to, you know, take care of it. Make some kind of effort, even a half-assed one, to quiet the kid. I see a whole lot of little ones who wouldn’t be melting down if the parent would jut pay some attention once in a while. Someone else mentioned the ones who you hear announce that they’re hungry or tired or need to potty, and the parents ignoring them. I waited in line behind some folks at the Biltmore a couple of years ago whose baby kept grabbing at the sippy cup just out of her reach in the diaper bag pocket, for like ten minutes, while they ignored her in favor of running their yaps. Eventually, she went from a little fussing to full-bore shrieking fit. If they had just given the poor little thing a damn drink (after being outdoors in August in North Carolina, fer fuck’s sake), things wouldn’t have escalated so.
I feel really bad for little ones who are trying to communicated some need or desire to someone who just won’t pay attention–we all know how frustrating that is. But even though part of me feels sorry for them, the rest of me is thinking that now I totally understand how shaken baby syndrome happens.
If they do it again tell the police that your dog probably just smells the meth lab in the neighbor’s garage. 
We live in New York City with a heavy restaurant culture so we took our daughter out to eat at restaurants starting at about 1 month. She’s pretty good in a restaurant, well about as good as you can expect a hyper-active 2 year old to be. SHe makes a mess of our table but we try to keep the mess confined to our table and we always leave an extra tip to compensate for the mess.
If you feel guilty about it that’s your problem. That doesn’t make children not the future.
Try learning even the most basic concepts of economics as it relates to demographics so that you can understand why what you said is so completely wrong. There are a couple threads in GD right now that can bring you up to speed.
I think I’ll tell them about the time those people lost a crack rock in their front yard and were out there looking for it with flashlights at 4 am. (Yeah, they were pretty loud.)
It’s not psychic it’s called reading comprehension.
Heh, well the implication that they are CURRENTLY engaging in illegal activity might be more effective.
Since someone upthread pointed out that it wouldn’t be considered trespassing unless that were the case, let’s assume so. Suppose I’ve got a dog in my yard on an invisible fence, with no physical barrier and no sign. A kid selling girl scout cookies comes up my sidwalk and gets attacked. She wasn’t trespassing, she was soliciting. My fault. In the situation with a chain link fence, a closed/locked gate and obvious signs, that’s the kid’s fault.
A bit off-topic…
(Maybe I should start a thread in Cafe Society.)
Can anyone tell me the source of this approximate fictional quote?
Short, ugly-looking alien:
- But I LUVVVVV human children!
(From a small, roughly spherical airbourne automaton):
*** – #BREEP# **
Consumption of babies as foodstuffs…
** – #BREEP## **
… is not allowed!
-- #BREEP# *
-
- Jack* (is BACK!)
Ahem. Noooooooo, you’re the one who’s wrong. Fortunately, there are web pages on the internets that allow me to dispense with the necessity of explaining why you are wrong. A google search on “NO U” will help bring you up to speed.
Thanks for playing!
I don’t think I hate anyone, definitely not an entire group of people I don’t know. But I can say that I do not actively like children, I didn’t like them much when I was one myself. The pitch of a child’s laughter is genuinely painful to my ears and makes me instantly crabby.
I don’t wish them harm, though, I just wish them to be elsewhere.
And I have always found the attitude that we exist to make more of ourselves and therefore must always prioritize the ones who are coming up to be sad. I know it’s the primal reality of life on earth, but I prefer to think that we are slightly beyond that being the highest function any and all of us can undertake.
But that’s a much more complicated conversation than I have time for.
I don’t think this is so much of a question of people who hate children as people who are annoyed at parents who don’t discipline their children according to local social standards.
This is true of me as well. As a kid, I didn’t hang out with other kids. I was in the kitchen helping cook dinner, or at the set of one of my aunt’s plays, or watching the 10 o’clock news with my grandma. At recess I could be found sitting off to the side with a book. That’s not to say I never played–indeed, we did many an afternoon of THE GRASS IS LAVA!!–but interacting with kids my age or younger didn’t really appeal to me. When the shrieking started at the jungle gym, I was the one saying “dudes, pipe down! I’m trying to finish this homework!” If **LHOD **thinks this means I am defective, so be it. I’m not hurting anybdy else, so it doesn’t matter.