I love this. It’s the perfect rejoinder to the child haters.
Ed
Right, and most people do not make a fuss about building an identity around something they don’t have in life. Usually they are defined by the things that they DO have, not the things that they DON’T have. Childless is a perfectly utilitarian word, but Anaamika made the point more eloquently than I believe you will be able.
I don’t have trouble using condoms, I don’t use them on purpose. 
So what? Do you think it’s going to make us all see the error of our ways? That you’ve won the thread because your side came up with a clever retort? Let me tell you, when this thread is over and forgotten about, my behavior and attitude won’t have changed. What a bunch of strangers on a message board think is not relevant to my everyday life.
You’ll forgive us if we think your last sentence rings rather hollow on page 11.
I have to say, this is the dumbest newspeak I’ve seen since I knew the girl who left high school and claimed she didn’t drop out–she rose out.
I just got back from going to a local weekly bar event, Babies 'n Beer, where people are welcome to come sling back a pint or so of schmancybeer and eat some barfood, and they’re welcome to bring their babies along with them. The ratio of kickin-it adults to infants and toddlers was probably about 3:1, maybe a little less. Kids were excited and running around the bar.
I did see some unacceptable behavior: a dad decided to change his toddler’s diaper in the front window of the bar. How tacky is that? A couple of year-olds started hitting one another, and when the moms came over to separate them, one of them started hitting his mom. She dealt with it promptly.
Other than diaper-changing dad, the parents were all very good, right on top of kid behavior when necessary. Other than the hitting toddlers (who were immediately corrected), the kids were all just fine: no screeching, no destruction of property, no tripping people up. This was an atmosphere replete with kids and nearly devoid of structure for them, in which their adult supervisors were almost all drinking. And there were no problems. Forgive me if I think some folks in this thread are Chicken Littles on the issue.
(A couple of childless–oh, excuse me, how your poor sensibilities must be crushed–childfree–guys in business suits came in at one point. Their expressions as they took in the scene were absolutely priceless, and in less than a minute they were walking back out. On the way out, though, their faces were full of baffled merriment: far from being horrified at the situation, they were clearly amused by the weirdness of it, and were doubtless heading for the downstairs, much quieter, room of the bar.)
Daniel
Nice try at the sidestep - gonna respond to the actual point of that paragraph? That being if you think it is oh so OK for children to scream and race about at a store, is it also OK with you if my service dog in training does the same? Remember, whether or not you think that puppy is important, he does have a right to be there under the law (at least, in California).
What ridiculous cantankerous bullshit, trying to compare your classroom with every child in the US.
You want a law that tells you that leaving your child in aisle #6 while it has a tantrum on the floor as you puruse aisle #7 is not only rude, entitled, and potential dangerous to other shoppers, but also really bad parenting? You want a law that says that bringing your tiny baby into a bar and parking it in a stroller to get over tired while you get your drink on just isn’t a good idea? And actually, there are laws - noise laws to the first and underage to the second - but they aren’t enforced.
As for these “most children” getting kicked out you are talking about, you know damn well they aren’t. It is the extremely rare store manager that will have the balls to go up against any of the mommy brigade. Especially now, the way the economy is. Store managers know that most people will grind their teeth and put up with 10 - 20 minutes of screaming baby, but it is the rare mother that would calmly and quietly agree to a suggestion that baby should leave. Look at what happened when other patrons didn’t like looking at naked breastfeeding and when store managers tried to get these women to cover up. Mothers are expecting and demanding more, they aren’t going to take a suggestion that they back off real well.
As for hysterical overreaction - look in the mirror. If nothing I say applies to your children, why are you freaking out?
Because people cannot get realistic about what the human species is doing to the planet, I personally think our future is going to be one of scrabbling around in the desert trying to find food while trying to fight off invading bands of other leftover people.
However, that isn’t really the point. When you all say “CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE”, you like to pretend that every child born (particularly yours) is going to grow up to cure cancer, create world wide peace or at the very least, be available to take care of old people. The reality is that a goodly number of those children are going to be criminals of some sort, others will be wastes of air on welfare and for the most part, the best you can hope for is they will drop into one of the bazillion cogs of the general workforce and just grind away until they die. If you all would quit having children at the rate you are, then each individual child would be of more value, get better schooling, get more support from home and family - they wouldn’t be one of a horde and they wouldn’t lose so much value when they are no longer cute.
To be fair, this sort of thing tends to draw more respectful parents. People who would bring their kids to a bar and let them run around during a time when it’s explicitly encouraged are the same ones who understand that it’s less acceptable at other times.
I can probably count on one hand the number of times in a year when my experience in a public place is made less pleasant by inappropriately behaving kids. But my co-workers probably think I complain about it all the time, because almost all of them have kids, and they understandably wouldn’t want to complain about somebody else’s kids. They also spend a lot less time in places where better behavior is expected of kids (restaurants, movie theatres, etc.) than I do.
But I admit that it’s a rare thing, and it’s probably more common in my neck of the woods than in most places, just because there are so few young adults without kids and because the culture around here is to indulge kids in their every whim. (A rant for another time.) It’s not right to generalize bad behavior to all kids, or deficient parenting to all parents. It’s just that, like Jon Stewart said about Iraq, nobody ever talks about the cars that don’t blow up.
As for “childfree”, I’ve never cared for it. “Childless” definitely has a sad connotation, though, and it would be nice to have a term for those of us who are childless-by-choice. In fact, I prefer “childless-by-choice”, but it’s awfully bulky.
Then yes: if you’re training your service dog, and it starts making a lot of noise, and you’re at the end of your rope, then I will have some patience with you. It’s a shitty analogy, but for what it’s worth, I’d be patient. Costs me nothing, and impatience gains me nothing.
Every time I think you can’t get stupider…the point is that I encounter probably hundreds of times more children every day than you, and am in a better position to judge the state of modern children than you are. My school serves a very diverse population, to put it mildly. YOu simply don’t know what you’re talking about.
No. You just lost the thread of conversation. Go pick it back up.
Precisely. Society backs these moms. The free market backs these moms. You don’t like it, start your own child-free grocery store with my blessing. Otherwise, consider this nice hot mug, and guess what it contains.
Has his argument EVER made sense? You’re being a moron, and it’s kind of a stress relief to mock morons on the Internet. I’ve also mocked Nazis; does that make me a Jew?
Nonsense. I’ve taught kids that I genuinely fear will end up in prison. Breaks my heart, but it’s a legitimate fear. The odds are overwhelming that it’ll happen to some kid who passes through my classroom during my career. I’ve no great expectations for my own child, only hopes. You’re projecting your own craziness onto me, as though everyone must be as much of a lunatic as yourself. Nothing I’ve said is remotely interpretable as that. All I did was point out a basic fact of the cosmos, and you interpreted that as something totally different.
You’re quite the piece of work.
Could be; I hadn’t thought of it that way. I saw at least three other teachers there, too (possibly four–not sure where I knew the other one from). Teachers tend to have definite ideas about how to keep kids in control.
Well, that’s true, and certainly someone who complains about a particular incident doesn’t chap my hide. If you rant about a specific instance in which a dad was ignoring a crying child, such as the instance upthread where a parent wasn’t giving a child a badly-needed bottle of water, I can back you. Complain about a particularly spoiled kid, and if your rant has merit, I’m right there with you. As you say, it’s the stupid, ignorant, bigoted generalizations that are the problem, that put the speakers on par with homophobes and misogynists and racists.
Okay, DINK, whatever.
(I appreciate your ability to talk about the issue reasonably. FWIW, I think the OP was way overblown, and would never have stepped in had it not been for the star wars freak’s nutjobbery. Folks without kids can be charming wonderful people; folks who are uncomfortable around children but express no generalized hostility are no worse than, say, people who like to date within their ethnic group. It’s the wackaloons that are the problem.)
Snort. Rainy days and late busses parents don’t have any control over, but they do have control over whether or not their child continues to have a screaming meltdown in a store. Yes parents are entitled to carry out their daily tasks but there is simply no reason to drag little babies and toddlers and children with no manners to the grocery store - the only reason they do is, for some reason, it has become fashionable to drag one’s children everywhere.
I just love (not) the entitlement = “But you DO have to live with it”. And there is no trade off. I am expected to listen to screaming children, put up with the damage they cause in my yard, weave around them as they play in the street and lay out thousands of dollars a year for my city’s babysitting service, er, I mean the public schools. But let my dog bark at all and any of the parents on my street can call animal control and cause me grief. Said dog cannot be off lead anywhere in my city even tho he has far more training and manners than any toddler. If I want to have friends over or bring home our travel trailer, I have to plan ahead and put up signs so no one parks in front of our house - the two or three car garages and driveways are no longer enough because there are so many people living in the houses on our street. If I want to have a nice quiet night out with my husband, there is damn little we can do without there being noisy, disruptive children there.
Somehow, a majority of society got the idea that children should be drug kicking and screaming into every facet of their parents lives, and the rest of us are told “But you DO have to live with it” and the irony of it is, it isn’t good for these children!
Oh god no! I don’t insult my pets that way! 
Yes, I know - all of today’s parents know it all and couldn’t possibly get anything of value from the generation that raised them. Or in my case, probably the generation that raised your parents.
Shows how much you know - I would never stoop to considering my pets as people.
You haven’t raised any children, you idiot.
Advice from the people that raised me? Very valuable. Advice from you is worthless; you don’t know anything about being a parent, since you’ve never been one.
Poor you, poor baby. Fortunately, I’m here to help. I have a solution:
- Raise your right hand.
- Place the back of your hand against your forehead.
- Roll your eyes toward the sky.
- Moan, “Woe! Woe is me! Life is misery!”
Apparently, having children rots the brain to the point that one cannot understand the posted word. Where did I say that a puppy is human?
Snort. Chair don’t have feelings, therefore they don’t know if their “lives” are lesser or not.
And, it’s cordless
Pay attention. Any puppy that I raise as a service dog legally has the same rights of access that any child does. I, as the caregiver, also have the same responsibilities to others that caregivers of children do. Do you understand that? Good. Now, if I was rude enough to allow a pup to run amok and scream in a store, how would you feel about that? If you say you wouldn’t like it, why is it ok with you that child caregivers ignore society’s responsibilities and the noise and nuisance laws?
This is some petty shit right here. You have to put signs up so people don’t park in front of your house? That’s a moan-worthy gripe? You live in a neighborhood—other people live there too. This is a fact of life. I had a neighbor like you growing up that would knock on our door when we parked in front of his house on a public street; you know how ridiculous this complaint is? Walk a half block. Holy shit.
And, as for “parents taking their kids everywhere”: nobody likes the screaming baby in the grocery store. It’s loud, it’s annoying, we know. But is the parent supposed to get a baby sitter to go get some eggs? Take the kid to day care? Wait for Dad to come home so she can go get the last couple things for dinner? Plus: it’s the frigging grocery store; it’s no fun anyway. Complain about the parents who took their one-year-old to the Batman sequel (oh, and I did)—pick your battles. You sound like a curmudgeon from my vantage point.