I have no desire to have any kind of talks with children, in fact, I find ignoring them to be more entertaining than trying to talk to them.
Since this “debate” appears so far to consist largely of colonic conjecture, I’ll offer some of my own: that if true, this statement (and your apparent bafflement over the existence of screaming or misbehaving children in public places) indicates that you a) actually don’t get out much, b) are oblivious to, or have an uncanny ability to ignore your surroundings, or c) lead something of a charmed life. If it’s (c), then I’m envious.
I suppose that if, during my entire life as a motorist, I only encountered other drivers who were friendly, courteous, highly skilled, and obedient to traffic laws and customs, I would probably be bemused by the many threads filled with complaints about the jackassery of other drivers. I might even be inclined to post something insinuating that others were exaggerating the problem or gaining some perverse thrill from bitching about it. But then how would I look?
Yeah, pretty much, except I’ll admit some are cute an interesting. That’s maybe one out of every couple hundred, though.
I’m someone who doesn’t have children by choice, and can find my relatives kids pretty damned annoying from time to time. But I have to second Malthus, I’ve literally never once in my life been in an R-rated movie with a screaming/crying baby.
However, I only average maybe ~8 trips to the movies a year, and I always tend to go on weekday nights (when I imagine a lot of parents probably don’t go out.)
Still, I think if this phenomenon was so pervasive I’d have run into it at least once.
Hell, to be honest almost every time I’ve ever gone to a movie it’s been dead quiet, to such a degree that any noise is remarkable. I also never go to movies shortly after they’ve been released, usually at least a few weeks into their run (so the theater is typically not packed at all.)
Put me down as in the “leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone” crowd, I don’t like to be forced to interact with kids, ignoring them is far better, I have no problem with well-behaved kids, but don’t expect me to fawn over your DNA-packets
just leave me alone, and I’ll be happy
All of us childless-by-choice folks are just uptight because we are constantly being told that we’re wrong, or we’ll change our minds.
The quick and easy answer to this constant nagging is “I FUCKING HATE KIDS AND I NEVER EVER WANT TO BE AROUND THEM, PERIOD!” We don’t really mean it (most of us) - we mean we don’t like this and this and this and this about kids and that’s just the way we are. But it at least gets the child-pushers out of our way and keeps us from having this long, drawn-out conversation where we list all of our dislikes and they poo-poo them.
Of course, once faced with the “I FUCKING HATE KIDS!” statement, they still walk away thinking “oh, they’ll change their mi-inds…” but at least they’ve walked away.
I think it’s only in the last few generations that people, especially women, who don’t get on with kids have been given the opportunity not to have any of their own, let alone to go prolonged periods without interacting with any.
“The most beautiful sound in the world is that of children playing out of earshot.”
CJ de Jager
(my maths teacher - tongue part-way into cheek)
I have a couple of kids. I’m not wild about children at all. Although of course my children are exceptionally wonderful. No, really they are. I don’t say that because they’re my kids. Here, I have a photo here somewhere. Don’t you agree they are the cutest, smartest…
Anyway, I kid.
But seriously. There are a couple of things that I suspect feed into this that people without much experience of children don’t take into account or perhaps realise.
1/ The Perception Problem. My oldest (five) is generally well behaved. Or so his kindy teacher says. We have no hesitation in taking him to restaurants etc because he’s fine. 95% of the time. The other 5% is when for some reason he gets upset, at which point he becomes an agitated, deliberately provocative, annoying, screaming fucking nightmare. I suspect like most kids.
I strongly suspect that if you saw Mrs P and I in a restaurant with my children, 95% of the time firstly you wouldn’t notice us at all because there’d be nothing to draw attention to us, so in a case of classic perception bias we would not feed into your personal statistics about what children in restaurants are like. Secondly, you would (if for some reason you turned your mind to us) think Mrs P and I to be “good” parents, and our children to be well behaved.
Yet if you were unlucky enough to be there when Master P had a tanty, then firstly, boy, would we feed into your statistics and secondly, we’d get labelled annoying, shitty parents who couldn’t keep our children under control, and Master P would be a hyperactive screaming brat.
The part that I find annoying is the apparent righteousness that some people seem to be able to maintain due to ignorance of what children are, and parenting is, like. There probably are perfect children and parents, and absolutely 'orrible ones. But mostly parents and children are about average and applying judgmental labels when you’ve only seen them on one occasion is probably unfair.
2/ Parents ignoring bad behaviour. It’s a crime of which many are accused. There’s several mentions of it above. Sure, it happens. But quite often parents who’ve done their homework know that children attention seek, and one way to force a parent to pay attention is to do something bad. Parents who give their child immediate attention for every minor infraction encourage more infractions. When a child is in attention seeking mode (and as an inexperienced passerby you probably won’t pick up the signs) you have to make a judicious decision in every case as to whether what your little darling is doing is so bad that you have to intervene, or whether you let it go so they are not encouraged to do it again. If your knee is set to hit your chin every time some parent doesn’t leap into action when their brat does something annoying, congratulations, you are helping to socialise that brat into growing up to be an attention seeking asshole.
The trouble is that these days you can’t punish children in public. There used to be time when if a child misbehaved you could teach them the consequences of that misbehaviour by giving them a clip round the ear or a quick spanking and nobody would bat an eyelid. You can’t do that now.
Exactly. When I started screaming in Church, I was taken outside and given a slap. These days, kids are running up and down the aisles, climbing on to the altar, screaming, banging toys etc. while their slack-jawed parents look on with a vacant grin on their face.
And because of this children didn’t misbehave back then, when I were a lad. Misbehaving children is a feature of the late 20th/early 21st century. In a pig’s ear.
…
Did anybody claim that? If you misbehaved, you were made to stop. This point is already implicit in Quartz’s post, if you cared to read it: “There used to be time when if a child misbehaved…”.
It is not how much you punish them, it’s how much attention you pay to them and love them. Children acting out, and adults also is a call for positive attention, but if positive attention is not available they will choose negative attention over nothing.
Oh. I’m sorry. Let me correct myself.
“And because of this children didn’t misbehave after appropriate parental intervention back then, when I were a lad. Children misbehaving after appropriate parental intervention is a feature of the late 20th/early 21st century. In a pig’s ear.”
Better?
Yes.
Include me in the dislike of sprogs category. The only time I like kids is either boiled or fried
Matter of fact the only kid I’ve ever thought much of is my own and I sometimes wonder about that
Now get off my fucking lawn ya brat
Genuine question - if you don’t like kids, then why did you decide to have one of your own?
Heh, my dad always used to say “I LOVE kids! A little butter, a little salt…”
I’m not chowder, obviously… but I don’t especially care for children, and yet I have one. It is, of course, *actually * different when it’s your own, no matter how much people hate hearing it. It might not be different *enough * if you’re really not cut out for parenting, but I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t have more tolerance for their own kid than for other peoples’.
So they gave you a chance. And now that you’re an adult, you’re not willing to give children a chance.