I was always an odd child. In fact, even when I was six or seven years old, I would have adults running to my parents telling them that I’m going to be a lawyer or even president one day, because they had just had an over intelligent conversation with me. Heh, look at me now, a musician. By my point is, not all kids are stupid, drolling meatsocks. Many are intelligent and can hang with adults in conversations, now if the conversation is appropriate, who knows, that’s up to the opposing adult to decide.
I have an eight yr old son and two nieces who are four and five and I love them more than anything. The one four yr old niece is chubby, so it make her cute as shit and you can’t help but to laugh at the things she says and does because she is intelligent as well. It’s just funny to see this little cute and chubby kid walking around naming out the capitols of cities and she’s only in kindergarten.
Kids are annoying a lot of the time. When all three are together, you rarely see me around, I just can’t hack the noise they make. And when I see people on TV who’ve had six or seven by some freak of nature, I think, “God, I feel sorry for that poor sap.” Meaning the father, because most men can’t tolerate babies as well as women and that’s just nature. I’ve seen it many times. Women just, well, seem to know what to do with kids more so than a man. Alright, I’m tired of typing on this crappy laptop keypad.
Did you read the whole of my post - or just the extract you chose to quote?
I ask, because if you read my post in context, it is pretty obvious (I would have thought) that I was well aware of the fact that the poster did not mean it literally - my sole point was that others hearing such sentiments expressed may not understand the context, and so derive an (unjustified) negative view of the poster, whom I in fact agree is justified in his or her use of the statement:
[emphasis added]
So your analysis:
Is wholly incorrect. It has nothing whatsoever to do with “proving my thesis”. I sort of wonder how it could be read that way.
I tend to dislike and avoid kids. This is mostly because I am leery of anyone or anything that I cannot expect to behave in a moderately rational, predictable manner, and because loud peircing noices hurt.
This does not mean I want them all dead or gone, of course; kids that are out of range can’t push my buttons anyway, for obvious reasons.
(When I was a kid I tended to avoid other kids as well, when they were in environments where they could be irrational or shrieky. I wasn’t irrational or shrieky as a kid myself. (No, really. I was bookish.) And no, I don’t have kids of my own.)
Who said I haven’t given children a chance? There are children whose presence I greatly enjoy. Well, OK, one child. Unfortunately, his parents are not fond of me, so I don’t get to see him much. But I babysat for him at their wedding and he’s an absolute delight. The other kids there? Not so much.
Anyway, those adults that talked to me “like a person”, to borrow the term from the other thread, were people who loved kids. I can’t stand most kids, and I’d only do myself and them a disservice by communicating with them any more than absolutely necessary.
But (unfortunately for chowder), his antler stood firm and did not give way.
Or, the Dope is a place to vent loudly and violently about things that bother you in real life, but don’t bother you enough to scream and rant about it in real life. Therefore, when we see a Dope rant and imagine that person screaming at the kids and parents in real life–which imagery seems to be employed quite a bit, to hear the kid-worshipers tell it–we’re doing that Doper a disservice. It’s like if you beat up your punching bag to get out all the little stresses that have accumulated over a few months, and your punching bag says, “Wow, dude, you are one violent motherfucker.”
Thank you! The rest of us do not need, nor want, to participate in your lesson by tolerating your child’s bullshit. When the tantrums happen in public, your duty as a parent is to function as a sane member of society, because it might as well be you screaming and stamping your feet for all the disruption and irritation it causes. If the rest of us wanted to have screaming kids running around, we would hatch our own.
Consider it the unfortunate price you pay for being a member of the same species.
I’ll agree to you never being mildly irritated by kids again - when you agree that we who reproduce get all the benefits of living in a society with younger replacement members doing jobs and funding pensions.
Really? So it’s my fault that you can’t control your screaming little brat, and don’t even want to? That, in a nutshell, is the reason people hate children, and have such disdain for many parents, including, probably, one in particular who won’t be named in this post: the assumption that the rest of the world should have to play a part in raising your little spermlets. You don’t ask everyone in the supermarket to help you advance in your career, build credit, or find your true love, do you? Of course, maybe you do, and the problem runs deeper than I thought.
Actually, I don’t have any assumption that the parents of a child are the ones solely responsible for their welfare or behavior (and I say this as someone without kids, FWIW). Sure, they have more responsibility than any single other person, but kids are separate people, distinct from adults in three main ways: they are more vulnerable, and they have reduced decisionmaking powers, and given a proper environment they can develop out of these two disadvantages. Our societal duty toward children is somewhat similar to our societal duty toward the mentally disabled. We must behave toward them with kindness, compassion, and respect, seeing them as people in their own right rather than as extensions of their parents. The fact that they can mature their way out of these disadvantages gives us an additional societal duty to help them in this maturation.
I know plenty of people see no such societal duty, but society at large does believe you have such a duty, and the chance of society at large changing on this matter is approximately zero. You can rage against it if it makes you happy, of course, but you’re still going to be responsible for treating children with respect, compassion, and kindness, and you’re still going to be expected to help them, however obliquely (e.g., through paying school taxes), in the process of maturation.
After all, it’s what the last generation did for you.
Actually, the only studies I’ve heard of show a correlation between increased long term aggression and physical punishment of any kind. You are trading short term compliance for long term problems. Generally a poor idea, although justifiable in some situations ( Example : My mother told me she spanked me because I insisted on running into the middle of the street; as for me to continue doing so would likely have led to there being no long term, period, I consider it justifiable and effective ).
Hey, address the post and not the poster. Unlike infants, I sort of expect adults to have some manners.
The point isn’t that parents “don’t even want to” control their “brats”, but that as a matter of fact no parent’s control is ever perfect (except the fortunate few such as Foxy40), and so demanding a standard of perfection is equivalent to demanding a child-free world. Such misanthopy or lack of tollerance for even the slightest inconvenience is common here on the Dope, and sort of unfortunate.
Which is fine, I suppose, and would be perfectly fair if it were possible for those who feel this way to reject all of the benefits that will accrue from other people’s decision to populate the world with well-socialized “screaming brats” and “spermlets” who will grow up to pay pensions, to be doctors, to serve in restaurants. Since they can’t, practically speaking, the next best thing would be to show a wee bit of empathy.
The statement I quoted did fit in well with something you said earlier, namely
which by putting “parents” in quotes suggests you think that complaints about bad parenting are a smokescreen for disliking children. If you can recognize that even flat-out statements about hating kids may reflect something other than a visceral disdain for children, I have hopes that you’ll come to see that rotten parenting is what most are targeting when they gripe about behavior in public.
Perfection is not demanded - only knowledge of the consequences, imbued at an early age.
We started by bringing our kids to Sunday brunches, where someone took them out if they started acting up. Foxy40’s point, if I’m reading it right, is that there are alternatives between letting a kid go crazy and clobbering him.
As a parent with two kids, now adults, I may be more offended by parents who don’t do anything than non-parents, since I know it is possible to teach kids to behave well. If a kid has some sort of problem, then they shouldn’t go to anyplace nice. All you need is the mindset that not destroying the experience of other people is more important than your uninterrupted meal.
BTW I grew up in the era of spanking, and I don’t recall I ever heard all kids being considered little angels.
I’ll grant that, if you will grant that the repeated language of distain used towards children on this Board (“screaming brats”, “spermlets”, etc. ad nauseum) may well reflect the fact that, even when the ostensible target is “rotten parenting”, in some cases there appears to be a very real dislike of children in evidence.
Moreover, plenty of people in this very thread have said that they dislike children. Are they mistaken?
I have hesitated to come back into this thread now. Buuuuuuut none of you ever answered my question from page 1.
I don’t like all adults, why on earth should I like all children?
What is the benefit for liking all children anyway?
What are you trying to say, Malthus? Can I ask what your exact point is? I’m honestly not trying to be snarky. It just seems like sometimes in these arguments on the Dope we get bogged down in the trees and lose sight of the forest.
FTR, I am one of those who generally are unimpressed by children. Do I hate them? Not really. Could I do without them? Sure. Do I let the kids know? Never.
I’ll explain more of my position when I hear your POV.
Indeed, my own reaction to screaming child in restaurant is to take the child out of the restaurant (assuming they can’t be distracted into behaving well). He is however not yet 2 years old.
I am however reacting to the notion that all one has to do is gently correct and all will be well:
In my experience, most people on this board who complain about children’s misbehavior in public do NOT claim that they hate children. It’s made quite clear that the parents are at fault.
Use of strawmen like this are why these discussions so often dissolve into rancor with nothing being accomplished.
It is reasonable to expect that 1) a continuing effort will be made by parents to get their kids to behave in public, and that 2) if wild behavior or a tantrum in a public place cannot quickly be resolved, that a parent will remove the child.
There is no general view here (or anywhere to my knowledge) that parenting is easy. Making the decision to sacrifice one’s dinner out or movie in order to remove uncontrollable screaming kids and spare other patrons a miserable experience should be relatively easy.
Didn’t like the kids I grew up with, but I like most of them just fine now we’re adults (kinda). I’m also well aware that I was an insufferable little shit myself.
What really fixed my opinion though were my nephews and nieces. See there’s quite an age gap in my family. I’m the youngest of 5. My sisters next in line and there’s 17 years between us.
So from the age of 13 or so, whenever family came to visit it would be “Go play with uncle Bunny.” Yeah OK fine, if they were about my age, but I was a good 10 years or more older than them.
So you have an insufferable shit of an anti-social teenager, forced to have a couple of yabbering snotbuckets following my every move all day long.
My POV isn’t really very complicated - it was merely to state that the OP raised an interesting and valid point, and was correct in the observation that there is a strong sentiment on this Board that actively dislikes children (or takes an exaggerated offense to the disruption and annoyance caused by children).
The rejoinder from some here is that what such people take offence to is not children per se, but bad parenting.
To which I would reply as follows:
No-one likes “bad parenting”. However, some people here are seemingly willing to label any disruption, noise or annoyance from children as “bad parenting”. In short, they raise the bar so high as to be insurmountable (I do not care how well-disciplined your children are, no 2 year old never causes disruption) - in effect demanding the impossible of parents, and then labelling the resulting failure as “bad partenting”.
Some of the examples given of “disruption” seem unlikey or rare (infants in an R-rated movie is this thread’s example). This seems an example of exaggeration of annoyance, again demonstrating that the OP has a point - that a large subset of Dopers, for whatever reason, exaggerate their annoyance over this topic.
The exaggerated language of distain and dislike used when discussing children also demonstrates dislike of them - even in the context of “bad parenting”. For example, if the discussion concerned racism, someone may reply that they aren’t racist - what they dislike is people (of whatever race) who are criminal or drug dealers. But that argument would be undermined if they continually used racial epithets when discribing such “criminals”.
Plenty of people in this very thread are perfectly willing to admit that they do in fact dislike children.
Again I recommend that you read my whole post before replying. You may in fact discover that you are arguing vociferously with me about a point I’ve just stated I agree with you on.
From my post (which you selectively quoted, but not this part):
In some circumstances, yes the bar is set really high. As someone else mentioned, if I am at a restaurant that has $20 plates your kid does not belong there period. Not even if he can behave himself, IMO. A 12 YO maybe.
At McD’s? My lookout if kids bother me, and that’s the perfect place to take the kids to scream.
If you simply must take your kids to a place that is not kid-appropriate I think it behooves you to be extra-vigilant.
Dopers tend to exaggerate toward hyperbole, and you’re kind of doing it in the next paragraph on the other side. If a Doper is bothered by a child and comes in and says “Oh, this child whined” that’s one thing. If he comes in and makes a big deal about it, it’s that much more entertaining to the readers! So we all make abig deal out of it. Continued below…
It seems you guys who are on the other “side” of this discussion are engaging in the same sort of hyperbole! You’re saying we all have this exaggerated language and disdain so we all hate kids. Again, a Doper habit.
Some do. But you haven’t really told me why this is a bad thing.