But what I’m saying is, WHY wouldn’t their names be included on the invite?? If you were inviting a family to come, why not say so?
I find it much weirder that it makes any sense to you for the host to say, “Gee, I’d like to invite Jane and Bob and their lovely children to my event” and then sit down and issue an invitation reading “Jane and Bob, please come to my event” rather than “Jane and Bob and your lovely children, please come to my event”. Your strange etiquette site link aside (go re-read it, it’s full of contridictions, including ambiguity directly following the part you quoted) it’s a fairly established “formula” that the people named on an invitation are the people invited and while I agree with you that there are some people to whom children are an automatic assumed extension of their parents, you don’t seem willing to accept that your way leaves open the opportunity to mistakenly bring children to a place where they are not wanted, and mine does not. Context, shmontext - weddings for example are a crapshoot as to whether kids are welcome or not, and it makes a lot more sense for the host to simply invite the people he wishes to attend than it does for him to both invite the people he wants and DISinvite the people he doesn’t.
I dunno what you are talking about. “My way”, repeated several times upthread, is to tell people explicitly if kids aren’t welcome. How does that is any way " … leave[…] open the opportunity to mistakenly bring children to a place where they are not wanted"?
The whole point is that, since in real life (as opposed to in some alternative universe where everyone agrees on following a sensible convention) not everyone understands and follows the “wedding invitation convention”, to avoid embarassing or humiliating anyone (which is sort of the point of being polite) if you have some requirement like “leave your kids at home”, you make sure they understand this by telling them directly in advance, rather than simply hoping they understand you, and either quietly seething and resenting them or telling them their kids are unwelcome if they show up with kids.
Dunno what more I can say. I suppose if you want to add stress and drama, and to find resons to resent other people, you could do it the other way.
It’ll never sound logical to me that a host should ever have to tell people they can’t come rather than simply inviting the people he wants and not inviting the people he doesn’t. I’ve conceded several times that you are right!! Enough people don’t understand the concept of reading or writing an invitation without assumptions that yes, a host who doesn’t want children should probably say so. I am not in any way arguing that. All I’m trying to do is figure out how it came to be that so many people assume an invitation to them means an invitation to their whole family rather than the invitation being the tool that lists who is invited, which seems to me the very point of putting someone’s name on an invitation.
Seriously, I get what you’re saying, I agree that’s the way the world is. It just seems really, really weird to me.
The middle piece of the human centipede.
I have to agree with Elret. I would find it very strange, and somewhat offensive, to receive an invitation that explicitly excluded my kids. It carries a presumption that I’m rude enough to impose them uninvited, otherwise.
The thing is though, “in real life” not everyone follows “your way” either, of explicitly saying not to bring kids (there are others like me, you know, who think that issuing an invitation to who they want means, oh, I don’t know, that the people they invited will come - some to whom it would never even occur that the recipient would take it upon themselves to invite additional people so would never even think of saying not to bring kids) so while I do concede that a host who wishes to avoid any confusion should (sadly) have to make a point of telling people they’re excluded ( which is not in any definition of polite I know of), you might want to consider that it also behooves a guest to doublecheck before bringing someone who was not invited.
RE: Airplanes
I read there was an airline (in Asia IIRC) that was going to start having age-restricted flights on the busier routes. How much extra would you pay for a flight from NY to LA if everyone on the plane was at least 18?
Certainly, if one is in any doubt of the matter, it makes sense to ask.
What I was questioning is how expressly telling someone upfront that the kids aren’t wanted is somehow going to add ambiguity. 
You’d be insulted to be told directly that this was an “adults only” event?
I’d go up by 10% if it could be a flight with everyone over 25. Damn college kids - some of them are no better than toddlers. (Based on my experiences in various airports when they are sprawled all over the damn floor, playing poker, right in the middle of the f’ing walkway.)
What if it’s not, though? What if some kids are invited, but others aren’t?
Because at the time, I thought “your way” was the way you are currently operating, which is to assume that any invitation addressed to you includes your whole family, despite the fact that not every invitation you receive has been issued in that spirit. I didn’t realize you were talking about the way you think the world should work, wherein any host who throws an event goes round telling everyone he doesn’t want there that they can’t come. Sure, that way is clear as a bell, however weird and illogical (and rude, IMO) it is.
I just can’t get my head around the arbitrariness of the assumption that your kids are included whenever you are. You laughed at my dentist example earlier, but the fact is, it seems almost as odd to me to assume your kids can come if they aren’t invited as it does to invite just any old random additional guest, simply because they’re family. Where do you draw the line?
What if your adult kids are living with you? What if their children are also living with you? What if just your grandchildren are living with you? What if your niece and nephew are staying with you for the summer? What if your buddy Steve from college has been living in your basement til he gets back on his feet? What about a single person who receives an invitation addressed to her and assumes her boyfriend must be invited too? I GUARANTEE you that not every person would answer these questions the same way, and the ONLY way to ensure that the event is attended by only those who are wanted is for the host to invite who he wants, and the people who receive the invitation to attend. Your extension of the invitation addressed to only you to your children seems as weird and random to me as extending an invitation addressed to you to any random person you feel like bringing along.
To answer the original OP, I agree with many others, that well-behaved kids belong just about everywhere it is legal for them to be.
One obvious dividing line is that most people travel everywhere with their (young) children as much as they can, and leaving them at home is a big deal - insofar as it requires hiring a baby sitter etc.
Add to that the general societal expectation that parents will keep with their kids as much as they can, and the fact that most humans understand this and that it is a traditional part of our society.
Presumably, this does not apply to your dentist. But then, maybe he’s a rather demanding fellow. 
In writing? I’d be taken aback, yeah. It would seem insecure, mistrustful.
Let me put it this way. My understanding of written invitations is that they are direct, in that they list the people they apply to. When I get invitations for family events, they’re addressed to me and my kids, or me “and family.”
You seem to be saying that you receive invitations addressed only to you, but still take this to include kids (yet not dogs, though some people apparently would), unless the invitation also includes a line categorically excluding them.
That way seems to always leave it open for other people to fill in their own assumptions that aren’t specifically ruled out. Somebody brings a date, somebody you don’t know. You didn’t mean to invite “guests” for this particular gathering, but you didn’t actually write out “no guests.” Somebody brings his dog. You didn’t mean to invite dogs, it didn’t occur to you that anybody would bring a dog, but you failed to ban them explicitly. He thinks his dog naturally comes with. And so on.
I see your point, but most of my examples were about kids, not dental professionals :). People who have children living with them who are not their direct offspring have the same issues with sitters, etc, should they assume those kids are an extension of themselves?
Do you not think that parents leaving the kids with a sitter and going out without them for an evening is a traditional part of our society?
I’d like to see the list of really rude things I have.
Sometimes in life, you need to hire a baby sitter and not take your kids every where. I think this is what this thread is coming down to. Adult who doesn’t want to be around kids: Children shouldn’t be in X for (whatever reason).
Parent: I had a kid and my kid is NEVER bad. EVER. So, deal with it.
:dubious:
True. But is it really necessary for stores to offer those humongous, equivalent-of-a-doublewide-Humvee “kid carts” with steering wheels and built-in video (I am not being facetious–I’ve seen them.) I’ll see your “Jesus wept” and raise it with, “Sheesh, do kids today have such gnatlike attention spans that they can’t even handle a trip to the store without a full complement of amenities making sure that they’re never unstimulated for even a second?”
I’m not so much a “kids shouldn’t go places” person (though I don’t think they belong at high-end restaurants or R-rated movies unless they can be seen but not heard), but I am an “everything in the world does not have to be remade so that little Boopsie doesn’t ever have to be bored” kind of person.
My child is in a perfectly regular old pram with nothing more to amuse him than his sock and possibly a bottle of milk and I still get the stink-eye from people who think we shouldn’t be allowed out of the house.
Or did you miss the post where it was suggested that children should not be allowed in bookstores because the lanes aren’t wide enough? Or any other store with narrow lanes, apparently. What if it’s a children’s bookstore?? :smack: There’s a local toy store with tiny lanes - should I get a babysitter before I go there to pick out a toy for Junior?
It’s absurd that I’m expected to get a babysitter because the lanes in a bookstore are too narrow and someone may have to gasp go down a different lane. Give me a friggin’ break.
And YaraMateo I’m pretty sure you think it’s rude if servers spend the tips you give them in a way other than what you think is appropriate, people who shop in stores with prams regardless of their size, people who have iPhones and a whole host of other crap.