If it was good enough for my folks, it is good enough for today’s parents! 
I agree. I didn’t see the movie, but I love the Reese Witherspoon line in the Sweet Home Alabama. You’ve got a baby … (incredulously) in a bar.
Some people should not be parents.
When I was working in a sports bar in Mississauga, Ontario, one gentleman would routinely come in and bring his small children with him. (They couldn’t have been older than 6 and 4.) He would leave them at the front lobby of the bar (bylaw stated that children under 19 were not allowed) and drink a few beers, never even glancing toward the entrance where his children were out of his sight, playing with cigarette butts and beer bottles.
What is WRONG with people?
Some people have kids but don’t really want to be parents. They have kids because that’s what you’re supposed to do-- get married and have kids-- or because of poor birth control practices, but they don’t really want to have to take care of them. They certainly have no intentions of changing their lifestyle. They just try to fit the kid in with the other things they want to do. Sure, they love the kid, and would be really upset if something happened to them (and would most likely try to find someone else on which to place the blame and a lawsuit) but they feel entitled to having their “own life.”
I know a woman who had a baby nearly ten years ago. Two weeks after the birth, she went back to work and left the kid in daycare or with babysitters. In the evenings, she and her husband almost always went out bar-hopping. She told me a few times that she generally got to see the kid an hour or two a day. She treated the kid like it was an accessory to her life and I couldn’t help wondering why dhe had a kid if she didn’t* want* a kid. (The baby was planned. She and her husband were financially comfortable.) She was shocked, I tell you, shocked, when the kid became a hellion. She wondered aloud a couple of times where she’d gone wrong. I had a pretty good idea, but I didn’t say anything.
And I thought it was bad enough to see a woman lock her baby in her car alone while she went into the bank. Although it was probably worse that I didn’t think to say I’d call the police on her for doing so :smack:
We don’t always agree on everything, Lissa, but this paragraph is spot-on and deserves to be repeated.
I used to know a woman who solved the kid in a bar problem. She would sit in the bar and drink to heavy excess, and make her 5-year-old stand outside on the street. And this was not in the safest part of the city.
The woman had some real problems.
Like she needed an older kid, for one thing. Tweens and teens can be counted on to sling rock in dicier areas and subsidize one’s drunken debauch.
Do cars in parking lots randomly explode? Or perhaps the fear is that someone is going to surreptitiously smash in a window and make off with the kid?
Don’t get my wrong – I have a nine-month-old and I would never leave her locked in the car while I run to the ATM – but that is only because there are so many busy-bodies around here who act like it’s a capital offense to leave your kid in a locked car for a minute (even though I’ve got one eye on the car the whole time).
I look at it this way…which is more dangerous – leaving the kid in a car where someone may break into the car and kidnap the child, or carrying her across the parking lot where you may get hit by a passing car? The correct answer is “neither one is more dangerous than the other”, because neither one is going to happen. So all you’re doing is causing problems for you and the child by pulling her out of the car seat and strapping her back in two minutes later.
Unfortunately, the Culture of Fear dictates that leaving your child alone for even a second will certainly lead to that child being killed/abducted, so any terrible parent who would do so must immediately be reported to the authorities.
Although now I just go to the ATM less often.
Hal–
I agree with you about the culture of fear, but some of the time, mostly in the summer or where it’s always hot, the problem is not probable kidnapping but rather heat. In Arizona, for example, there are routinely news stories in the summer about kids who die in locked cars when the parent ran into the store “just for a minute.” The public is urged to call 911 if we see a child in a locked car because the kid could be dead or brain damaged in a very short time due to heat. The police take this sort of incident very seriously and you can (at least temporarily) lose custody of your kid over it.
A-fucking-men.
There’s a world of difference between leaving your child in a closed car on a hot day for four hours and leaving your child in a closed car on a moderate or chilly day for 5 minutes - during which you’ll not be out of line-of-sight. It’s far fucking safer in the winter on snow and ice to leave the kids safely belted in then to herd them across a slippery, cold, icy parking lot where dumbass idiots are driving like cattle on PCP and don’t notice the little ones who don’t stand taller than the front bumper - even if I’m going to be gone for 10 minutes into a grocery store. No kid ever died for crying for 10 minutes.
Jesus farking Christ people, seven year olds used to raise their little siblings while Ma and Pa were out in the fields all day. It doesn’t take a great deal of cognitive power to watch your little sister for 10 fucking minutes when there are not even any outlets to stick screwdrivers into or other convenient ways to kill yourself in a parked car strapped into a carseat.
But in this zero-fucking-tolerance-pc-bullshit world, I have to expose my kids to more danger simply because I don’t know if there will be a cop and a locksmith there when I get back. And I know, you, as a bystander, don’t know how long I’ve been gone or when I’ll be back, but why the fuck would you assume I’m putting my kid in danger when it’s a small percentage of people indeed who actually do that? Fucking fuckers have fucked it up for the rest of us.
Bringing the kid to your regular hang out to meet your friends? Why not? I’d bring 'em to the office, to the knitting circle and to the gym, if those were my places of social contact. Playing with a lighter? Why not? A six month old is sure as hell not going to be able to light it, it’s just another metal doo-dad to chew on, although I wouldn’t allow it with a cheap lighter with springs and levers that could come loose and be a choking hazard. Telling other people in a bar not to smoke? That’s just fucking rude and stupid, I agree. Not watching mobile kids? Unexcusable. Letting your kids bug other people? Unforgivable. Not having a designated driver? Dumb and criminal, assuming there’s no public transportation.
But see how there’s all sorts of variables here? Saying a baby should never be in a bar is just as dumb as saying kids should always be in bars.
My old man used to love telling the story of how I cost him a beer one night, when I was only a few months old. He had given my mon “the night off,” and had walked me down to his local, Cavagnero’s Bar & Grill. Plopped me on the bar, turned away to talk to one of his buddies, and I grabbed a handful of napkins & shoved them into someone else’s mug, sopping up the beer. Well, the guy got all ticked off, and my pop had to shell out another $.35 for a fresh beer for him. All my fault; he should have returned me to the gypsies right then and there. As I got older, I learned the joys of Albie Cavagnero’s roast beef sandwiches. Me & dad would go down there for lunch, but I couldn’t sit at the bar, that was against the law … until after I had eaten, in which case I could clamber up on a seat & watch the Drinking Bird while the old man sucked down a quick cold one. Good memories!
That being said, it was a quiet, gentle bar, peopled by old-timers and locals; no roughnecks. It’s gone, of course. They sell overpriced bathroom fixtures there, now.
Have to agree with you, here. My husband and I have always taken our daughter to bars, because where we live, they are generally taverns with food. If it’s really crowded & overly smoky, we don’t go, and we aren’t just standing around drinking, but it IS a bar, and I don’t see the big deal.
Funny you say that about leaving a kid in the car. My husband travels a lot for work, and so when I have to run errands, I have always had to bring the baby with me. Well, I live across the street from a convenience store. I have never understood why it is considered safer for me to bring the baby with me if I have to run across the street to the store, than it would be for me to leave her sleeping in her crib in a locked house while I go over there by myself (I’m talking about no longer than 10 minutes). The only thing I could think of that could harm her in her crib is if the house caught on fire. But considering that I would be downstairs in the house anyway, with her upstairs, I’m not sure how much more dangerous it would be for me to be across the street. I don’t have data to support this, but I have always thought that there may be a higher probablility that we would be hit by a car crossing the street than anything would happen to her sleeping in her crib.
Of course, this doesn’t apply now that she is old enough to get out of her crib and sleeps in a regular bed, but when she was a little baby? I don’t get it. It’s all emotional reaction and not logic, IMO. As you say, I make the choice based on what might get me into trouble as a parent from people who might like to cause that kind of trouble. That’s fine, because, as you also point out, the chances of the house catching fire at that moment OR us getting hit by a car are pretty remote, anyway. But I hate having to make my decisions based on what I think other people might think about those decisions.
Also, I was just thinking - I know of several bars in Ireland that actually have creches – little play areas – so mommies and daddies can park their kids there when they go out for a few scoops! The bar hires a babysitter to mind the little runts and everything.
This is why I love the Irish. They know how to live. 
The bar in question was a sports bar/pool hall. They don’t serve food. The smoke level is amazing as the crowd, especially during happy hour, is very blue collar. I’d estimate 95% of the patrons smoke.
I wouldn’t pit a mother who took a baby into a TGI Fridays or something and sat at a table. But, mother getting hammered on shots of whatever while her baby is sucking on a lighter is a bit too much for me.
Just make sure it’s not wearing a uniform.
So, I clicked on this thread because I thought the title was Your baby belongs in a jar. I was expecting something else entirely.
I grew up in a…bar, I guess. My stepfather owned a business started by his grandfather (used to be an honest-to-goodness trading post, but by the time my stepfather owned it, it was a local hangout in a rural farm community). They sold pop, beer, cold sandwiches, gas–no bathroom, they still had outhouses. It still exists, but is now more of a steakhouse for locals. There are still crowds of kids there with parents, at all hours of the day into the night. It’s more community gathering spot than anything.
I would agree with that.
One more for my baby, and one more for the road.
Sorry, I can see why some of the parents are frustrated re: the 5-minute ATM thing, but I can find absolutely no excuse to bring a small child to a bar so you can have a beer.
A sports-style restaurant, where the family will be eating? Okay, sure.
But surely to God you can hang on until you aren’t the sole person in charge of your kid before you have that beer. And if you can’t, well… I’m not 100% sure you’re necessarily the best person to be in charge of the kid.
Look, I’m not one to tell other people how to raise their children, but where I come from, bringing a kid to a bar is super-duper sleazefest. I’m not talking you’re going there to eat, I’m talking you’re going there just for a beer. Or five. Never in my life can I think of any situation where it’s a good idea to bring your baby to a bar so you can have a brew.