Seriously what is up with whining about people bringing their kids shopping. I get that they hate poor people I just would expect them to have more than one thing to talk about
Edit: Even though I enjoy conflict, I guess I'll add some context here anyway. The usual line I hear as smalltalk is "You don't have to bring the whole family shopping," which if you don't shut it down immediately, will be followed up with some of the most racist and/or classist statements you can imagine, typically involving birth rates
It's called a nuclear family because I WILL GO NUCLEAR if its dominance is challengedthis attitude is just the Victorian "children are to be seen and not heard"
Dw, judging by the last sentence they're joking about that Victorian attitude
Yes, but you have to spell it out because that’s still some people’s unironic take
"I am very progressive I just have the same social views about poor children as an 18th century mill owner"
"Yes, they're my kids, but they need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Yes, I do think having kids is like having slaves, why do you ask?"
A grocery store is a miserable place to be a child. It’s full of objects scientifically designed to convince people to pick them up and take them, and the kid is not allowed to take them. Plus they have to sit on the hard steel wire basket seat for like 90 minutes, and are surrounded by obnoxiously loud noises.
Of course, nobody can afford a babysitter and nobody has an extended family, so the kids come with. Even if they are sick. ESPECIALLY if they are sick.
As a father of two, I can confirm that we train our kids specifically to act out in public. It's a lot of fun for everyone involved. I, for one, think it's delightful when my child melts down because the grocery store doesn't have an item that almost certainly exists only in their mind. It's just one of the joys of being a Bad Parent™
who would want to miss out on the judgemental glares of strangers and wrangling a screaming toddler
Am I the only one that enjoys seeing kids being feral little shits? Like, hell yeah buddy climb on that statue. Does no one have a sense of wonder anymore?
went out to eat with friends that had kids and they kept apologizing to me for their kid being loud, but like, we were the only ones there and it was kinda hilarious that the kid was freaking out over the crayon breaking even though they could still use it. very entertaining
I enjoy it until the feral child runs into the highways service road. Which happened in front of me last week. Thankfully there were no cars passing at that moment.
Ok I agree but people get run over in my city all the time. Drivers are antisocial here.
Drivers are antisocial everywhere because driving is a fundamentally antisocial act.
Tbh climbing on a statue isn’t really what I would consider shit behavior
unironically.
saw a video of a scenic area in yunnan with tourists walking around and in each town they had basically a daycare place where you could let your kids play with local kids without them running off while you enjoy the town. and its designed in such a way that its trivial to drop your kids off and pick them up, and appeared to be a communal service. its also good because they get to socialize instead of being bored while the parents go do adult shit
China is safe enough that even anti-China westerners let their kids commute to school on busy trains lol. I also saw a video of some night park in the city where it was filled with mostly kids and a couple parents just chatting in the sidelines. People aren’t afraid of someone gunning their kids down and trust each other to protect and watch their community
Some really big shops have kids areas where the children can just hang out while their parents shop
Modern society hates kids. Whether its their noise, or kids at home (during COVID) disturbed them, to many places deploying high-pitched sound devices to drive away loitering teenagers.
Hell, COVID is a leading cause of death for kids, but fuck-em I wanna eat at Red Robin without a mask
I am convinced that the particular rampant nature of childism is at least partly because the atomization in our society ensures that people aren't around children at all.
I think there’s like a ton of things going on when people say they hate noisy kids out in public. I think there are those for whom “noisy” is just shorthand for reckless, inappropriate, obnoxious behavior. Which, like, is annoying, and there are absolutely those parents who don’t teach their kids how to act respectfully in public (and often the kids are just imitating their parents who themselves never learned to act respectfully in public) and let them run wild. Or it’s teenagers who, like, it annoys me but also I did some shithead stuff when I was a teen so I can’t really talk.
But there are also definitely people who legitimately hate children unless they’re silent and only spoke when spoken to, that sort of thing. My aunt is like this, it’s shit.
Also there are some things that really annoy me, like babies crying in public, but just because it annoys me, what am I gonna do, ban babies in public? That’s stupid. I mean we do live in a society so you have to expect some minor annoyances when in public, and also most parents realize how disruptive and annoying that is and are usually pretty embarrassed and try hard to get their baby to calm down, so like, we’re on the same page pretty much. Not a big deal.
people who legitimately hate children unless they’re silent and only spoke when spoken to
Oof. I've only met one person who openly said that kids should only speak when spoken to, and he was a monster to every member of his household
I was once standing in line at a public library waiting to check out books. Dude at the front of the line was complaining to the librarian that there were kids reading books out loud in the Children's section. The librarian was doing her best not to roll her eyes at him.
Some people need to learn how to deal with mild inconvenience in public.
suburbia is just anti-human on all levels, it squicks me out so bad
they thought that the sound of children playing would be a blight upon the neighborhood and lower their precious property values.
actually being near amenities makes a house less valueable don'tyaknow
To be fair you don't have to be rich to teach your kids how to act while their out in public.
Unless they're baby age, then yeah babies gonna cry sometimes, it happens.
Noisy isn't necessarily inappropriate behavior in public. People should be less tightassed
I dunno man, on one hand, I kind of agree with you for the most part, on the other hand, if you're out in public you should be mindful that it's not your house and there are people around that may be dealing with shit you don't know about. People with PTSD and sensory issues gotta shop too.
They do, but so do parents of kids with behavioral issues and such. I'm not saying "don't teach your kids to be respectful in public," I'm saying that a lack of childcare is the source of the conflict and the amount of "they need to hit that kid" that passes for smalltalk is outrageous, selfish, and whiny
Tbh we might have different calibrations for the word noisy. In this James Dobson-afflicted hell, it just means "making noise" and often includes not actually making noise at all if the kids are brown
I was in a theater once with a woman who brought her toddler into a horror movie, and when the kid predictably started crying, she pulled out her phone and put on baby shark at damn near full volume for them. Some people do need to be less tightaased, but some people also genuinely don't know how to act in public anymore.
Don't get me wrong, I'd get theater staff involved at that point
It's usually shopping that people talk about - specifically something necessary, boring, and time-sensitive where you're likely to encounter behavior problems in larger families because it's a kid-unfriendly environment where most activities are impossible, and the parent is having to divide their attention between all of the kids and shopping
I did, and I hated it. But my girlfriend had been looking forward to that particular movie for a minute, and I didn't want her night to be ruined. I don't know that I would've done so otherwise, I'm usually too non-confrontational to do anything aside from just tolerating it.
At any rate, yeah, in situations like a shopping trip or any public place where quiet isn't an expectation, I don't really think it can be helped. Some kids are going to act up, it's a pain in the ass, but it's understandable, and most people really have no choice but to bring their kids everywhere. I'll admit to grousing about it whenever I run into noisy kids in public, but I used to be just the same at their age. Probably worse. It'd be hypocritical of us to forget how annoying we used to be.
Yeah, that does suck. I'm really confused over why anyone would want to stay in a movie theater to comfort a baby in the first place
Hey, no shame in grousing so long as you don't fundamentally oppose pro-child methods for making it not have to be that way
Lord only knows. Even in the moment I was trying to be empathetic though. I don't recall the particulars, but I overheard her conversing with a guy she'd brought (she was in the row directly in front of us, which kinda made the whole thing worse lol) and it sounded like her life was pretty screwy. The poor thing probably has a hard time getting out.
Oh hell yeah. I feel that anybody who feels strongly about it should support things like universal childcare, if not for the million and one reasons that that's a good and proper thing to do, than at least because it demonstrates genuine principles to put your money where your mouth is.
she pulled out her phone and put on baby shark at damn near full volume for them
I agree with you but also that woman is objectively hillarious
What the hell is wrong with bringing kids with to the grocery store? Hell here in South Africa some of the shopping carts even have full on baby car seats attached to them, and most of the larger carts/trolleys have a fold out kids seat. It's perfectly normal to bring your kids with. Do people really moan about that?
Are people really so atomised in the USA that seeing kids exist in the real world freaks them out?
We have those carts too in the US. There are certain people who hate kids and parents so much they lose their shit on anything that helps them at all like universal childcare. The weird child free types.
Are people really so atomised in the USA that seeing kids exist in the real world freaks them out?
Absolutely. Where do you think those antinatalist freaks come from?
Yeah I couldn’t imagine why people wouldn’t like going grocery shopping while someone’s kid is running around, screaming and pulling things off shelves. Must be because they hate poor people.
Welcome to the real world lol. Kids are part of it, get used to it. You were once a bratty child too, we all were at one stage. It's part of life.
It's part of life
naturalizing capitalist modes of production...ok liberal
kids aren't a capitalist mode of production, they are people
In the “real world” it’s perfectly fine to be annoyed by unmanaged children. It always has been and it always will be, just like not having kids and not wanting to deal with other people’s shittily behaved kids is also acceptable. Do you think kid free restaurants, vacation spots, etc exist for no reason?
Yeah but a supermarket is not a vacation spot, restaurant or club. It's a supermarket, a grocery store.
I understand child free spots when appropriate, I just don't think a grocery store or supermarket should be child free.
A grocery store isn’t a playground, no one is entitled to make other people deal with their shitty parenting.
until you're paying for their childcare so they don't have to bring their kids shut the fuck up
Making sure your children aren’t little shits is a parents responsibility, not the daycares. If you have kids and they can’t behave for like a half hour, that’s wholly on you.
Individual responsibility brainworms, and from a federated user, what a surprise.
I like seeing kids in at the grocery store because its the only place I get to see kids anymore after my last job working with them was taken from me by an ableist boss so please, bring your kids to the grocery store.
It is very weird how
is alienated from children. Most adults don’t interact with or even see children regularly unless they have children or work in child care. It’s really sad how such a fundamental part of existence is so cordoned off both for the children not being able to see and be part of their whole world and for the adults missing out on the sense of community and humanity that comes from dealing with both the good and the bad about children. The system behind this dehumanized structure is obviously capitalism. I’d encourage any comrades to let go of any unnecessary boundaries between adult and child spaces and embrace more humanity.i agree to an extent but me and my friends constantly smoke weed, plus my house/room has far too many small and fragile and sharp things around to be a child safe place. its the same reason i don't have pets even though i don't dislike them, i just couldn't trust them around my models and miniatures (plus most of my family is allergic). there do need to be some amount of exclusively adult and exclusively (probably with oversight) child spaces imo, but probably to a lesser degree than the status quo in many places.
Sure your personal space is yours to define, my concern is with how society perceives shared spaces. And for those shared spaces there’s already an expectation (especially from comrades) of things like public safety, consideration for differently abled people, elderly persons. We should not limit those considerations away from the expectation children will be there and have their own unique needs, including social understanding for their lack of ability to fully self regulate , and that we can pay into a community that accepts and shares that cost same as we would encourage community to share and accept all sorts of other social costs.
It depends on the area you live. You get a little further from the cities and there is a very normal mix of families wherever you go and consequently much less of the type of judgement being discussed in this thread. Cities tend to collect single people or people without kids, and frankly, raising kids in an urban setting is much more challenging so fewer people do it or they move out when they start a family.
Leaving urban areas is not a reasonable prerequisite to raising children.
