I’m not claiming credit for writing this post – it’s a comment from one of our readers on an older post. I liked it so much that I thought it’s worth being a post in its own right. (That, by the way goes for the majority of comments on this blog – big thanks for so many thought provoking insights). It also reminded me of my last post.
So many things struck me as true in this post… bad behaviour from children and parents allowed because “they are just children” yet if you’re childfree you’re not allowed to comment on said bad behaviour. As a childfree person, I pay thousands of dollars (or pounds) for an airplane flight yet, for some reason some parent’s ill-brought up child is allowed to make my flight hell by kicking the back of my seat whenever they feel like it. With the parent looking on. Yet being childfree we’re supposed to endure it because they are “just children.” It is ludicrous that one should have to pay more money because a parent cannot or usually will not control their offspring. I could go on, but SS has laid these and more out below.
It’s up to parents to ensure their children are brought up to respect other members of society. That’s how my parents brought me up. Don’t even get me started about the pregnancy issue. Non-parents get no free passes. Maybe it’s time we stop tolerating the BS and double standards we’ve been putting up with. I especially agree about the Girl Guide cookies.
The comment was on my 2009 post Noisy Kids Upstairs? You May Be Asked to Suck it Up
Read on – and add your thoughts and comments. And thanks SS – for helping me make this post.
“In general, children and pregnancy are seen as acceptable excuses for otherwise offensive behavior. There is no excuse for disturbing the peace of your neighbors, whether in a mansion or an apartment. My parents had a large surrounding yard when we grew up but we were not allowed to be loud everywhere, leave the yard a mess with toys, and we were taught where it was OK to make noise and where we had to be quiet. I now live in a condo on a top floor and I am very careful not to turn up music or TV up too loud, or let nieces and nephews run or scream when they are here. Thankfully, they are very well behaved but that is because they were taught to be that way.
I’ve seen too many examples of terrible behavior being justified by pregnancy and parenthood. Noise, unreliability at work, creating messes in public areas, expectation of accommodations that are beyond reasonable. It’s not that non parents don’t commit the same offenses, but there is no free pass for them.
If you have an adult party and the music is too loud, the neighbors can all the police and the caller is not an intolerant human hater. If you bail out at the last minute at work with the flu frequently you are lazy and subject to disciplinary action, if you are out with morning sickness or take repeated maternity leaves, you are a trouper and protected by law. If a drunk vomits at a bar or in your car, they are a boor, if a pregnant woman vomits all over the inside of your car or on the floor at a restaurant, don’t you dare be irritated that she didn’t offer to clean up or gasp, be prepared by carrying barf bags as many chemo patients do, the poor mother is suffering for the sake of preserving the human race.
If I prosletyze at work, it is prohibited by company policy (as it should be), but if a parent brings girl scout cookies in and you don’t buy a case you are a mean, cold, bitter person who hates the world even if you spend the money that didn’t go to the cookies on a donation to a charity that works towards saving the environment or homeless people.
I don’t mind making certain accommodations for parents and their kids, but I’d like the standard to be set where both parents and childfree folks have to be considerate. I don’t mind working longer hours as long if I am paid more and recognized for doing more work(don’t start that argument about how moms are super efficient and do twice as much work in half the time, there is no scientific evidence for that one, and it is flat out a joke if you look at jobs like surgeon, or any job that requires physical presence or extended intervals of intense focus).
Childfree workers would not be as resentful of parent workers if company policies were people friendly, not family only friendly. Give everyone x days of leave, not only parents. Give everyone whatever flexibility is available, not only parents. Have benefits that both parents and non parents can use. And for healthcare benefits, pay 100% of your employees dental or medical insurance, not 50% for employee and children. I wouldn’t mind letting families board the plane first if parents would keep their kids from kicking my chair and running up and down the aisles or cancel their trip if the kid is sick and contagious.
I would be happy to celebrate a friend having a baby if they got excited when I get the job of my dreams. I might not ever want to be around the baby ha ha but I could appreciate that it was important to my friend. It is unfortunately rare, at least in my experience, for that type of reciprocity to happen. In fact, there are only a handful of parents I know who are like this.”
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you Britgirl for your website, I am happy to have been able to contribute in a small way. I found it a few days ago (apologies for my going comment happy, I was so excited to find intelligent writing and conversations on these topics) and have been working my way through older posts ever since.
We live in a society that tell us over and over again to get married and have kids, and it’s only normal (in their opinion) that mothers play an important part in our society and have more benefits. I don’t disagree entirely: i offer my seat in a bus to any old person or pregnant woman (this is how i was thought), but i hate when kids are bad behaving and the parents’ answer is always “what can i do? he is only a kid”. At first i just smiled nicely, but now i can say “you could educate him – that will be a start”.
I really don’t care what mothers think of me, but i don’t see in a kid the entire purpose of my life. I tend to respect the ones who respect me, even if they are pregnant women or not. I get that being pregnant requires a certain attention and for some this is a special moment in life, but let’s not assume that we are all the same and that we all feel good inside when we see a baby.
I wonder if the tolerance of bad behavior from children is the result of the pendulum swinging from the “children are seen and not heard” from our grandparents/great grandparents era. Something like how instead of persons in their teens or early twenties being treated as adults they are still treated as children. Just a thought.
I don’t like seeing a pregnant woman in my way, this will sound strange to some. Seeing a pregnant woman really repels me, I don’t know why, I just don’t like. Some pregnant women have nasty temper during her pregnancy and think she’s great; expecting every attention paid to her. When I was working in a restaurant, I hated serving pregnant women, they just can’t wait a slightly longer for the dish be served. They would complain.Thanks that I don’t have kids.
I think that you are expecting a whole lot from a child. Kids include everything from newborn to 17 years of age. I am not sure you can expect a child under five to even understand any of the things you are talking about them being able to do and understand. Another thing I found weird about your post was this idea of “controlling” a child. What exactly does that entail? Controlling anyone is awful, parenting is not like owning property or pet, you cannot force another person through control to do what you want. Children, something we all were are living, breathing, conscious human beings, next time one gets on your nerves or kicks your seat or whatever be an adult, turn around and say, “Excuse me, I am going to need you to stop kicking my seat, it is making me very uncomfortable. Thanks”
browneyedgirl
I think you misunderstood the post, the point isn’t that kids, infants, or fetuses should be expected to act like adults or that a 5 year old would understand a post written for adult readers. It’s that adults with children should not be excused from being considerate of others simply because they are parents (nor should adults without children be inconsiderate). The title of the post explains it, it’s about the parents. If a child kicks the seat in front of them on the plane, I will politely ask the child to stop, but it is the parent’s responsibility to supervise behavior, and by the way I’ve been screamed at by parents for politely asking their child not to kick my seat. And if the child does not heed the request, I don’t blame the child, the problem is the parent who should know better.
To address your point about control, adults should control children at times. The word has a negative connotation, and if you are referring to telling a kid what to think or feel, and regulating its every move 24/7, then yes that would be awful, that isn’t what is being discussed here. If you are saying that adults shouldn’t exert any control, then I disagree. If I am taking care of a child, and it makes a run for the street with traffic, I will control it and keep it from getting killed and I make no excuses for that. I would rather have a startled child who resents me for controlling it in that moment than a dead or injured child. My guess is that maybe our opinions aren’t as dissimilar as you first thought.
I try my best to be understanding of children. To be fair, small children probably don’t know that kicking my seat is uncomfortable to me. If they do kick my seat, greater things have been lost and I try to shrug it off. But that in no way excuses the parents that are in charge of said children. When the child repeatedly kicks my seat it’s the parents failing at their job. God forbid I should ask the kid not to kick my seat.
I think the main reason that bad behavior is allowed is that parents know they can hide behind the shield of self-righteous indignation. If you get upset because the child kicks your seat they can take all of their anger and frustration and direct it towards you, and then tell themselves that they are protecting their child from the world. When parents do get belligerent it just goes along with society’s generally held belief that protection of children supersedes everything and the parent gets to look like a caring parent.
I think a lot of the time parents would rather look like good parents then actually be good parents. I don’t know how it could possibly be considered good parenting to let your child engage in acts that if he where a dog he would be put down and if he where an adult he would be arrested. I guess those parents think that somewhere between infancy and adulthood, without actually being told, the kid will learn how to conduct themselves.
I think my comment became more of a rant than actually addressing the issue at hand. I’ll try to get back on topic.
I think the most “family only friendly” job that I ever had was the military. If we were on the other side of the world and a major holiday came around, it was the parents that got to go home for christmas, thanksgiving, or 4th of july. The excuse I was given bugged me the most, it was because they had families. I guess that means that I just sprouted off of a tree. If there was a picnic or some family event, the people with families got to leave early while the single soldiers got to clean up and go home late. And there never were any single events, not that I didn’t vocally give many suggestions.
The pay was also very lopsided in favor of families. They called it basic housing allowance, but it just meant that if you had dependents that you made more money. I had subordinates of a lower rank who were making more money than I was. I never quite understood that. Our primary job was to catch bullets, but somehow because they had kids they got more money for doing it. (sorry for the long post)
I so agree with what you wrote, especially the second and third paragraphs. And the part about, “I guess that means I just sprouted off a tree” had me laughing. Childfree folks are supposed to be understanding and tolerant of the parents, but we are chopped liver. And they look at us like we just grew fangs if we stand up for ourselves. The crappy logic they use makes it all the more fun. If it is the hardest job in the world and they didn’t want to do the work, why did they have them? It’s not as if it’s a secret that being a good parent is difficult. And if they say the joy makes it all worth it, then why all the special demands for goodies on top of the abundant joy?
Parents even turn on each other, willing to sacrifice someone else’s kid unfairly. I had an instructor in a CPR class say that he tells his children to use another child as a human shield if they see anyone with a gun. He said he had no problem throwing any other kid under the bus to save his own. Now I can understand being protective of your offspring, but what does that teach a child? It’s fine if he would take a bullet for his kids, but he shouldn’t be volunteering others for that role. The other common one I see is parents suing a school for punishing their kid for misbehaving. If I had a kid and he or she was bullying another kid or destroying property, I would be dealing with the kid and my ineffective parenting, not blaming the school for protecting the rest of the kids in the school. Another parent sued a police officer for not doing CPR on her child (he wasn’t certified to do it) when she was standing there too. For my friends who are parents, every single one of them got CPR certified and keep it current. Why does this woman think she can sue when she didn’t bother to do it herself?
And finally, thank you for being willing to risk your life to protect your country.
I agree with SS’s overall point, which is that anyone can and should be taught from a young age to consider and respect other people. Kids are always going to be more selfish than most humans, but the earlier they can be taught to understand that their actions affect other people, they can begin to make an effort to put out more positive effects than negative ones. (Hopefully, unless they are evil geniuses, which I suspect many children of being.)
I wouldn’t mind if MORE kids were evil geniuses, because that would mean they lurk about, quietly, blending in, plotting and planning, silently, in their lairs, out of sight. They get their way in subtle ways, not generally by yelling and screaming. Give me a quietly manipulative little kid over a screecher any day….
I keep trying to put stories on here about friends, family and my own experiences but delete before i post for some reason.
So i’ll say this.
Have a kid IF you want one. But be responsible and THINK about what you’re getting into for the next year. And 2 years. And 5 years. And 8 years. And LIFE.
No easy task. A 1 year old could be the best 1 year old in the world. But just because you think you’ve got that down doesn’t mean you can cope with the “terrible two’s” or tantrum toddlers! Kids have a habit of growing up and changing you know. I’m not a parent but even i know that.
Is it any coincidence that I looked this website up as I am being pestered by the sounds of unruly kids in my vacation rental condo in Turkey?
What does it take for a lover of peace and quiet to find a corner that is not saturated with kids.
Spot on post about the justification, rationalization and explanation of belligrent behaviour in the name of parenting. I might actually be quite the radical, however, even in the childfree community, in that I have not once celebrated the birth of a child. My immediate reaction to human reproduction has been that of repulsion, increasingly so as I have become more aware of environmental destruction. Given the rate of environmental, I think it is negligent and irresponsible to reproduce.