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
Kids don’t belong in public. They’re meant to be stored at home along with all your other property. You exist at home. You exist at work while your kids are in school. All other places require money which kids don’t have because they’re not people yet. This is how society works and therefore how society should be. It doesn’t exist within a broader context so please don’t check.
It’s called a nuclear family because I WILL GO NUCLEAR if its dominance is challenged
this 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
Yeah I know and was agreeing with them
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.
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.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP CAR BRAIN” - feral gen alpha
Children belong in the road cars don’t
He said he enjoyed it.
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
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
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.
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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
Oh well in that case I agree lol
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.
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
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.
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?
Yes
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
what the fuck are you talking about
Death to America
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.
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Lol tightass
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.
Lmao ok “komrade”
eat my shit and hair
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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.
i mean, i like not having auditory sensitivities triggered by the worst sounds known to man and i absolutely support free childcare
The childcare part is what gives the game away. Everyone I know with sensory issues that they acknowledge will rightfully complain about stuff triggering it, but they frame it experientially and they’re never the ones making this particular complaint
The folks making this complaint in person to me have been, without a single exception, trying to use it as an inroad to talk about birth rates. Those fuckers hate universal childcare
Anybody complaining about birth rates is no more than five degrees from openly seig heiling.
Seriously though why would we prioritize a few with sensory issues over children spending time with their parents. That makes zero sense.
I’m not saying “ban children from stores.” They’re the most entertaining part of shopping, for one thing. I’m saying there would be far, far fewer meltdowns if parents had a choice in whether or not to force a kid to follow them through walmart
As it stands, bringing the whole family shopping is the only option for a lot of people. This is fine if the whole family is okay with it, but can cause problems if one or more of the kids doesn’t feel up to it. Since grocery shopping can be very time-sensitive and has no acceptable activities for kids, it’s generally an unpleasant surprise at best for them
Give parents access to nearby free, safe, supervised places for their kids to play and that (plus so much more) becomes a non-issue. If a kid’s dreading Walmart, just let them do something kid-friendly. If not, then there’s no reason not to bring them along
yeah as a kid I hated going to the supermarket with my parents your mum would always meet a friend and you’d just be hanging around for what to my kid brain felt like 20 years
This shit is so detached from reality, idk how to even respond to that. Kids really aren’t a problem at grocery stores, it’s an extremely normal part of life. This is entirely a non issue.
I guess people in your area don’t dogwhistle about big families in grocery stores then