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this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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Here’s a fresh one: someone called me a shitty parent because I think Americans are generally very intolerant of kids in public spaces. They flew off the handle because I said what some people call “annoying” I call “being a kid.” There are a lot of people on Lemmy who get very angry about the idea that kids might irritate them or otherwise make themselves known, and they immediately start ranting about how those parents are dog shit and the kids need to essentially be muzzled.
I have a pretty big ax to grind with all the eugenics/breeder bullshit going on in my country right now. It’s very scary and I get why people are weary of having kids. But anti-natalism is not a good look and this tendency for people to feel borderline virtuous for calling parents shitty for “not controlling their kids“ is really something to behold.
I’m not even here to have that debate. What’s so shocking to me is after just a couple of sentences the default stance is “you must be a shitty parent.” It’s pretty awful thing to say but I see it thrown around so casually all the time like how the right just calls people pedophiles for no fucking reason (obviously very different tiers of accusations but you get the point).
depending on context, I could easily support either side of this argument.
on the one hand, people overreact too much.
on the other hand, children are often unpleasant to be around.
On a third hand, people in general are often unpleasant to be around, children are just different kinds of unpleasant.
Setting also matters. Playing and screaming in a park? probably fine. playing and screaming in a library? those kids have bad parents.
Sir, where did you get a third hand. Grave robbing and necromancy is illegal around here.
Tho I do very much agree with what you have on said third hand.
uuhhhhh, glory to the four-armed emperor?
Libraries have sections for kids man. Most people adhere to it. You (Royal you) can’t let theoreticals/rare cases inform your feelings on these issues.
Divorced of context, I 100% agree. However, I don't think you've engaged with my point. There are settings in which it is simply NOT ok for children to be playing and screaming, full stop. "but what about-" No, you've changed the setting and now we're not talking about the same thing anymore.
But who ever said kids should be able to do whatever they want whenever they want? This feels a bit strawman to me. No one is advocating for that, certainly not me.
Kids are going to be on your public transit, your airplanes, on sidewalks, at pizza shops, etc. and people need to not just accept but embrace them. They are a part of your community, just like any other person. If being an inconvenience or annoying was an acceptable reason for people to reject you, then we’d have a lot bigger issues (than we already have) with the elderly, people with autism, people in wheel chairs, etc. No one gets mad when the bus takes an extra bit of time to help someone with a disability get settled. Yes an infant may cry or scream in public. They do that.
Not going to argue about the general kid stance. Just about the "shitty parent" bit, which is also de main complain.
There are two tiers of good/bad parent. There's the objective one, are the kids being hurt? No, then you are a good parent. Pretty easy.
But there's a more complex one. Are your education as a parent helping to produce an adult with a series of determined characteristics? This is a lot more complex. As there's no universal agree on what a good adult is so there cannot be a good agree on which parenting is good because it produces these type of adults.
I'd would assume that when people say "you are a shitty parent" they would me mostly saying "your education will produce an adult that I do not consider desirable in my idea of a society". That's subjective. Some people prefer some traits and other prefer others.
As in this general example if someone sees a kids making a lot of noise and their parents not correcting them they may say "that's a shitty parent". Do they think they are hurting the kids? No. They'll just probably think that those kids will grow up to be noisy adults and they don't like noisy adults, so they think that's not a desirable education for a kid in their society. Nothing more. I wouldn't take those "you are a shitty parent" in any other way.
You’re missing the issue - I know what they’re thinking, but frankly I don’t understand why people feel entitled to make that statement after simply disagreeing with one or two sentences of mine or someone else. The point is it is an extremely rude, personal attack that borders on cruel. It cannot be overstated how deeply personal that attack is and how unwarranted it almost always is.
I said “we need to be patient with kids,” they said “kids are obnoxious in public spaces,” I said “what you may consider annoying I often consider kids just being kids,” and they said “you’re a shitty parent.” Does that sound like an even remotely appropriate escalation to you? They are hardly unique in this behavior. This is basically a meme at this point on the Internet. If you say are a parent and advocate for kids at all, people just call you a shitty parent immediately. And they’re so excited to do it andget so much support in it. It’s not right.
It's not appropriate. But don't take it personal.
I am sensitive to noises, so I can empathize very well with people who suffer when noisy/kids people are around. It can be really debilitating and stressful. And frustrating, as there's usually no control over that situation. So it's usual for people to vent the extreme frustration generated by shit talking.
Maybe they have a neighbor with noisy kids and they are suffering every day because of it (as it is my case for instance). So being rude to strangers who may not have special concerns if kids/people are noisy or not is a way to vent. Not a good way, but it's natural in most people to vent their frustration with people they assume (correctly or not) are related to their suffering.
What I mean is that noise sensibility can be a very serious issue to some people. Empathy and compassion is needed in this cases when defending anything related with noisemaking.
You are totally right that there are many reasons why people could feel that way. But like a lot of things on the Internet, I think it’s simply a behavior that is being rewarded. It’s become trendy to hate parents and kids. People basically assume you’re a breeder eugenicist republican the moment you say you love your kids or suggest that your kids should be allowed to exist in the community like everyone else.
I agree, but also I think there’s a line between “kiddo getting excited or having a hard time in a public space” vs. “this kid is being neglected by their parents in favor of phones, and/or not taught general manners and human-to-human respect” because their parents are also inconsiderate of other people.
A child having a meltdown in a grocery store, or bouncing around a park or making excited commentary at a movie theater I can easily forgive. Ignoring and letting a child run off unattended in a restaurant where a server can trip and get hurt is a problem. A kid getting antsy happens, but you also need to let them know why they should be mindful in certain environments.
That said, there needs to be more openly kid-friendly spaces in the US, since they need free space to let off energy and develop their minds freely.
Not just kids, a lot of adults are annoying as hell too.
But Kids should be free to learn so for me it feels like they are allowed/have the right to be annoying
That is a fantastic perspective.
Yeah, the two are usually (though not always) correlated. Annoying adults have annoying kids that grow up to be annoying adults, and the cycle continues.
You’d be amazed how many people are not patient with that learning process. And they always cite the same caricature. Some dude told me he has issues with “kids at bars” and “candlelit dinners.” What the fuck is he even on about?
Listen, I just hate kids man. It’s probably my most consistent thing since I was a kid. Fuck kids. We should just be growing adults out of a vat, it’s 2025 for fucks sake.
I have met dozens of people who have told me they hate kids throughout my life, and they have without fail been the absolute worst. I get that kids can be irritating, but hate? fuck you.
I’m being hyperbolic, if the last bit about growing people out of a vat didn’t make that clear enough.
Yes. It feels like a specific kind of projection. Their subconscious reconfizes they were a shitty kid raised by a shitty parent and are still shitty people because of it and then paint that over every child because it's what shitty people do.
Well this couldn’t be further from my truth but maybe other people are like that. I dunno. I also don’t actually hate kids, I thought my comment was evidently hyperbolic bu I guess not.
You do you but I don’t imagine that translates into you calling random people “shitty parents” when they disagree lol
Oh yeah you're that dude who was commenting on my meme about kids being annoying in a restaurant. I didn't feel the need to comment there because I had thought "person doesn't realize that few people have problems with well behaved kids or understand that people know that kids OCCASIONALLY act out.". But it looks like you're doubling down.
First, did you see anyone complaining about kids on playgrounds? Play places at fast food restaurants? Public parks? No? That's because those are places for kids to be running around. Restaurants where adults are trying to relax is not for kids to be running around. Full stop. There is no "but". YOU need to teach your child that their actions affect those around them.
Secondly, YOU choose to have children and where you take them. If you take them to a place where you know they have the potential to inconvenience the people around them and they do, then you are inflicting them on others and that makes you a bad parent.
And lastly, I can't even remember the amount of children who stayed at their table, where maybe a little louder than would be necessary but ultimately settled down, or were well behaved and well mannered. But I do remember that the parents of those children were usually well put together and maintained people who seemed to have control over their life. An unruly child who was running around the restaurant is usually a symptom and not the problem.
I didn't see the meme, but--
Maybe I'm missing something, but I kinda feel like that ignores the reality of how kids learn. They can't be taught how to act at restaurants if they're left at home for their entire childhood. We've got fairly well-behaved children, but it's because they were a little bit crazy when they were younger and we disciplined them through the process. Particularly for neuro-spicy kids, they're never going to be able to learn how to calm down unless you take them to those places, teach them how to act, and discipline them when they transgress those boundaries.
Yeah, it's an inconvenience to others, but them being a minor inconvenience now so that they won't be a major inconvenience when they're adults is kind of the tradeoff you make in order to live in a reasonably well-adjusted society.
Now, if you're talking about, like, a Michelin-starred restaurant with pristine tablecloths and no dollar signs on the menu, that's one thing. People save up for months to have a single pleasant, quiet night at places like that, and parents need to find better ways/locations to train their kids. But if you mean Applebees or whatever, I kind of think the minor inconvenience now is worth the better-behaved adult the kids will turn into.
I think the annoying kids in restaurants stereotype we’re talking about are usually when the parents of the kids are ignoring the behavior rather than trying to teach their kids anything.
Your ideal scenario here is fine but 99% of the time when I’m super irritated at kids its because the parents are ignoring and/or downplaying the affect their kids have on other people.
Gotcha. Yeah, parents can definitely suck just as much as any other human (or, to be fair, they can just be exhausted or distracted). Though I will also note that in the cases where my kids have acted unexpectedly badly, it is notable to me that my usual nuclear threat ("we'll just leave") carries with it a financial penalty as well (now we have to pay for food we ordered but can't eat), which adds an additional wrinkle to this problem; particularly for lower-income folks.
I do think that I usually have a lower tolerance for my kids' behavior than most of the people around me do, so hopefully that's part of what is on my side here.
You can train your kids at McDonalds. And while I'd acquiesce about Applebee's, if alcohol is served, children shouldn't be. Sure that may limit what you can do as a parent. But I'm sure the joys and triumphs of parenthood will outweigh the loss of having a beer while your child knocks into other customers at the restaurant.
Respectfully, no. That's an entirely different scenario with entirely different norms, patterns, expectations, etc. A sit-down, table-service restaurant in a "boring" location with slow food is an entirely different experience than counter service at a fast food restaurant. You start with that, of course, but that's definitely not where it can end.
Not to mention, there are no casual fast food places that serve vegetables. If you care about offering your kids any kind of healthy food, you have to go somewhere at least slightly more upmarket.
That excludes pretty much every restaurant that isn't fast food. In some countries, that excludes even McDonald's. It definitely excludes Applebee's. It excludes Chuck E. Cheese, for crying out loud.
Maybe in the 90s that would've been a reasonable limitation, but that is far from the case today.
Nah, I'm not worried about that even a little bit. I chose to be a parent, which means that I chose to accept certain limitations on my life while they're still young. I don't have any issue with that as a principle. Yes, parents are still human and should be able to exist independently of their children, and yes, some people didn't choose to be parents (but had that choice made for them), but I don't think that either situation is a large enough situation to be worth discussing here.
What I'm saying is that teaching and training has to happen in real situations. It doesn't start there, no; you work on not throwing your food on the floor at home, you work on not shouting and screaming at the table at Grandma's, you work on not running around the restaurant at McDonald's. But once you have the basics down, you have to go out and actually work on them in the real world. That means a real restaurant, with waiters and other diners, where the food isn't exactly what they want, and it takes "forever" to arrive. It has to be in the real world, or else it doesn't work.
That means that your kids' bad days are going to go out into the real world sometimes, too; and you won't have any warning that they're coming. They'll just show up along with your basket of breadsticks at the pizza place, or they'll be serving them alongside the General Tso's chicken at the Chinese buffet.
At that point, you have three options: leave (probably not super feasible, you still have to pay for the meal and you still have to feed your kids and yourself), ignore them (this is clearly the type of parent you're frustrated by, and I agree, but they're far more exception than rule), or parent your way through it (which is honestly the whole point of this excursion). But the last one is the hardest, and runs the most risk of looking like ignoring if you have more than one kid and have to focus on them in turn.
Yeah, honestly, it does. Not all the time, but every time.
Man I just don’t care anymore. Believe what you want to believe. Have a good one.
I remember that one. It was a weird thread. We had people saying they let their kids poop on the floor, and others that only let their kids out of their cages for special occasions.
Of course, those were exaggerations of the extremes, but it got very heated.
The “poop on the floor” thing is unfortunately a reality of potty training but that shouldn’t happen in public spaces, nor have I ever heard or witnessed that lol
I would guess many people on here have done the research but have little experience with the actions necessary to conceive
Here's a great response to any parent who gets the "You must be a shitty parent" line.
"And you ARE a shitty person"
Definitely. Only shitty people spend any time disparaging others. The self reflection required for them to understand that is the first step to not being a shitty person.
Being curmudgeonly used to carry social shame but that's all disappeared along with the ignorant spreading their ignorance.
All symptoms of people who were never taught how to behave and haven't taken the time to work the skill as an adult.