Hacker News Reader

Comment by settsu | Hacker News Reader

I've observed what seems to be a growing sentiment among 20- to early 30-somethings that is... "child hostile" (?)—no babies or young children doing in public spaces what babies or young children are wont to do: cry, fuss, whine, speak loudly, etc. Just seemed to be a notable trend, especially when it came to places like restaurants and airplanes.

I'm not suggesting this is the sole root of the problem, just that it could be a factor when you have a city flush with a demographic that is probably the least likely, after teenagers, to want to stand out for the "wrong" reasons. Who wants to be "those people" at the trendy restaurant?

View on HN

I recently had an experience with this type that was so absurd it belonged in a movie. Waiting in line at a bakery with my kid (who was uncharacteristically silent) and a woman in front of us with a newborn who was crying loudly. A mid 20s woman came in with her dog and immediately started the passive aggressive complaining about people who bring their crying babies into public. And while she was complaining about it, her dog shit on the floor. And when someone pointed it out to her, she said "What can you do? She's a dog!" and proceeded to not clean it up.

I try my best to raise my kid with good behavior in public, and I am peeved by parents who obviously do not...but there are some times that children have learning moments in public and it is part of being a human to understand that. Complaining about children having their childish moments in public is near sociopathic levels of self centeredness. The best you can do is ignore the sociopaths and hope their karma comes elsewhere.

Do you have kids? Because, as a parent, I don't care what might be bothering some childless 20 something. On the other hand, who brings their kid to the trendy restaurant?

>I don't care what might be bothering [someone]

Sorry, but people like you are what creates this 'hostile' attitude.

You're supposed to care whether your kids are bothering people.

The problem is some people are so out of touch with a reality that includes children that they become too easily bothered.

A child throwing a tantrum is bothering. A child just saying something out loud or running around a bit is just being a child.

That's a fairly self-centered view you have there. Why should anyone care what bothers you?

In my opinion the more self-centered view is going around doing exactly what you want without any concession to how it affects other people.

I regularly think about whether my actions are bothering anyone else. It's the opposite of self-centeredness, and something that many modern parents fail to do.

That isn't the opposite of self-centeredness. In fact odds are you avoid behaviors that annoy you. You simply aren't gifted enough to know the range of behavior that might bother others. To think you do is arrogant and more than a little self-centered.

It depends on the place. If you're in an expensive restaurant or a movie theater, yes, you should most definitely care if your kids are bothering people.

If you're in the supermarket or some other public place, well, kids are kids, and shopping has to get done. All you can do is ensure that a tantrum is always wasted effort, and little kids stay in the novelty race car-shaped cart so that they aren't toppling the pyramid of soup cans onto themselves.

If I would care about everything what someone could bother I would have to lock my kids into the house the whole day.

I care whether my children behave themselves. I'm too busy caring about my kids to worry about what other people might think. In my experience, most people are reasonable, but some are not. I don't waste time on those if I've got more important people to worry about.

My view is that a child throwing a tantrum in the supermarket, and a 20-something being bothered by it, are two sides of the same coin. And in fact, I care about the consequences of either behavior, but not the causes.

Of course we care at some level. We're programmed to care, otherwise kids wouldn't have developed the tantrum gene. If my baby has a tantrum in the supermarket, I will swing into tantrum mode and deal with it.

If my kid reaches the age of 20-something, and expresses hostility towards the reasonably expected range of human behaviors observed in a typical civic environment, well, I hope that doesn't happen.

Sure, it takes a village to raise a child. But if it's somebody else's baby, or somebody else's 20-something, then in fact I don't care about it in the same way as if it's my own.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com