the culture wars...

[flea]

In addition to their ongoing anti-feminist articles about young women wanting to stay home with children, the New York Times also has had repeated articles about clashes between people with children and people without children. Today's instalment is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/national/09bakery.html?8hpib

My response is well-covered by Bitch, PhD in this essay (http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2005/04/moms-at-work-over-there.html) and can be summed up this way: children are part of society. Yes, parents should encourage them to be well-behaved in public, and should not take one-year-olds to Michelin 3-star restaurants. But a casual neighborhood cafe at brunch time or early evening? Give me a break.

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I hate the attitude that, unless I want to get a babysitter, my family ought to limit ourselves to restaurants with plastic chairs and what my friend saoba calls "all-American brown and white food." Alex has been in a lot of restaurants, some of them with fancy white tablecloths. Usually she goes to sleep, although she might emit a squawk or two on the way down. As she gets older, we'll probably limit ourselves to ethnic restaurants for a while, which usually have higher levels of kid acceptance. But damn it, when she's five or six she'll have the right to go to a nice restaurant with good food, without being glared at.

I do think the article sets up an unfair dichotomy, as if the parental side of the argument must necessarily be that lying on the floor or bashing into things is an only-to-be-expected part of childhood. There are definitely some parents who don't make enough of an effort to corral their kids. But on the other hand, there are people who will glare at a baby in a restaurant just for having the temerity to exist, or will get all upset about toddler babbling that's below the decibel level of adult conversation. "We just want to have children behave themselves here" sounds reasonable, but how often does it mask an attitude that any noise or movement by a child is unacceptable?

My personal metric for restaurants' baby friendliness, incidentally, is whether anyone helps me get the stroller through the door. Yes, I know, it's not the responsibility of the restaurant staff to help me. But if the proprietor leaps forward to give me a hand, it's unfailingly a place where my family can eat comfortably. If they stand back, watching us struggle with cold dislike? The whole meal's going to be about keeping Alex from squeaking, so we might as well leave right away.

The most shocking part of the NYT article, to me, was that a feminist bookstore called Women and Children First (a) kicks children out of their story hour for standing up or talking, and (b) tried to stop a mother from nursing in the bookstore. If that qualifies as putting "women and children first," I'd hate to see what they do to the people they put last.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Yes, the anti-feminist feminist bookstore was a little mind-boggling.

How I miss the halcyon days when Casper could be counted on to sleep or sit happily mouthing a spoon for a 45-minute meal! But we do go fetch her immediately every time she slips out of her chair, and our rule is, twice out of the chair means it's time to sit on someone's lap for a while.

And on the glare side, yes - I got glared at in an art museum, outside the cafe which was hosting a 4th birthday party, as my quiet baby crawled along their clean, carpeted floor. The elderly woman said to her husband, "People take babies anywhere these days!" And if they're not disturbing you except by simply existing, why not?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I find that the same people who object to children being anyplace that isn't specifically kid-oriented also sneer at parents for "not having anything interesting to talk about anymore."