okay seriously about that broadsheet article though
oh whatever. how are parents supposed to control their kids? what exactly does that look like? it is not the role of a parent to ‘control’ anyone especially their kids. they are kids. which means that they are people. and we dont have the right to go around controlling people unless those people are actually infringing on someone else’s personhood. kids yell sometimes. kids scream sometimes. kids laugh loudly sometimes. that is what kids do. i live in cairo. and one of the reasons that i do not live in the united states. is because it is sickening to me as a parent to live in usa anti-child society. it is anti-child to insist that children act like someone they are not, namely adults. in cairo. kids are everywhere. in bars, on trains, in stores, on the streets. they run. they yell. they giggle. they say hi to you 50 times. some of them work full time for almost no wages. not everything about this culture’s attitude toward children i like. but one thing that i love here and in mexico and in most of the third world. is that adults do not expect to go through their lives not having to deal with children. let me say it again. it is oppressive to expect children to act like adults. talking about children in that way is analogous to able-ism (as if making sure shit is accessible is a huge fucking burden) or fat-phobia (i shouldnt have to look at fat people who are soooo unhealthy) or ppl who speak english as a second language or so on and so forth. what a screwed up culture that we have that makes us think that we have the right to go through a world where there are no children. (or only quiet ones). where do you think all those children are? where do you think all those mothers (and fathers but lets be honest its usually mothers) are? if they arent in the plane, the store, the cafe with you? let me make this personal. i have traveled three or four continents with my daughter who is only two years old. she has fucking cried on a plane. of course. it is uncomfortable to not be able to walk, all that pressure building up in your head, the strange environment, probably a lot of stress from the parents trying to get on the plane, of course, she might get upset, overwhelmed, need to cry. she is a baby! a toddler! what do you expect? what? am i supposed to teach her -not- to express her emotions? yeah, that is what the world needs one more quiet demure repressed little girl who is a people pleaser…yep… of course we try to calm her down. but not for the passengers sake. but because i love flying and i want her to share that love with me. and if you dont want to be around children who act like children. then dont leave your house. dont go to the store. dont take a plane. isolate yourself. get all your food delivered. but stop expecting mothers and children to isolate themselves. because difference makes you uncomfortable. oh and as for the whole - consistent parenting works! - parents need to get their kids in order - im sorry. but that is just straight bullshit. kids are not loud and energetic because they lack consistent parenting. sometimes kids are loud and energetic just because they are kids. and you dont need to be a parent to know that. you just need to respect kids.this one, written by kate harding who is no lie one of my very favoritest internet people! i think i cried when i found her site! but ouch, this paragraph:If I can see that the adult is trying to get the outburst in hand, and the kid is simply having none of it, I chide myself for my own knee-jerk uncharitable thoughts and try to focus instead on how frustrated that parent must be, what a crappy position she finds herself in. I believe this is The Decent Thing to Do. But at the same time, there really are parents out there who do nothing, or almost nothing, when their kids start making life miserable for everyone else on a plane or in a restaurant or in a store — and I reserve the right to smugly judge them, dammit.
i just… don’t think anyone should reserve the right to be smug, ever. can i say that? can i say that i think smugness is inherently assholish? smugness involves a closing off of your mind to alternate possibilities. also, i just don’t see the point of it. it’s self-serving at the expense of others and even if it IS justified, just… why expend mental energy on that, instead of something more positive? like you could smugly judge your fellow airplane passengers, i guess, or you could wonder about how many of them are going and how many are returning (does anyone else like to do this on airplanes?) and whether any of them are getting married, or if any of them are leaving home planning to begin a new life and if they’re sad about this or happy or a bit of both. airplanes are so great for speculating about people because you know, if nothing else, they are traveling a great distance, for usually no small cost, so they’ve got to have some kind of reason.
and you may say, “well isabel, i am not interested, personally, in making up backstories to people i don’t know” to which i say, “well great, bring a book then.” but see, when you are smugly judging the Bad Parents who Should Be Minding Their Kids, Dammit, you are already doing that! it’s like david foster wallace speech i’m completely obsessed with and reread like once a month and link all the time because it should be required reading for life, when he says, “it’s really easy to view people in terms of how irritating they are to you right now, but for all you know they are super wonderful people who have committed minor acts of heroism, and maybe it’s not the most likely thing but it sure is possible and it is to your own benefit to try and entertain that possibility when you can.”
look, i’m not going to say there are no bad parents. THERE ARE. one of mine is. i am just going to say that you absolutely cannot fucking tell from observing a parent with their children for very long whether or not they are good parents. FOR EXAMPLE: my brother and i were really shockingly well-behaved kids, by and large. if you were to see us hanging out in public with my father, you might have assumed that he was a very good father because, look how well-behaved his kids are! you would NOT have seen, in watching me and my brother entertain ourselves peacefully in our father’s company, the fact that my father is an actual sociopath incapable of loving anyone, including his children, who did a number of things to make our lives hugely stressful while we were growing up!
on the contrary, if you had seen us with our mother in the grocery store - because my mother was the actual parent in this relationship, which meant she had to take us to the grocery store sometimes, unlike my father who never needed to because we only saw him on weekends - you may have caught us in one of our whinier moods. you may have seen us fighting at each other, tattling on each other, yelling about how we wanted to go home. and you may have thought to yourself, “shit, that woman really needs to get her children under control for my personal benefit.” you would NOT have seen the fact that she was still several years from finding a treatment that would consistently alleviate the pain of her fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. you would NOT have seen that she was freaking out about how she was going to feed us on a grad student’s wages because my father wasn’t paying child support. you would NOT have seen the fact that we were ordinarily very well-behaved but the past few months had frayed all three of our nerves.
so this is why you should never judge - smugly or otherwise - parents based on a single glimpse of them in public. because you don’t fucking know what they’re dealing with, what they’re normally like, what it was that may have been that last straw today. you don’t know if the kids are quiet because they know if they misbehave they’ll get beaten till they bleed later [this is not me, for the record, this is a hypothetical but probably very real situation]. you don’t know - and Kate addresses this in her piece and then just… ignores it, which is weird - whether the kid does in fact have special needs, whether they are autistic and can’t deal with crowds but can deal less with being separated from their parents because their parents don’t have the money for a steady caretaking assistant. you just don’t know.
so shut the fuck up and read your book. it’s better for your soul than judgment.
I think that’s what bothers me the most about this sort of thing. In general, I try very hard not to be judgmental, and I had to giggle a bit when you were describing backstories for these people because I do that all the time. And when something is annoying me, I turn up the volume of my music or start reading my book or whatever distraction I need. I mean really, this is only a few hours of your life so why the hell are you wasting it worrying about what somebody else is doing? And if it’s bringing you some small amount of discomfort, just get the hell over it and move on.
It boggles my mind whenever I read people on the internet saying they have a PROBLEM with this. Really? I wonder if some people just like to sound more tolerant than thou. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be around screaming kids. Parents need to get their kids in order. Consistent parenting works; letting your kids run the show does not. And I absolutely DO reserve the right to be smug.
Oh and what I REALLY hate is when people suggest that I just feel this way because I don’t have children, and therefore I have no right to an opinion and should just shut up. First of all, I know plenty of people who DO have children and who share my opinion - for example, my mom. Secondly, do they think I’ll magically LIKE screaming, rude children once I have some of my own (because obviously THEY’LL be screaming and rude too, it’s just inherent, right, nothing to do w/ parenting styles…)? Third, yes in fact, I DO plan to have a child in the next few years, so check back in with me then and see if I feel any different. We can take bets if you want.
Since I can’t re-like this, I’m reblogging to say YES to guerrillamamamedicine’s response.
I also want to add that children’s temperament isn’t only about parenting styles, it’s about the child too. Some children are very quiet and what would be considered “well-behaved” while others (even with the same parents & same style) are very hyper and active. It’s also about situation — I have a young cousin who can keep still pretty much everywhere (even church) except cars and nobody can figure out why. But in the car, she starts acting up and screaming and fussing and all of that.
*shrug* maybe my ability to block things out just makes it easier for me to ignore this shit, who knows.
