I used to hate children. Or perhaps more specifically, I used to be one of those people who said I hated children by way of saying that what I really hated was assholes. I have always, of course, as an only child and seriously dedicated bookworm, hated loud, outgoing people who interrupt my reading time. I had a boyfriend threaten to break up with me once if I didn’t stop yelling at him whenever he dared to address me while I was reading. But children, loud children, wild children, selfish little monsters – those were simply the most visible assholes in my vicinity at the time. So usually, as shorthand, I’d just say I hated children.
See, before I lived where I am now, I lived in a sort of mecca of a certain kind of upper class white professional urban procreation-oriented person, a place located in a borough of New York that begins with a B and ends with an N. The place where I lived had a several artisanal coffee shops displaying local artwork and selling things like “stout cake” and “organic home-made oreos,” wherein I regularly had to step around, over, and sometimes narrowly avoid the serious injury of, the spawn of such folk.
Numerous articles have been written about neighbourhoods like my former one, of late. And unless they appear in the fawning New York Times Style Section (which I like to think of as an ongoing subversive attempt to inspire class warfare between white people in New York), they usually tend to be underwritten by the overall theme of, “Would you get a load of these fucking people, Jesus Christ, etc.” I would like to say that my time among these people led me to the conclusion that they were not as awful as this media coverage would have you believe. But after the day where newly unemployed me was standing behind some women engaged in deep and serious conversation about the psychological effects their future solo trip to Paris would have on their left-behind offspring, I decided my generosity on that score had been exhausted.
But of late I have had to confront my personal prejudices against people with children. For the last few months I lived in Brooklyn, out of a confluence of personal circumstances, I ended up spending my Thursdays with a friend of mine who is also a commenter on this website. (Out thyself, if you wish, in the comments.) This friend has two young children: R., who is just about to turn three, and O., who is just under one year old. On Thursdays my friend, who worked from home, had little childcare assistance, and I got into the habit of hanging out with her to help her out with the children.
R. and O., I want to say first, are among the world’s most adorable children. R. bears a significant physical and spiritual resemblance to Scout Finch, and O. looks like a Gerber baby. O. doesn’t talk yet, but he does smile whenever you look at him and adores water, bending into the spray like a contortionist at the local playground fountains. He will have a difficult time getting a word in edgewise with a sister like R., in any event, who tends to natter on all day on any subject that interests her. The first Thursday I arrived, feeling somewhat trepidatious about potentially spending time with children when I thought myself “not good” with them, she examined my band-aid covered shin (a recent hiking snafu had left me with vampiric-looking holes in my flesh), then looked at me gravely and said, ‘I hope you feel better soon.” Every week thereafter she would comment on the ongoing status of my healing, right up until the last time I saw her, when she said, again, “You are not wearing band-aids any more.” She also had running commentary on my toenail polish colour (“It’s still purple this week”), her demands for the day (“Now I will watch Peppa Pig”),and future pets (“I want a pink porcupine, but it will hurt my hands so Daddy will have to hold it”). R. is a bit of a tiny lawyer – there are stated reasons for everything she does. She once apparently told her parents she could not yet learn her letters because she was “too young.” (I intend to use this excuse in future when people want me to do things.)
All of that adorableness aside, however, those Thursdays were hard work. R. is still in the process of learning that rules which apply to other people also apply to her, for example. Though this is cute when she admonishes her mother and I for chewing with our mouths open, it is less cute when one cannot convince her to eat her breakfast, leave her brother alone (she likes to maul him), take a nap, or go places she doesn’t, in the moment, feel like going. O. tends to yell when you leave his line of sight, and crawls incredibly quickly, and has a strong sense of what things people don’t want him to play with accompanied by a strong desire to play with exactly those things. And though I never saw either child have a tantrum that lasted longer than a few seconds, by the time I’d leave to go home in the late afternoon, I usually needed a nap, and often a shower.
I say all of this because while my time with R. and O. once and for all convinced me that maybe it was not children, but in fact assholes, that I hated, more than that it showed me something that I feel gets lost on all sides of debates like this recent one at Feministe over the public role of children. Children, you see, are people too, and this means not just one thing. I often hear people adapt the old feminist sawhorse that, “Feminism is the radical proposition that women are people” to children’s rights, as I did in the title of this post. But like all slogans, I feel like that line obscures as much as it reveals. Being a “person” shouldn’t be, it seems to me, simply a status that accords one freedom. It also accords one responsibilities, important responsibilities. Including, for example, the responsibility to behave with regard to the feelings and needs of others, both in coffee shops and, later on, in legislatures. I don’t know whether this is simply my having trouble looking across the divide to an American way of seeing things, but I’ve never quite understood why it is that the recognition of children as people should involve only the recognition of children’s value, and exclude any recognition of their destrctive tendencies. I recognize destructive tendencies in adults too, don’t get me wrong – it’s exactly my point that full humanity involves failure as well as success for everyone – not simply people of a certain age.
In any event it’s that responsibility, I think, that’s often at play in the cultural/media narrative about misbehaving children in white gentrified Brooklyn, for example. It’s frustrating to witness, first hand, children being taught that their needs and wants are superior to everyone else’s in the room. Because children who are taught that, I think, do not grow up to be particularly caring adults. They grow up, generally, to be the kind of people who believe that personal freedom is the be-all and end-all of existence. And to a certain extent, I think the ability to teach your kids to “express themselves,” without regard to the rest of the world, is one that is rooted in privilege. Only people who are white, rich, able-bodied, are able to express themselves without risk of retaliation. When your child does not have those privileges, they cannot simply believe that the world is what they make of it. I’m not trying to imply, of course, that allowing children to “express themselves” ought to continue to be reserved for children of privilege. I’m simply saying that perhaps there is a role, in self-expression generally, for the consideration of others. And I’m saying that there can be a soft version of what I’ve come to think of as the “latte critique” of a certain strain of modern parenthood – “Your child is interrupting my latte” – that says the issue here is not so much the latte, is not so much the occasional tantrum or blowout, but the general attitude among a certain class of people that their children deserve a superior class of respect and care to everyone else – including, in many cases, other people’s children.
Of course, this all ought to be distinguished from critiques of parenthood, or mothering, generally. Because there is, in a classist, racist, cissexist, heterosexist world, nothing monolithic about mothering that one can easily observe. It doesn’t operate the same for everybody, and I think that criticisms of parenthood have to come to terms with those substantive differences of experience. Sady, for example, is right here when she admonishes folks to remember that non-white women have entirely different substantive experiences of parenting in this culture than white women, and so come at the subject from entirely different epistemological standpoints that ought to be given voice in these conversations.
But by the same token, I don’t understand a defense of parenting that is monolithic. It has always struck me that, for example, radical mothering is a strange bedfellow for the Brooklyn “yoga parent” set. Yes, it may be true that the class-privileged white mother would spout some similar rhetoric about caring as an ethic and children’s rights to full human status – but it’s also the case, and I can tell you from being there, that the vast majority of such women hand off their children every day to women of colour, in many cases thus prioritizing their own children’s needs for care over those of the nanny’s children themselves. (I rarely see these women agitating for state-subsidized daycare, is what I’m saying.) I assume that I’m not telling any feminist defenders against the “latte critique” something they don’t already know; I guess what I’m asking is why the assumption that all mothers share some kind of bond of reasonableness and fealty to their fellow mothers is one that must go unchallenged in these discussions.
Thank you for this. It is so nice to see someone so eloquently express how I feel about this whole debate. Children are, by and large, lovely to have around – and SHOULD be out and about interacting with the world at large. How else will they learn to share space and company with others? It’s the asshole parents (and not all parents) who cause so many issues and conflicts with the adults – and other children – they encounter.
Asshole non-parents probably play a role in this as well.
(Also, thank you so much for not turning this into yet another, “Babies do/don’t belong in bars!” conversation. Thank you SO MUCH.)
I think this is a great post – I love kids in general and overwhemingly, but I’ve realized that when I meet one I just can’t stand, what I’m actually reacting to is the way they were parented.
What’s great is having the opportunity to spend time with those kids away from their parents and watching them adapt to a new authority structure when PermissiveParent is out of the building. It’s easier to re-teach kids than it is to re-teach parents.
I currently live in the slope-ish area of the BK so I know exaaactly what you’re saying about the ambiance
I find that 99% of the time it’s the parents I’m hating and judging, not the kids. If a kid is uncivilized, it’s because the parents haven’t bothered to teach them appropriate behavior. I also know R. and O. and agree with Michelle that they’re delightful, which is due in no small part to the fact that their parents are that magical blend of not-too-strict and just-strict-enough.
As a side note, I’ve also found that a lot of the people I know who have an aversion to kids are people who simply haven’t been exposed to them much. Children to them are the Other.
I have many friends—some of whom are now irritating yuppie Brooklyn stroller moms and dads—who literally never held a baby or played with a toddler until they had their own children. To them, kids were this alien species and they had no idea how to relate to them, which led to a lot of stress for everyone.
That’s in stark contrast to previous generations, where there were larger families, often multi-generational, living in smaller spaces. Kids and teens spent a lot of time caring for or simply being around little brothers/sisters/cousins/neighbor kids (needless to say, this was true of women more than men).
Once you’ve spent time with kids, they don’t seem as alien or unknowable and you learn to like the good things about them—pretty much like any group of people.
Also, standing O for this:
And unless they appear in the fawning New York Times Style Section (which I like to think of as an ongoing subversive attempt to inspire class warfare between white people in New York), they usually tend to be underwritten by the overall theme of, “Would you get a load of these fucking people, Jesus Christ, etc.”
So true about the Style Section. Also, New York magazine.
The child is often, though not always, the reflection of the parent. Children are not good or evil, they are not saints nor sinners, and they are certainly not racists of their own volition, save if they are taught so.
But children are also not “little adults.” Even when they are teenagers, they have to learn that their role in society is defined by their age and how they act, and whatever knowledge they think they have, if they do not attempt to become successfully integrated into the human milieu, they will find their life tough sledding when they get out on their own.
There is nothing wrong with a child that is not of the province of the parent to fix, and there is nothing in the behavior of a child that others did not wreak when they, too, were children. Children are not our future, they are our present, and, as such, deserve the best of efforts of everyone around them to model appropriate behavior.
“It’s frustrating to witness, first hand, children being taught that their needs and wants are superior to everyone else’s in the room. Because children who are taught that, I think, do not grow up to be particularly caring adults. They grow up, generally, to be the kind of people who believe that personal freedom is the be-all and end-all of existence. And to a certain extent, I think the ability to teach your kids to “express themselves,” without regard to the rest of the world, is one that is rooted in privilege. Only people who are white, rich, able-bodied, are able to express themselves without risk of retaliation.”
Oh, I love it when people articulate a feeling I have that I’ve never quite been able to pinpoint. This is exactly what I cannot stand about certain parent/children interactions. And this is, conversely, exactly what I love about some parents and kids.
The kids I nannied for three years, for example, were extremely (!) privileged. They could hire a nanny, for example, who spent her day carting them around to wherever, doing whatever, fixing them lunch, and so on. But it’s not as annoying when you hear their mom tell them over and over again that their needs are not the sole needs that the universe must bend to, or when their father gets Angry Stern Voice when he hears about how one of the kids called me a StupidHead that afternoon.
These parents also didn’t give their kids “punishment” when they did something wrong, they gave their kids “consequences,” which I thought was genius. But watching kids get shaped into thoughtful, good grownup humans was really interesting.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Laurie, michelledean and Jess Southwood, Pursuit of Harpyness. Pursuit of Harpyness said: On the Radical Notion That Children Are People @ http://bit.ly/9C19XJ [...]
@Michelle – thanks for this..
I was the eldest female (and 2nd eldest) in a very large family, so things to do with the care of kids and hanging out with them was something that I have always done from a rather young age.
I find that as a “grown-up” I still enjoy hanging out with the kids, and enjoy being the “pseudo-aunt” to help out friends/family.
There’s something enjoyable in spending time interacting with youngsters and seeing the world from their perspective. And when there’s colouring in to be done, I’m so there! (there’s something deeply meditative about an hour of colouring in/drawing.)
In saying that, there is the need for mutual courtesy and respect. If courtesy and respect are shown, I have found that there are not usually problems with the interactions.
…the vast majority of such women hand off their children every day to women of colour, in many cases thus prioritizing their own children’s needs for care over those of the nanny’s children themselves.
I’m not sure that the hiring of a nanny in and of itself means that the employer has no concern for her employee. Would it be better for the nanny if she were unemployed? Having said that, though, child care providers generally are grossly underpaid and that shows exactly how deep our “pro-child” rhetoric goes in this country.
Michelle, you have it exactly right when you point out that children are not fully realized people and shouldn’t be treated as such. There are skills that kids simply are unable to master because, for instance, their brains haven’t developed enough for the necessary synapses to connect. It’s not doing the kids any service to neglect to teach them the skills they need. The same parents who are busy shoving Baby Einstein down their kids’ throats seem to think that skipping the whole manners and consideration of others thing is unnecessary and a terrible burden on their children. But interpersonal skills are no more natural than academic ones, and just as important.
I also think that there is something universal about successful parenting. Everyone I know who’s a good parent respects their children for the individuals they are. Each kid has different needs and a different experience of the world, and treating them as though they’re fungible items is a parenting fail.
Thank you so much for this article! While I tend to blame the parents more than the kids for the horrible behavior, it still makes me very resentful of the child’s presence at all. You have very eloquently described and explained a big part of the creation of little brats. My boyfriend and I dicuss this from time to time, worrying about whether or not we’ll have little hell-raisers. I agree with you that good parenting- teaching the child that there needs are not automatically more important than everyone else’s in the room being a part of that- can really make a difference.
I wasn’t actually going to post as it felt a little odd but then I thought I should thank Michelle for writing such lovely things about my children and also Becky for being nice about my parenting. So er thanks.
I will say that even now with kids I am capable of being extremely irritated by people allowing their children to run riot or meltdown (I blame the fact that I’m British). I do understand (believe me I do) that mothers need a break and a chat in a coffee shop. I don’t think that gives them the right to let their kids run screaming around that shop, not only driving other customers insane but also preventing the people working in the coffee shop from doing their jobs. (Ah Brooklyn)
MichiefManager – the childcare issue is such a difficult one. I work from home, as Michelle says, which allows me much more flexibility and means that actually I wouldn’t feel particularly comfortable with a nanny in the house the whole time I was there too. So my kids go to daycare when I’m working – but one of the other reasons we went for daycare over nanny was the health care issue.
I really wouldn’t feel comfortable employing someone almost full time and not paying their health insurance, yet at the same time I only have mine because of my husband’s job and can’t afford to pay someone elses. I know that probably makes me sound sanctimonious but blame it on the fact that I come from a country where health care is free.
The only disagreement I have with you is one of semantics, I think — I tend to define “person” based on cognitive abilities like the ability to understand the consequences of your actions, the basic ability to empathize, and so on, because I find that this allows me to make much more coherent arguments about other things I care about. It’s all a question of how you justify morally valuing one sort of entity and not another sort. Under my conceptualization, children are in training and are valued in trust that they will become people as-defined. I agree with you strongly that personhood has both freedoms and responsibilities, but it’s my understanding that (especially young) children are cognitively unable to undertake some of those responsibilities and as a result I honestly don’t believe that children should have all the freedoms that adults do.
Similarly, I find the argument that children should be given all the same considerations as adults to be…somewhat absurd. And the idea that it’s oppressive to have any space that doesn’t allow children is, to me, simply dangerous (there are many, many examples other than bars of the kinds of places where this is just not feasible and shouldn’t be and it’s not a problem that it isn’t — e.g. I work in a chem lab and it’s not a good idea for most adults without proper safety training to be there but it’s just not safe for any children).
I mostly stopped by to say thanks for the thoughtful post.
As a non-parent who nevertheless remembers what it was like to be treated like the Other as a child, I’ve been trying hard lately to find ways to break through this “child haters” vs. “parents” deadlock the feminist blogosphere seems to have gotten itself into. See here and here for a couple of recent posts at my own blog.
I really see this (the “children are people” argument) as an effort to dismantle the hierarchy in our society that holds all non-”producers,” non-workers as less-than human somehow. Children are one group. Our elders another. Parents who are not employed. Mentally or physically disabled persons. Etc. Everyone who is outside of that ideal rugged individual / worker with no personal life expectation — people who need assistance from others in order to be part of the human community (which is all of us, but some of us are more capable of pretending than others) — they’re all problematic in American culture because they call into question the entire system.
I do want to say a quick word about the hating parents vs. hating children thing.
I’m really, REALLY wary of turning this into a question of whether or not the parent is doing her or his (usually her) “job” controlling/training/raising her children and teaching them how to behave “appropriately” in public spaces. I’m concerned about this because I think 1) it treads dangerously close to mother-blaming. NefariousNewt in a comment above writes: “There is nothing wrong with a child that is not of the province of the parent to fix.” This is just NOT true. Children are their own people, and as people often have problems that their parents are incapable of “fixing.” My cousin struggled all through his childhood with severe behavioral issues, violence, chemical imbalances, etc. These were out of my Aunt’s control … he was born with a difficult mix of stuff and they had to learn by trial and error how to help him cope.
I feel like shifting the blame from child to parent doesn’t solve the issue, since it is still problematizing childhood as an age-category … and privitizing responsibility (demanding that parents/children conform) rather than asking deeper questions about how we can organize the world to better accommodate ALL people, not just self-sufficient ideal workers. Too often, judging the parent is not about actual social harm, but about personal beliefs concerning “right” and “wrong” ways to be a parent or a family. In my opinion, we need to step back from snap judgments and ask ourselves why we feel so offended by the behavior of certain parent/child groups … and what right we have to ask them not to offend us.
@annajcook: I take your point to a degree. It was pretty easy for us to rear our kids because we got easy kids. They’re smart and socially competent, without any serious cognitive, emotional or physical problems. But not everyone gets that kind of kid, and I agree that we as a culture could rachet down the hostility if we were aware of that.
But…I don’t agree with your meta-analysis. The fact that kids don’t contribute to the economy has nothing to do with whether or not they can behave in public. Although a high income obviously lets people get away with more than they would if they were less affluent, it doesn’t excuse them entirely.
Every society creates expectations of the kinds of behaviors that are acceptable and unacceptable, and it is the responsibility of the individual and those under the care of the individual to meet those expectations or face the consequences. If we can’t, as individuals, manage to meet basic standards of consideration for others, we will not be able to maintain a civil society at all.
Ask anyone who has ever worked in retail about misbehaving kids and their neglectful/indulgent parents. How is it anyone’s job but the parent’s to impose behavioral standards on the kids?
@annajcook – Having spent a lot of time with an autistic three year old i agree it’s I agree with you that it’s unfair to expect children with special needs to behave in the same way but I don’t think I can agree with your overall analysis.
Personally I just don’t think it’s asking too much to suggest that children without such special needs should have basic manners. It’s not a question of right or wrong parenting so much as the understanding that your child isn’t the centre of everyone’s universe no matter how much you might adore them yourselves. I’m probably a judgmental old cow but when my children scream I remove them from the place in question I don’t continue having a conversation with my friend and thinking that it’s perfectly alright for little Jemima to express herself.
Sorry but I do think that while children can’t be expect to get everything in life right, there parents do have some obligation to understand that the world is full of other people. There’s a sense of entitlement to so much of today’s child rearing that drives me insane.
Also I know this is unfair but I am unnaturally biased by the fact that the worse behaviour I see always comes from non-special needs upper middle and middle class kids because their parents simply seem to think that every thing they do is delightful to everyone.
Finally I agree with MischiefManager – for society to function everyone has to understand their part in it to extent, if parents fail to teach their children how to behave is has a wide affect on a whole bunch of people and I don’t think you can just excuse it by saying that “it’s down to personal beliefs”.
My personal belief is that it costs nothing to teach your kid to say please and thank you and to help them understand that there are other people in the world besides them.
@mischief manager
Well, I have worked in retail. And I travel on public transportation. And I have attended church services. And been in restaurants with unhappy children. Basically, I’ve been out in the wider world, in public spaces, and I’ve seen children be exhausted, cranky, rude, loud, restless and unsupervised. And yes, in individual circumstances I have definitely passed my own internal (and sometimes vocal) judgments about whether X parent was acting responsibly to keep their child safe.
I stand by my analysis, however, that our cultural norms concerning “appropriate” and “responsible” behavior in public spaces often come back to the conception of a completely rational, self-controlled, physically capable adult being. We measure all peoples’ behavior against the expectation that the ideal person will be self-contained, quiet, undemanding of the persons around them, able to move around under their own motive power, etc. We don’t expect the ideal person to ever express anger, frustration, tiredness, fear, or sadness, immoderate joy, etc. in public. We resent when it appears that someone is moving around the world with the expectation that their presence will be welcomed and enjoyed, welcomed and accommodated, whatever their particular idiosyncrasies. We label that a sense of “entitlement.”
I’m questioning whether what we so often label “entitlement” isn’t just the expectation that one deserves to be accepted, warts and all, into the human community. Granted, ideally that expectation should be reciprocated by a radical acceptance of others (so the child who expects to be delighted in should, in turn, remember to delight in others). Radical acceptance is a two-way street.
This, of course, means that it’s important to accept that there are times when we get frustrated, impatient, angry at the behavior of a specific child or adult in public space … because we’re only human too. But I believe it’s important to recognize this as a frustrating WE are feeling, and that we don’t have the right to demand that others in the world fix that frustrating for us by stopping the activity. We can ask that the activity stop, and explain why it’s bothering us (“that noise is really triggering for my ptsd” etc.) … in my experience, many children are willing to listen and alter behavior if given a reason vs. just being told to stop because an adult orders them to. But we don’t have a RIGHT to expect other beings not to be human and have human moments any more than they have a right to expect inhuman perfection from us during every public moment.
I lean towards annajcook’s outlook. My kids are older than some of the commenters, other than mm.
Here’s why. Around noon time, I frequently wish I could just take a 30 minute break and run around screaming like my hair was on fire, just like I did when I was 8. After that, I would jump rope to come down.
I think it’s clear that 1) the parent has very serious responsibilities to teach the child, 2) not all children are teachable to the same degree and 3) we are all human, and the lack of empathy or patience can be on either side.
But especially, lately, I agree with this many children are willing to listen and alter behavior if given a reason vs. just being told to stop because an adult orders them to. A parent’s lessons need to include an age appropriate WHY portion, and that why part may include some surprising counter arguments from the kid.
@emilyann
I don’t think what you are saying regarding parents modeling responsive behavior for their children and what I am saying about not demanding it are mutually exclusive … I agree that, ideally, all beings should be encouraged and helped to extend empathy and compassion to all other beings in the world. And parents, as (often) the primary caregivers of their children, are in the best position to help their child cultivate that sort of empathic feeling and action toward others.
What I see, though, is that this desire that all beings extend more empathy toward one another manifests itself as the desire to control others: to DEMAND that empathy from others (which in turn is not a very empathic action) … it’s one of those “judge not lest ye be judged” situations in my mind … we’re quick to censure others’ behavior and end up behaving in the very sort of self-centered way we’re condemning others for behaving.
I’m NOT saying extending radical acceptance towards others who (in our opinion) are behaving rudely or selfishly is easy. Nor am I saying that challenging others’ to examine their behavior and consider how it hurts others is unwarranted. (As a feminist I rather specialize in issuing such challenges
!) But I do think it’s important to separate that type of challenge toward greater empathy from dehumanizing language/stereotypes and the impulse to act on those stereotypes in a way that impinges on the personhood of children.
I don’t believe ANYONE is a person-in-training (as someone above in this comment thread suggested) … I believe we are all born persons, with the rights and responsibilities of the human community, which we should all strive to fulfill to the best of our abilities (whatever those abilities are). Personhood is NOT conditional.
First, @mm: I find it hard to believe that anyone employs a nanny out of concern for the nanny’s employment prospects. I could have been a bit more clear about what I meant to say in that passage, which is that I so often her people justify hiring nannies on some perceived concern that their children will not receive enough personal attention in group-setting daycare, for example. Then they will extrapolate from that position to make some kind of claptrap argument about how children need special attention to flourish, etc. All the while blithely ignoring that they are in fact often taking women of colour from their own families. I’m always curious, for example, why it would not be acceptable for nannies to care for their own children along with their charges, but one never sees that, because that’s “not the job.”
Also, I think if the concern here is really about children writ large, rather than just one’s own offspring, there would, as I said above, be more agitation for state-subsidized daycare.
Finally, like emilyanne, I’m extremely uncomfortable with the total lack of labour standards involved in nanny microeconomics. No health care, in some cases no lunch breaks or vacation, etc etc. I think it’s appalling, particularly among self-proclaimed feminists, that such labour conditions persist in that market. It ought to be viewed as part of the cost of having a nanny for your child that you pay them a decent wage, provide benefits, etc. But it currently isn’t, and so yeah, I tend to be disdainful of the idea that nannies ought to be grateful to be employed at all.
As to the rest of this discussion, a few notes. Personally I don’t always blame parents. It’s contextual; there are settings where I don’t think it’s fair to expect as much of parents as I see people doing, but I can’t explain them without getting into a lengthy anecdote. All I can say is I think that people of all ages sometimes handle themselves poorly, and there are times when nothing anyone else does can change that.
I don’t understand, either, why one must have a doctrinaire approach to child-rearing in which every discussion with your child is a negotiation. I don’t think, in every public tantrum situation, for example, that it’s appropriate to reason with the child. Picking them up, swooping them out: that doesn’t deny their hmanity. It’s what would happen to an adult.
Finally, I beg of us because I see a few comments tending in this direction not to make this about bars or whatever. Again, context. If there’s a specific situation to be discussed that makes sense to me; but these sort of abstract pronouncements on what is or isn’t appropriate make no sense, out of context. Life isn’t lived according to a rulebook.
@annajcook – I get what you’re saying, but there are limits. To give a concrete example, one norm that I find children violate way more than adults has to do with personal space. I really, really don’t like being touched by strangers. Brushing past someone and so on is fine but someone coming up to me and deliberately touching me without my permission is completely not okay with me and generally speaking that syncs with cultural norms so I don’t have to enforce it too much — with *adults*. Children touch people all the time and if I’m in a public space and someone else’s kid starts climbing on me or messing with my things, that’s not okay and it’s ultimately the fault of the parent or caretaker. I don’t feel I should have to explain to a child why they shouldn’t be pulling on my hair. That’s not my job. They need to stop and if their parent won’t stop them, I will, and that’s that. There are some times that intolerance is cloaked in language about appropriate behavior, but it’s also the case that there are some norms relating to public space and how one treats others that are simply good operating principles for human society and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that those be followed and to be upset when they’re not.
@annajcook – sadly I don’t have time to talk about this at length. But I do agree with you about acceptance and empathy and i also agree about personhood.
The problem is (and yes this is my flaw) that I honestly will never be able to extend that empathy to people just ignoring their children and letting them run all over the place preventing other people from doing their jobs
(which is often the case in the coffee shops where I live to use an example, sorry Michelle, but I feel it important to state that because i think what’s going on in these scenarios is an almighty sense of privilege where the parents just don’t seem to think that the (by and large poorly paid) people employed by the coffee shop count in any way. It’s a nightmare trying to serve people when children are running in and out of your legs while their parents entirely ignore it).
Rodriguez – i agree reasoning is a good tool with older children. That said i once saw a woman spend 40 minutes asking her two year old why she thumped another kid with a plastic truck and how she felt about that. And that was just silly.
Haha, emilyanne, you know I agree with you as to Brooklyn coffee shops.
I really, really don’t like being touched by strangers. Brushing past someone and so on is fine but someone coming up to me and deliberately touching me without my permission is completely not okay with me
You’ve raised a point that I’ve seen in a number of threads on this topic … and I do think it’s important to think about how to explain to children that it’s important to ask before touching. Americans are generally schooled to be touch-averse (and above and beyond cultural norms there are people who are personally touch-averse for a variety of reasons) and for children living in American society, it’s important for them to learn that this is a social norm.
At the same time, I think it’s important to remember that, in general (realizing this doesn’t speak for all humans!) the human species is wired for skin-to-skin contact as a way of reassuring, communicating, exploring … and children especially can be tactile creatures. They learn with their bodies. (Again: I realize I’m generalizing!) So as adults who have been socialized into the norm of not-touching-without-asking, maybe we can find a way to help children learn that social norm without punishing them or shaming them for expressing themselves physically and approaching other human beings with physical contact.
As someone who was very tactile as a child, and who continues to be high-contact as an adult (I get a lot out of physical contact), I perhaps have more innate sympathy with children whose impulse is to make physical contact than would someone who is more contact-averse or contact-specific (more particular about who and what kinds of touch, and when). But I do think there’s a way that even non-parents can ask a child to stop doing something that is bothering them without being an ass about it. Children are people, but they are learning social norms and I think there’s a way to remind them or help them follow those norms without being punitive or judgmental (often the attitude that comes across when people vent about such incidents online).
Thanks, Michelle. This “it was not children, but in fact assholes, that I hated” is perfect. These discussions always surprise me a little because my experience is that children are well-behaved/appropriate in public far more often than not–maybe I don’t live in a “nice” enough neighborhood.
@annajcook: I’ve never heard “radical acceptance” before, but I think I love it. There are a million reasons why a child might have a tantrum in public that wouldn’t reflect poorly on the child or parent. Such is life. I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, not that that’s easy.
I’m having a baby in the fall so this is fascinating. I understand that society has evolved so that it’s inappropriate to tell a stranger’s child to stop pulling your hair (baraqiel’s example), but it shouldn’t be. It takes a village etc.
@emilyanne I’m sorry, too, that we aren’t able to talk more, but I totally understand that often Life Outside The Blogosphere calls
!
@spark I owe my friends Laura (quoted in one of my linked blog posts above) and Ashley for the “radical acceptance” idea which I believe comes from Christian theology but also manifests in other world religions (and nonreligious philosophies).
I completely agree with you that it should be acceptable for any person to tell another person (in this case a child) “please stop touching me, it’s making me uncomfortable.” We teach children that they have a right to decline touch that makes them feel uncomfortable and I think it’s perfectly okay for an adult to speak up for themselves in exactly the same way. I see that as showing the child that they (the child) also has permission to determine who touches them and how. So it’s actually kinda like early feminist training in bodily autonomy
!
I’m a bit late to the party, but for what it’s worth: I’ve always liked kids, but I grew up around them in a large family setting – I was changing diapers by age 7 and babysitting alone by age 10. That said, I can’t stand it when parents let their kids run riot in public places, and can completely understand how someone without much exposure to nice kids would be tempted to think they don’t like any of them.
I don’t have kids but think I would go fairly old-school – of course they’re people and need to be treated with respect, but kids also need to learn how to behave, and for that to happen, they need to experience limits. The key thing is to be consistent.
A lot of parents seem to get overly emotional about the whole business. Either they ignore bad behavior until they can’t take it any more, and then go over the score yelling – leaving the poor kid no doubt confused. Or sometimes they seem terrified their kids will not love them if they don’t give them what they want – what nonsense!
That, combined with an inflated sense of privilege (‘I’d rather subject a whole coffee shop to my kid’s screaming than step outside with him’) is a fatal mixture.
These discussions always surprise me a little because my experience is that children are well-behaved/appropriate in public far more often than not–maybe I don’t live in a “nice” enough neighborhood.
Heh, Spark, I had that same thought. In the non-white, mostly immigrant Brooklyn neighborhood where I live, kids do not do the kind of screaming/fighting/running around/getting in people’s way in restaurants and shops nearly as much as what I see in yuppie white Brooklyn neighborhoods. Parents in my neighborhood are very quick to correct their kids and often other people’s kids when they get rambunctious—although sometimes more harshly than I’m comfortable with. There’s none of the “Oh, my little sunshine’s just expressing himself .” that you see in the latte-and-stroller set. I think to a certain extent, that laissez-faire, enabling attitude white yuppies have towards their kids is just an extension of white privilege and class privilege. They mostly behave however they want with no blowback because that’s how they live their lives as white, moneyed adults, so why shouldn’t their kids?
When my kids were little, I was a hard ass. (I used a playpen aka the “corral” (!) in Spanish) They might say that I still am; at least my daughter said so yesterday. So it’s funny that I’m taking the other side of this.
I think annajcook’s ideas on empathy for working members vs. non-working members of society is a really worthy idea. It rings a huge gong with me, living in the US.
Not having ever lived in Park Slope tho, the descriptions of the coffee shops are a little scary.
I think to a certain extent, that laissez-faire, enabling attitude white yuppies have towards their kids is just an extension of white privilege and class privilege. They mostly behave however they want with no blowback because that’s how they live their lives as white, moneyed adults, so why shouldn’t their kids?
AMEN.
@annajcook – “But I do think there’s a way that even non-parents can ask a child to stop doing something that is bothering them without being an ass about it.”
To me this is sort of the crux of it. Some children only require being asked once, politely, and that’s great. Some children require being told the same thing many, many times before they will change their behavior (and I recognize that these two types of children are a) extremes and b) possibly the same child in different moods or at different times). If an adult came up to me and started touching me and didn’t stop after I asked once, I would be well within my rights to be “an ass” about it but as you say, children are leaning social norms. But I don’t understand how it’s coherent at all to say that we can’t expect the same sort of self-control and governance of children that we expect of adults and still maintain that children should receive the same *kind* of respect and consideration and freedoms and so on that we give to adults.
Here’s a small story relating to discipline and immigrants. When my parents arrived in the US they lived in an apartment that was too small for its contents: 8 related adults and 3 children.
One was my cousin Mike, who was maybe 6. According to my mother he was a holy terror, and never got disciplined by his parents. Climbing on people and getting in their (limited) space was his specialty.
Can you imagine that situation? I don’t think I can. I think I might yell until I was hoarse, every day.
I think to a certain extent, that laissez-faire, enabling attitude white yuppies have towards their kids is just an extension of white privilege and class privilege.
As someone whose parents were what today might be termed “free range” unschooling parents (that is, very hands on but with the goal of enabling us to be capable and responsible on our own as early as we were ready for) … I find it disturbing and fascinating how non-authoritarian parenting in recent years has come to be associated with the privileged classes and has lost the social responsibility component. A huge part of growing up in our family was learning how to meet the needs of all members of the family (parents as well as children) and in turn how to extend that care-taking out to others in society. Caring for one’s self should be the starting place for caring for all other beings — not merely an end in itself that cuts you off from attending to the needs and desires of others!
It’s sad that this part of the nonauthoritarian parenting message has somehow gotten lost in translation.
@rodriguez: Yikes. I would be a wreck.
And, of course, non-white and immigrant children get treated much more judgementally by strangers, teachers and society in general (how this works in public school settings was the subject of MamaSharper’s PhD dissertation). So if you’re an immigrant/non-white parent, you might be a stricter disciplinarian because you don’t want your children or family to be harshly treated by the local racists for their perceived misbehavior. That always reminds me of how Wanda Sykes said her mother’s ultimate disciplinary tool was to hiss at her children: “White people are looking at you!”
I see that as showing the child that they (the child) also has permission to determine who touches them and how. So it’s actually kinda like early feminist training in bodily autonomy
I feel like I currently spend all day reminding my three year old that his sister is a person, not a toy, and that he can’t force his friend to play how he wants, and that he only controls himself, not anyone else. I agree that he’s a person, but he clearly requires more civilizing before I’d let him go out in public without a parent or teacher to hand out more reminders. I have high hopes that by the time he starts school, he won’t be quite such a self-centered sociopath.
Or else he runs the risk of growing up into a wingnut.
I do think it’s important to realize that you don’t know what’s going on in the lives of the parent or child when you see bad behavior (on either part). I was once raked over the coals because my child was screaming bloody murder in Powells (the most awesome bookstore on earth). And it was awful that he was screaming and I felt bad that he was disturbing browsers. But another patron had just dropped a book on his head. And he’s three. I just can’t imagine any way we could have avoided the two minutes of screaming, and no, I couldn’t have “controlled my child.” And apparently I’m still bitter, months later.
Kids don’t always react the same as adults. If someone had dropped a book on my head, I wouldn’t have screamed loudly, no matter how much it hurt or scared me. But that doesn’t make his reaction wrong, just annoyingly loud.
@annajcook: I was raised pretty much the same way as you and I agree. Personal responsibility, teamwork and the fact that the choices I made affected others was hammered into me at a very early age.
Maybe it’s just a good idea that’s been taken to the extreme? Or used as an excuse to sit back and do nothing by people who are too tired/timid/reluctant to do the hard work of reinforcing those ideas? Setting and reinforcing expectations and boundaries requires a lot of work—at least at first—and so many parents I see simply can’t or won’t go the distance.
@BeckySharper
Really agree.
I also think it’s worth remembering (vis a vis the tired/timid parenting thing) that we currently expect parents to do ALL THE WORK of caring for children. We’ve isolated them as a society. In part for good reasons — i.e. giving families a certain measure of privacy and autonomy in decision-making for themselves. But one bad result of this is that parenting, particularly parenting very young children, is an exhausting, never-ending responsibility in which you will be blamed no matter what for ANY shortcoming. It’s been taken to (in my opinion) an unhealthy extreme. Unhealthy for parents, unhealthy for children.
Which makes me, the more I think about it, upset in a feminist sort of way that we’ve created a society in which adults feel unable to interact meaningfully (whether it’s saying “no” or just being a human being with) children not their own.
Must go write a blog post about this! Wanders away to own blog …
I am very late to this party but I wanted to say that you did a wonderful job with this Michelle. I always get sort of jumpy and touchy and twitchy when I start reading parenting discussions, afraid I’m about to be slammed for choosing to have kids but this was spot on.
I was one of those adults who didn’t really like children, who saw them as The Other, before I had my own. And then I would say, “Well, I like MY child, just not most children.” Because I didn’t know any. Now I know and interact with lots of kids on a regular basis and have to say 99% of them are lovely and a credit to good, attentive parenting.
And I agree with Spark on this:
These discussions always surprise me a little because my experience is that children are well-behaved/appropriate in public far more often than not–maybe I don’t live in a “nice” enough neighborhood.
Maybe my area of suburbia isn’t densely populated enough for crowded coffee shops or rich enough for the kind of “Oh little Johnny is just EXPRESSING himself, we don’t want to interfere” parenting I read about in the NYT, but it’s a rare day I have to speak to a child about their behavior because their parent won’t.
@Avogadro: You’re right, in your bookstore situation it has nothing to do with being unable to keep your child under control. But maybe in that case what you could do would be to grab him and carry him outside until he quietens down.
(Please read that last sentence as a friendly suggestion, btw)
As a mother whose youngest will start college this fall, I’ve got some distance on this but I still remember the times when I couldn’t just leave. Even nice stores like Powell’s frown on a quick exit when you haven’t paid for your books. By the time I got everything settled so I could get out, the screaming would be over. This was especially painful in the grocery store. I have actually abandoned a cart if I had just started and nothing was in it from the freezer section, but when you’re actually in the checkout line, walking out helps very few people.
My children rarely had meltdowns and were never allowed to leave the table in restaurants so I only had the occasional moment when I wanted to just die. I do still say a thank-you prayer that I no longer have to shop with two children under 4. I hate shopping anyway (except for books) and trying to do it with small children was the worst.
We’ve created a society in which adults feel unable to interact meaningfully (whether it’s saying “no” or just being a human being with) children not their own. anna, this is so true–and it means children can’t interact meaningfully with adults. They’re segregated from society. There’s a whole chapter on this in Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex. You should check it out if you haven’t already.
@spark: thanks for the reference! I’ve never gotten around to Dialectic but clearly I should if there’s a whole chapter on this dynamic!
I just spent some time elaborating my thoughts about this aspect of the children-as-people thing (the adult-child interaction and an adult’s ability to set personal limits) over at my own blog. It’s very stream-of-consciousness, but if anyone is interested in thinking more about this idea that adults feel constrained in their ability to say “no” to children who invade their personal space — I’d love to meditate on this more!
I haven’t read the Dialectic, but I can tell you why I don’t feel comfortable telling other people’s children “no” in public (though I often do it anyway), and that’s the parents themselves.
As a former retail drone, I remember asking a four year old not to jump up and down in the basket of a cart (“Sweetie, you shouldn’t jump in the cart like that”), on which the little pictograph drawings of a jumping child with a circle and slash through it were prominently displayed. His mother reamed me out, then stormed over to the fabric counter. The four year old started jumping up and down again and flipped the cart over, spilling his infant sister onto the tile floor as she wasn’t properly secured in the child seat of the cart, and braining himself on the edge of the fabric counter.
Here’s the thing, unless the child is directly touching me or my stuff, or in imminent danger, or harming an animal, I don’t say anything, because you never know when some completely crazed parent of either gender is going to lose their shit all over you, no matter how polite you are, even when there’s danger involved.
Here’s the thing, if you want the village to help raise your child, then you don’t get to jump the village’s shit for grabbing your toddler just before they toddle out into rush hour traffic on a busy road. Or asking you not to let your teething infant chew on the cap of a plastic bottle of paint (thank Gods it was acrylic and non-toxic), or ask you to not let your child climb up on a wall of glassed in picture frames, just before they bring the whole thing crashing down on themselves.
One of the craft stores around here has a “NO ONE under the age of 16 allowed” policy, and frequently I wished it were the one I had worked at.
Yeah, many of my examples are craft store specific, that was my longest stretch of retail employment. I also have some dandy, “The bookstore is not your fucking babysitter” stories I could tell you, too.
I should probably, for the record, state, that I actually adore children, and spoil the crap out of my friends’ kids every chance I get.
BUT… unless there is a burning reason to interact with a stranger’s child, such as imminent danger, harming an animal or climbing on me or my stuff, then I generally am not going to say anything. Because I’ve been yelled at enough by parents where those three situations do apply to even begin to want to deal with trying to get them to quit kicking my seat.
Yeah, I might glare, but I’d glare at an adult doing the same thing. Actually, I do give kids a hell of a lot more slack in public, because a lot of public is boring and sucky and not built for kids, so seats are too tall and make little legs ache, and everything’s loud and overwhelming.
(I realized my last comment came off way meaner than I intended.)
GGR, my thoughts exactly. I’d interact with children more if I wasn’t terrified of their aggressively defensive parents. I like the It Takes a Village philosophy, myself, but you can’t have it both ways. Either everyone pitches in AND gets to tell your kid when s/he is out of line, or they have to mind their business and respect your authority as The Parent and just bitch about you behind your back.
@annajcook: Deciding what civil behavior is on the basis of what the human species is “hard-wired for” is asking for a lot of trouble. Civilization is precisely the taming of many of those instincts to times, places and circumstances we’ve decided are acceptable. Kids are not born civilized-they have to be taught how to get along with others. That doesn’t mean they’re not human beings; it just means they’re not fully educated, fully trained ones.
our cultural norms concerning “appropriate” and “responsible” behavior in public spaces often come back to the conception of a completely rational, self-controlled, physically capable adult being
That’s exactly right, and as it should be. (I don’t see physical limitations as affecting a person’s ability to behave in a civil manner, which is what we’re talking about here.) We should expect the best from ourselves. The idea of radical acceptance leads all too easily to the neglect of standards. I’m a big-time lefty, but I think there’s a difference between accepting a person unconditionally and accepting their behavior unconditionally. I think that with kids you’re trying to have it both ways-you want them to have all the rights of adults simply because they were born into the human species. But you reject imposing responsibilities on them because that’s too judgmental. Human beings make judgments-you might say we’re hard-wired to do so-and that’s how we’re able to live together.
@Michelle-I’ve never had a nanny, nor have I ever known anyone who has. There’s no question that nannies need and deserve decent wages and benefits. But I don’t see how a job that requires a woman to leave her children is automatically racist-don’t most jobs do that? Is it racist if a woman of color leaves her children to work for a white employer in an office? Then why is it so if she’s working for a white employer in that person’s home? Doesn’t the employer have the right to set working conditions, within the bounds of the law (which, certainly, is lacking in this area)? I can see how having the nanny’s kids at the employer’s home could be great for all involved-but I can also see how it could be a complete nightmare.
@GeekGirls: You are so right. When I was a kid, all the parents around could scold you (or feed you!), as is the case in BeckyS’s neighborhood. But it’s not safe any more to make the assumption that your involvement in a strange child’s discipline will be welcome. In fact, the parent will probably go ballistic, defend the child no matter what the child was doing, and give you hell. So the idea of our all being one big village is a lovely one, but not one that exists in the reality most of us live in.
Mai’a's post on Feministe struck a nerve with me. I didn’t comment, but I visited for a few days and read every comment, as well as her subsequent posts. I chewed on them like a piece of tough bread, analyzing the responses and traversing my own memory in search of my own interactions with children in public spaces.
Something about a child’s piercing screams in a restaurant. Something about children up at midnight in the 24-hour laundromat, running, screaming. Something about a dinner with friends, enjoying margaritas and a friend who was breastfeeding her newborn, keeping tabs on her toddler and catching a bite in between that and the conversation.
My reactions ran the gamut, and when I stopped and made my conclusions, I fully agreed with Mai’a. I just needed to get through the surface littered with ‘my $300 suit’, ‘children in bars’, ‘children in strip clubs’, ‘”badly behaving” children’ and ‘I don’t hate the children, it’s the parents!!111′ to remember that as a child I resented the kind of sub-human treatment and abuse I received from adults. Children are people. Full stop.
And if I am in the presence of a child screaming, I will (take a deep breath and) deal with it without giving the ‘nasty eye’ to the mother for ‘not controlling’* her child.
And if I do get past my extreme shyness to offer help or a kind word to a mother whose child is screaming, and if the mother rudely dismisses me, I will not hold it against her. There are days when I want the world to fuck off and leave me alone, too.
*On a side note, I resent the phrase ‘controlling your child’. As if they could (control me).
@mm:
Just to clarify, I was in no way suggesting that biological propensity to behavior X be THE basis for social behavior. 1) because the science is complicated and generalizations about what we are wired for as a species are damn hard to nail down, and 2) because, as you say, nature interacts with nurture and we should definitely rely on BOTH when it comes to living harmoniously together.
What I was saying, however, is that infants and children — as mammals — thrive on touch and, developmentally, they learn about the world in part through physical contact. I was not suggesting that we can’t ask a child to modify that behavior if it is impinging on our own being-in-the-world. What I was suggesting is that it might help normalize their impulses toward that behavior by realizing that it’s part of how they are learning about the world. It’s a developmental thing (in part), not some crazy alien activity
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I am more skeptical than you, it sounds like, about the positive nature of “civilization” as we concieve of it as a cultural norm (when pulled apart it often turns out to be very culturally-specific, Western and middle-class). I do believe that human beings need to learn how to be responsive and caring … but I don’t necessarily believe that the conventions of “civilization” as a series of social rules are all that helpful, in the end, in achieving that sort of social consciousness.
I’ve been thinking about the nanny thing and it’s complicated (duh).
My mother works as a nanny for a family of three in the midwest; the parents are public school teachers and she cares for the children who are not yet in school full-time. She’s been working for them for several years now. When I was growing up, since the family unschooled, she was the primary at-home parent and my father was the single income for our family of five. She works for an hourly rate, above minimum wage but no benefits. It’s basically extra money to help put my sister through college and do stuff like pay for home repairs.
I worked as a live-in nanny for a year while I was in college for a (temporarily) single mother with two children who needed to work full-time to support the family while her husband was doing a residency training program in another state. I worked for room and board plus a stipend. No benefits (but then, at the time I was still on my parents’ health insurance, etc.).
In both cases, this is a white, middle-class person working for another white, middle-class family. Since we know the families as friends as well as employers, it’s more like an extension of the 18th century practice of daughters being sent out to extended family homes as extra labor … or grandparents caring for infants while the parents labored in the fields. Only there’s a cash transaction being added in. Both my mother and I had/have bargaining power and other options if we decided the situation wasn’t working out.
I guess what I’m saying is this: it’s not the job of “nanny” per se that is inherently racist or classist or antifeminist … it’s the fact that, nannying as a practice here in the United States, particularly among certain economic brackets and in certain urban/suburban spaces is one part of the social services industry that channels our race/class divisions. And that, if you’re going to participate in that industry you need to think carefully if you want to be socially responsible about how to outsource childcare in a way that doesn’t simply replicate those injustices.
Anna, I was a nanny in college (same thing, decent pay but no benefits), and I agree, it’s not the act of caring for someone else’s child that’s wrong. But the relationship between a college kid and her chemistry professor’s family is pretty different from the relationship between a poor immigrant and her stranger-employer. Especially if the immigrant is in the country illegally and the balance of power is even more skewed.
Endora, sometimes a good suggestion, but the bookstore in question is literally the size of a city block. Getting out quickly isn’t actually easy.
I guess my original point was that there are assholes everywhere. For every parent who’s letting their kid run amok with a tolerant eyeroll, there’s a woman in a bookstore willing to order a heavily pregnant woman to control her crying child.
And the risk of correcting other people’s children is a common topic on the playgrounds. Every mom I know has a story of some parent who somehow completely fails to notice their little darling pushing smaller kids of the slide, but is their in two seconds screaming at the parent who dared to suggest that it wasn’t ok to bully their own innocent tot. It’s usually just verbal, but I know more than one mom who has felt physically threatened by a dad who got in their face and loomed while ordering the mom in question to leave his kid alone. Which I guess shows where the kid gets the bullying tendencies. The kids on my street whose parents I hang out with can expect me to call them on misbehavior. A kid I don’t know? I’m not interfering unless they’re actively hurting my child or are about to get run over.