memes @hexbear.net Judge_Jury [comrade/them, he/him] @hexbear.net 1 yr. ago

Smalltalk

Seriously what is up with whining about people bringing their kids shopping. I get that they hate poor people I just would expect them to have more than one thing to talk about

Edit: Even though I enjoy conflict, I guess I'll add some context here anyway. The usual line I hear as smalltalk is "You don't have to bring the whole family shopping," which if you don't shut it down immediately, will be followed up with some of the most racist and/or classist statements you can imagine, typically involving birth rates

79 comments

Kids don’t belong in public. They’re meant to be stored at home along with all your other property. You exist at home. You exist at work while your kids are in school. All other places require money which kids don’t have because they’re not people yet. This is how society works and therefore how society should be. It doesn’t exist within a broader context so please don’t check.
- It's called a nuclear family because I WILL GO NUCLEAR if its dominance is challenged
- this attitude is just the Victorian "children are to be seen and not heard"
  
  Dw, judging by the last sentence they're joking about that Victorian attitude
  
  Yes, but you have to spell it out because that’s still some people’s unironic take
A grocery store is a miserable place to be a child. It’s full of objects scientifically designed to convince people to pick them up and take them, and the kid is not allowed to take them. Plus they have to sit on the hard steel wire basket seat for like 90 minutes, and are surrounded by obnoxiously loud noises.

Of course, nobody can afford a babysitter and nobody has an extended family, so the kids come with. Even if they are sick. ESPECIALLY if they are sick.
Am I the only one that enjoys seeing kids being feral little shits? Like, hell yeah buddy climb on that statue. Does no one have a sense of wonder anymore?
- went out to eat with friends that had kids and they kept apologizing to me for their kid being loud, but like, we were the only ones there and it was kinda hilarious that the kid was freaking out over the crayon breaking even though they could still use it. very entertaining
- I enjoy it until the feral child runs into the highways service road. Which happened in front of me last week. Thankfully there were no cars passing at that moment.
  
  "SHUT THE FUCK UP CAR BRAIN" - feral gen alpha
  
  Children belong in the road cars don't
- Tbh climbing on a statue isn’t really what I would consider shit behavior
As a father of two, I can confirm that we train our kids specifically to act out in public. It's a lot of fun for everyone involved. I, for one, think it's delightful when my child melts down because the grocery store doesn't have an item that almost certainly exists only in their mind. It's just one of the joys of being a Bad Parent™
- who would want to miss out on the judgemental glares of strangers and wrangling a screaming toddler
Modern society hates kids. Whether its their noise, or kids at home (during COVID) disturbed them, to many places deploying high-pitched sound devices to drive away loitering teenagers.

Hell, COVID is a leading cause of death for kids, but fuck-em I wanna eat at Red Robin without a mask
unironically.

saw a video of a scenic area in yunnan with tourists walking around and in each town they had basically a daycare place where you could let your kids play with local kids without them running off while you enjoy the town. and its designed in such a way that its trivial to drop your kids off and pick them up, and appeared to be a communal service. its also good because they get to socialize instead of being bored while the parents go do adult shit
- China is safe enough that even anti-China westerners let their kids commute to school on busy trains lol. I also saw a video of some night park in the city where it was filled with mostly kids and a couple parents just chatting in the sidelines. People aren’t afraid of someone gunning their kids down and trust each other to protect and watch their community
- Some really big shops have kids areas where the children can just hang out while their parents shop
I am convinced that the particular rampant nature of childism is at least partly because the atomization in our society ensures that people aren't around children at all.
I was once standing in line at a public library waiting to check out books. Dude at the front of the line was complaining to the librarian that there were kids reading books out loud in the Children's section. The librarian was doing her best not to roll her eyes at him.

Some people need to learn how to deal with mild inconvenience in public.
Permanently Deleted
- suburbia is just anti-human on all levels, it squicks me out so bad
- they thought that the sound of children playing would be a blight upon the neighborhood and lower their precious property values.
  
  actually being near amenities makes a house less valueable don'tyaknow
I think there’s like a ton of things going on when people say they hate noisy kids out in public. I think there are those for whom “noisy” is just shorthand for reckless, inappropriate, obnoxious behavior. Which, like, is annoying, and there are absolutely those parents who don’t teach their kids how to act respectfully in public (and often the kids are just imitating their parents who themselves never learned to act respectfully in public) and let them run wild. Or it’s teenagers who, like, it annoys me but also I did some shithead stuff when I was a teen so I can’t really talk.

But there are also definitely people who legitimately hate children unless they’re silent and only spoke when spoken to, that sort of thing. My aunt is like this, it’s shit.

Also there are some things that really annoy me, like babies crying in public, but just because it annoys me, what am I gonna do, ban babies in public? That’s stupid. I mean we do live in a society so you have to expect some minor annoyances when in public, and also most parents realize how disruptive and annoying that is and are usually pretty embarrassed and try hard to get their baby to calm down, so like, we’re on the same page pretty much. Not a big deal.
- people who legitimately hate children unless they’re silent and only spoke when spoken to
  
  Oof. I've only met one person who openly said that kids should only speak when spoken to, and he was a monster to every member of his household
To be fair you don't have to be rich to teach your kids how to act while their out in public.

Unless they're baby age, then yeah babies gonna cry sometimes, it happens.
- Noisy isn't necessarily inappropriate behavior in public. People should be less tightassed
  
  I dunno man, on one hand, I kind of agree with you for the most part, on the other hand, if you're out in public you should be mindful that it's not your house and there are people around that may be dealing with shit you don't know about. People with PTSD and sensory issues gotta shop too.
  
  I was in a theater once with a woman who brought her toddler into a horror movie, and when the kid predictably started crying, she pulled out her phone and put on baby shark at damn near full volume for them. Some people do need to be less tightaased, but some people also genuinely don't know how to act in public anymore.
Yeah I couldn’t imagine why people wouldn’t like going grocery shopping while someone’s kid is running around, screaming and pulling things off shelves. Must be because they hate poor people.
- Welcome to the real world lol. Kids are part of it, get used to it. You were once a bratty child too, we all were at one stage. It's part of life.
  
  It's part of life
  
  naturalizing capitalist modes of production...ok liberal
  
  In the “real world” it’s perfectly fine to be annoyed by unmanaged children. It always has been and it always will be, just like not having kids and not wanting to deal with other people’s shittily behaved kids is also acceptable. Do you think kid free restaurants, vacation spots, etc exist for no reason?
- Lol tightass
  
  A grocery store isn’t a playground, no one is entitled to make other people deal with their shitty parenting.
What the hell is wrong with bringing kids with to the grocery store? Hell here in South Africa some of the shopping carts even have full on baby car seats attached to them, and most of the larger carts/trolleys have a fold out kids seat. It's perfectly normal to bring your kids with. Do people really moan about that?

Are people really so atomised in the USA that seeing kids exist in the real world freaks them out?
- We have those carts too in the US. There are certain people who hate kids and parents so much they lose their shit on anything that helps them at all like universal childcare. The weird child free types.
- Are people really so atomised in the USA that seeing kids exist in the real world freaks them out?
  
  Absolutely. Where do you think those antinatalist freaks come from?
- Yes
I like seeing kids in at the grocery store because its the only place I get to see kids anymore after my last job working with them was taken from me by an ableist boss so please, bring your kids to the grocery store.
i mean, i like not having auditory sensitivities triggered by the worst sounds known to man and i absolutely support free childcare
- The childcare part is what gives the game away. Everyone I know with sensory issues that they acknowledge will rightfully complain about stuff triggering it, but they frame it experientially and they're never the ones making this particular complaint
  
  The folks making this complaint in person to me have been, without a single exception, trying to use it as an inroad to talk about birth rates. Those fuckers hate universal childcare
  
  Anybody complaining about birth rates is no more than five degrees from openly seig heiling.
  
  Seriously though why would we prioritize a few with sensory issues over children spending time with their parents. That makes zero sense.
It is very weird how is alienated from children. Most adults don’t interact with or even see children regularly unless they have children or work in child care. It’s really sad how such a fundamental part of existence is so cordoned off both for the children not being able to see and be part of their whole world and for the adults missing out on the sense of community and humanity that comes from dealing with both the good and the bad about children. The system behind this dehumanized structure is obviously capitalism. I’d encourage any comrades to let go of any unnecessary boundaries between adult and child spaces and embrace more humanity.
- i agree to an extent but me and my friends constantly smoke weed, plus my house/room has far too many small and fragile and sharp things around to be a child safe place. its the same reason i don't have pets even though i don't dislike them, i just couldn't trust them around my models and miniatures (plus most of my family is allergic). there do need to be some amount of exclusively adult and exclusively (probably with oversight) child spaces imo, but probably to a lesser degree than the status quo in many places.
  
  Sure your personal space is yours to define, my concern is with how society perceives shared spaces. And for those shared spaces there’s already an expectation (especially from comrades) of things like public safety, consideration for differently abled people, elderly persons. We should not limit those considerations away from the expectation children will be there and have their own unique needs, including social understanding for their lack of ability to fully self regulate , and that we can pay into a community that accepts and shares that cost same as we would encourage community to share and accept all sorts of other social costs.
- It depends on the area you live. You get a little further from the cities and there is a very normal mix of families wherever you go and consequently much less of the type of judgement being discussed in this thread. Cities tend to collect single people or people without kids, and frankly, raising kids in an urban setting is much more challenging so fewer people do it or they move out when they start a family.
  
  Leaving urban areas is not a reasonable prerequisite to raising children.
i know i personally get anxious in crowded public spaces like grocery stores but its weird to blame parents for that, not everyone has childcare etc. they can rely on. obviously we should have more public childcare lol, and even public spaces for children to exist outside of school. its more understandable to me to complain about (poorly behaved or obviously uncomfortable) children in places you expect to spend more time in, like restaurants. recently my roommates went to a somewhat more restaurant for a date and got put in some back room full of some other party's children, and had an awful time. i think its because they are both bi and outwardly present as LGBT.
I just hate being around people, and kids are some of the most unrestrained people there are. By the transitive property, I hate kids.
- Hating someone who hasn't even developed the psychological capability of active, cognizant malice is pretty weird to me but ok.
wtf even kind of response is this
I just hate when people don’t control their children. I don’t need your kids getting in front of my cart while I’m trying to push because then the parents start screeching

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