“Children should neither be seen nor heard from – ever again." W.C. Fields
Kids are icky. OK, not really, but funny enough, that’s the conclusion at which more and more adults seem to be arriving nowadays. For example, McDain’s, a Pittsburgh-area eatery, made headlines earlier this summer when it instituted a ban on kids under 6 years of age, and, according to a poll taken in the local area, more than half of the residents are in favor of the restaurant’s move. They sent out an email to customers which read, in part, that “…McDain’s is not a place for young children. Their volume can’t be controlled and many, many times they have disturbed other customers.” What's more, a lot of other businesses are doing, to one degree or another, what McDain’s has done, including airlines, hotels, movie theatres and even grocery stores.
A big reason for this “movement” is that more people are finding themselves childless. Many have chosen to refrain from having them altogether; in so-called first-world countries, populations are currently on the decline, and one result of the trend is the existence of many more childless couples out there these days.
There is another reason for the push: we seem to live in an era of bad parenting. A generation of indulgent parents has given rise to a pack of brats, and now a lot of us are saying, “enough.” As a society, we scoff at the old rules like “seen and not heard,” believing them to be inappropriate relics of the dinosaur age, but the truth is that those rules, and, more importantly, the culture that presented and enforced them, understood that in most of the world, children are welcome in public on the basis of a time and a place. There’s a time and a place for kids…and some of those times and places do NOT include upscale restaurants and first class airplane cabins.
To argue in favor of “kids everywhere” on the simplistic basis that we were once all kids is specious; of course we were once all kids, but we weren’t once all bratty kids. If more children today were made to adhere to the standards that made our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents…themselves kids once, funny enough…the productive, dignified, and responsible leaders of some of our greatest generations, you likely wouldn’t be hearing a word about any of this, and yet you are starting to hear lots about it.
Speaking for myself, I have never once been put off by the mere presence of a child. Rather, while my antennae will admittedly go up when I see one of the aliens enter my “safe zone,” I will give the wee people the benefit of the doubt until I have reason to do otherwise, but honestly, as far as the movement goes, I’m all in favor of it. As for possible long-term ramifications, no reasonable person should ever be worried that prohibitions on kids will ever become a genuine problem for anyone, including kids. In truth, the same motivator…money…that is giving rise to this trend is the same motivator that will see to it that kids remain welcome at endless numbers of places; merchants that wish to cater to the adults-only crowd will create a substantial opportunity for the merchants who choose to remain friendly to the parents with young children (and their spending dollars). Lots of room for both sides to be happy.
Anyway, I’d love to go on waxing philosophic about this for a while longer, but I have to bring this to an end; I hear a couple of the little worms playing in front of my house right now, and it’s time to go shake my fist at them.
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Bob Yetman, Editor-at-Large at Christian Money.com (www.christianmoney.com), is an author of a variety of materials on personal finance and investing, as well as on topics of fitness and self defense, to include the book Investor's Passport to Hedge Fund Profits (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) and the unarmed combat training DVD Thunderstrikes - How to Develop One Shot, One Kill Striking Power (Paladin Press).
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