People are not entitled to a public sphere cleansed of children. 💁♀️
The places I will encourage my children to be quiet in are those dedicated to concentration or meditation: libraries, theatres, churches, and fancy restaurants. Not places of community recreation!
If your "place of work" is a community recreation center, congrats, you have chosen to work at a place where the point of your job is to facilitate the community (including children) recreating (including yawping and other developmentally appropriate play). Do they complain about the sound of basketballs bouncing in the basketball court too?
I'm with you on most all of this but I generally won't let my kids run in the supermarket or shriek/yell/be loud in places where it's not appropriate (restaurants, libraries, etc). Of course, barren childless Millennials and bitter old adults are going to freak out about your kids being in public no matter what, so it probably comes to the same thing.
I'm curious -- why don't you let them do those things? Does it bother you or does it make others uncomfy and subsequently bother you? I'm so curious about parents that theoretically agree with letting kids be kids but then enforcing higher standards in practice.
And you're totally right -- ppl who hate kids and childhood are gonna rage anyways!
I think people have a reasonable expectation to not have to endure shrieking and yelling in those spaces. In the case of libraries, for instance, virtually everyone there is trying to concentrate on reading/studying/researching, in which case yelling and horseplaying children will distract them from the thing they specifically came there to do. The same is arguably true of supermarkets, say, where people are trying to focus on shopping, comparing prices, reading ingredients labels, etc. A yelling, shouting child in these places will inhibit peoples' use of these places in a way that's just unpleasant. I don't want to make people's lives unpleasant if I can help it. It's a courtesy.
Running and jumping in these places also runs the risk of injury and/or destruction. If I let my kids run up and down the aisles at Kroger, they could easily fall into a shelf full of glass pickle jars, knocking them over and shattering them and potentially hurting themselves. Or they could run into an elderly woman with a carton of milk, who would then drop it, spill it everywhere, potentially fall herself or slip and get injured, etc. These places are not designed to be treated like playgrounds. Too many risky variables.
I think the point is not that we need to let our kids be as loud and kinetic as they want, everywhere. That seems really rude and obtrusive. The point is that (a) we should be working to keep our kids reasonably quiet and well-behaved in places where it's not appropriate for anyone to run and shout, and (b) people without kids should be perfectly capable of dealing with the occasional loud/tantrummy/overactive child. I think we can do both!
Thanks for responding. What about the children's section at the library? I find those places to be creepily labeled as 'kids areas' but then they're expected to behave as an adult.
The stores: I think there can be diff expectations based on acoustics of a place. I think that, naturally, there is some adaptation that happens with all ages of kids in places like these. I think they are able to read the room, but not to the same degree that we can. So, since their capabilities aren't the same as ours, we can adjust our expectations based on place but be totally ready for their impulsiveness to take over. I think it's a long-term scaffolding project BUT I def think they still belong in marketplaces -- no matter how long it takes them to learn 'courtesy' (which is subjective, so this would be their parents' definition of that) and no matter how many times they go against those expectations simply bc going to the markets or stores, is a necessary and natural part of life.
Destruction in stores: yes, I agree that a certain level of conservative adaptation is necessary in stores (much of what I said above applies) but stores are also not set up to be very kid or family friendly. They assemble massive, breakable, colorful, enticing creations that seem like they exist just so that we ALL (adults included) have to be super delicate in stores. I'm clumsy, so this annoys me. Also, they purposefully put kid-enticing crap at kids' eye level w/ the intention of driving them crazy for it. There are toy sections in stores. I think design, along with culture, has a long way to go in terms of making places family-friendly and not just profit-obsessed consumer machines.
Lastly, I think that 'places where isn't not appropriate' is very interpretive. I think most places should be kid and family friendly--not just places designed for kids. I think our society has adapted to this adult-centric culture that effectively pushes families with kids out of tons of public places. Instead of expecting our kids to have to behave in developmentally unrealistic ways, we should design spaces to account for the existence of children in them.
But yeah, ofc, there is a natural sense of being considerate about things that unnecessarily affect others. I figured that'd be implied.
Wow, this really feels like such a U.S. phenomenon — I haven’t experienced anything close to this level of hostility toward kids in public spaces in South America or Europe. It honestly baffles me every time.
The other day, I went to a restaurant around 6 PM with my son (who was literally sitting there calmly coloring), and the woman at the next table had a full meltdown. She asked to be moved, started openly talking trash about my kid (while I was right there??), and when I said something, she snapped that she "didn't come to a restaurant to see kids." Like… excuse me?
It was 6 PM, not midnight at a bar.
My kid was minding his business.
Since when are children second-tier citizens?
What’s even crazier is how, in the U.S., kids are often treated like the sole "problem" of the parent — not seen as part of society as a whole. And honestly, how are we supposed to grow and evolve as a society when so many people are actively disengaging from the very people who are the future?
There’s even research on this — a 2016 Pew Research Center study found that Americans are far less supportive of family-friendly policies compared to Europe, and that broader cultural attitude shows up everywhere, even in something as simple as a family sitting down to dinner. It’s like there’s this expectation that kids should be hidden away — which is not just sad, it's short-sighted.
Yes! Well is permeates all aspects of American culture. From public space etiquette to actual policy, like you said kids are often treated like the sole "problem" of the parent. From birth on!
The exclusion of children from public spaces is ultimately the exclusion of parents (and let's be real, more often than not - mothers.)
Without intending to exclude NB parents and dads who also experience this, in general I find this to be an inherently anti woman take. How can you be anti child without being anti mom?
People are annoyed by children in public spaces, but and also annoyed when they see children using screens in public spaces. Screens put in their hands by parents who feel pressured to keep their kids still and quiet and not bothering anyone in the public space. People continue to isolate mothers/parents, and then wonder why the birth rate continues to decline. We are allowed to exist and take up space.
I've said it to someone on an airplane, but if you find it annoying to fly with kids I guess you should fucking fly private next time.
If you don't want to be around children, stay home.
People are wild in their exclusion of kids. And, I've seen with my eyes parents swing to an opposite extreme in frustration, letting their kids be overly crazy in public spaces, which I think has the effect of just cementing people's desire to not have kids in public. Ugh it's tough out there
I lived in Portland proper and then the southern PDX suburbs when I first had my now-toddler (now living in Central Oregon) and whenever I go back to visit, I’m like, where are the babies/toddlers/young kids in public?! I’m a gen-z/millenial cusper and none of my friends in Portland have kids yet, but whenever I’m walking around NW or SE I just don’t see other moms with strollers or little ones so i feel like it’s not just who I’m hanging with (but perhaps it’s where I’m hanging?). I think what I’m getting at is that it feels like Portland has small pockets of baby/toddler-friendliness (shoutout and much love to the mama groups) but overall I get a hostile vibe towards mamas/little ones in non-mamababy centered spaces. Like I was walking near east burnside with my newborn in a stroller and singing to her softly, and a guy I was walking by just glared hard at me, lol. I was singing to a baby, cmon man!
I just throw all this out there as a phenomena, not really a critique of Portland (I grew up in the burbs there! I really want to see it be great!). It became more stark to me once I moved over here and babies/toddlers/kids/mamas are everywhere, all the time, walking down my street and seen at the cafes most daylight hours. Could be the sunny weather is getting everyone out and about all the time - but just interesting overall! Trying to crack the case about what is the difference in two different parts of the same state.
Anywho! Fantastic article. Right there with you in opinion ❤️
The absolute nerve of telling toddlers to be quiet DURING TODDLER DESIGNATED TIMES is incomprehensible to me. I'd LOVE my 17-month old daughter to be able to experience this.
Isn't it weird how WE'RE the outliers? How most people just accept this contrived, sanitized version of human existence but since we don't fight nature, we're the ones that are out of line...clown world.
My entire existence is that of resistance -- not cuz it's fun or cool but because it's simply necessary. I was deprived of being a child, as a child and I refuse to do that to any other children. Here's to the revolution!
As a loud mom with a roaring daughter, I loved this piece. Your children belong in public, as children being children, and ESPECIALLY at a recreational community center.
"People like to think their tax dollars pay for everything and that entitles them to a lot. But in this case my tax dollars literally pay for this community center and I am entitled to just a little: a place for my kid to be a kid." Also, yes lol
This attitude is so rampant! I guess the assumption is children belong in only a few spaces - school, the playground, and where else? As if they aren’t actual humans that have as much a right to exist in public spaces as anyone else.
I've been to an Olive Garden with my 5 year old and some other moms with kids aged between 4-6yo. Luckily one of the moms was smart enough to call in a reservation, and the restaurant was smart enough to give us a private room. It wasn't a closed room with a door though, so we were still "exposed" to the public. The kids, predictably, started running around because they were so excited to see each other. I told them the boundary is staying inside the confines of the room, not into the rest of the restaurant. They were allowed to be as loud as they wanted. They can crawl under the table if they wanted to. They were kids! The other moms freaked a little, but I just said, look the kids have every right to be at a restaurant as every other diner out there. *shrug*
I was 100% with you until I read the “I could have a seizure” part of the complaint. Noise sensitivity, neurodivergence, and aging are all real, and part of liberating our kids is teaching them criticality - why are we behaving the way we do? Is it in line with our values of community care, of sharing space, to exclude elders? I’m not saying kids always need to quiet down, in fact I want mine to be loud loud loud too :) But I think we need to teach them how to “dance” with society. Claim space but also know when how to willingly yield it in the name of loving others.
It seems that you're suggesting that I should have turned to my children and assumed used a moment where they were scared, confused be an adult stranger yelling at them to have a teachable moment. Rather than politely asking an adult to stop screaming.
Not at all! But I think later when writing a post about claiming space in public for our kids there couldve been more nuance. I would’ve felt bad if I gave someone a seizure even if they were being a jerkwad in the moment. I wasn’t commenting on your parenting, and sorry if it came
across that way. I was commenting on your writing/analysis of the situation… in the moment you gotta protect your kids.
Ultimately, to me it isn’t radical to enact an ethic of care that only includes our children and not what else is also broken about the world. How can we extend our grace farther from the injury and indignation we felt in the moment?
People are not entitled to a public sphere cleansed of children. 💁♀️
The places I will encourage my children to be quiet in are those dedicated to concentration or meditation: libraries, theatres, churches, and fancy restaurants. Not places of community recreation!
If your "place of work" is a community recreation center, congrats, you have chosen to work at a place where the point of your job is to facilitate the community (including children) recreating (including yawping and other developmentally appropriate play). Do they complain about the sound of basketballs bouncing in the basketball court too?
I'm with you on most all of this but I generally won't let my kids run in the supermarket or shriek/yell/be loud in places where it's not appropriate (restaurants, libraries, etc). Of course, barren childless Millennials and bitter old adults are going to freak out about your kids being in public no matter what, so it probably comes to the same thing.
I'm curious -- why don't you let them do those things? Does it bother you or does it make others uncomfy and subsequently bother you? I'm so curious about parents that theoretically agree with letting kids be kids but then enforcing higher standards in practice.
And you're totally right -- ppl who hate kids and childhood are gonna rage anyways!
I think people have a reasonable expectation to not have to endure shrieking and yelling in those spaces. In the case of libraries, for instance, virtually everyone there is trying to concentrate on reading/studying/researching, in which case yelling and horseplaying children will distract them from the thing they specifically came there to do. The same is arguably true of supermarkets, say, where people are trying to focus on shopping, comparing prices, reading ingredients labels, etc. A yelling, shouting child in these places will inhibit peoples' use of these places in a way that's just unpleasant. I don't want to make people's lives unpleasant if I can help it. It's a courtesy.
Running and jumping in these places also runs the risk of injury and/or destruction. If I let my kids run up and down the aisles at Kroger, they could easily fall into a shelf full of glass pickle jars, knocking them over and shattering them and potentially hurting themselves. Or they could run into an elderly woman with a carton of milk, who would then drop it, spill it everywhere, potentially fall herself or slip and get injured, etc. These places are not designed to be treated like playgrounds. Too many risky variables.
I think the point is not that we need to let our kids be as loud and kinetic as they want, everywhere. That seems really rude and obtrusive. The point is that (a) we should be working to keep our kids reasonably quiet and well-behaved in places where it's not appropriate for anyone to run and shout, and (b) people without kids should be perfectly capable of dealing with the occasional loud/tantrummy/overactive child. I think we can do both!
Thanks for responding. What about the children's section at the library? I find those places to be creepily labeled as 'kids areas' but then they're expected to behave as an adult.
The stores: I think there can be diff expectations based on acoustics of a place. I think that, naturally, there is some adaptation that happens with all ages of kids in places like these. I think they are able to read the room, but not to the same degree that we can. So, since their capabilities aren't the same as ours, we can adjust our expectations based on place but be totally ready for their impulsiveness to take over. I think it's a long-term scaffolding project BUT I def think they still belong in marketplaces -- no matter how long it takes them to learn 'courtesy' (which is subjective, so this would be their parents' definition of that) and no matter how many times they go against those expectations simply bc going to the markets or stores, is a necessary and natural part of life.
Destruction in stores: yes, I agree that a certain level of conservative adaptation is necessary in stores (much of what I said above applies) but stores are also not set up to be very kid or family friendly. They assemble massive, breakable, colorful, enticing creations that seem like they exist just so that we ALL (adults included) have to be super delicate in stores. I'm clumsy, so this annoys me. Also, they purposefully put kid-enticing crap at kids' eye level w/ the intention of driving them crazy for it. There are toy sections in stores. I think design, along with culture, has a long way to go in terms of making places family-friendly and not just profit-obsessed consumer machines.
Lastly, I think that 'places where isn't not appropriate' is very interpretive. I think most places should be kid and family friendly--not just places designed for kids. I think our society has adapted to this adult-centric culture that effectively pushes families with kids out of tons of public places. Instead of expecting our kids to have to behave in developmentally unrealistic ways, we should design spaces to account for the existence of children in them.
But yeah, ofc, there is a natural sense of being considerate about things that unnecessarily affect others. I figured that'd be implied.
Wow, this really feels like such a U.S. phenomenon — I haven’t experienced anything close to this level of hostility toward kids in public spaces in South America or Europe. It honestly baffles me every time.
The other day, I went to a restaurant around 6 PM with my son (who was literally sitting there calmly coloring), and the woman at the next table had a full meltdown. She asked to be moved, started openly talking trash about my kid (while I was right there??), and when I said something, she snapped that she "didn't come to a restaurant to see kids." Like… excuse me?
It was 6 PM, not midnight at a bar.
My kid was minding his business.
Since when are children second-tier citizens?
What’s even crazier is how, in the U.S., kids are often treated like the sole "problem" of the parent — not seen as part of society as a whole. And honestly, how are we supposed to grow and evolve as a society when so many people are actively disengaging from the very people who are the future?
There’s even research on this — a 2016 Pew Research Center study found that Americans are far less supportive of family-friendly policies compared to Europe, and that broader cultural attitude shows up everywhere, even in something as simple as a family sitting down to dinner. It’s like there’s this expectation that kids should be hidden away — which is not just sad, it's short-sighted.
Yes! Well is permeates all aspects of American culture. From public space etiquette to actual policy, like you said kids are often treated like the sole "problem" of the parent. From birth on!
The exclusion of children from public spaces is ultimately the exclusion of parents (and let's be real, more often than not - mothers.)
Without intending to exclude NB parents and dads who also experience this, in general I find this to be an inherently anti woman take. How can you be anti child without being anti mom?
People are annoyed by children in public spaces, but and also annoyed when they see children using screens in public spaces. Screens put in their hands by parents who feel pressured to keep their kids still and quiet and not bothering anyone in the public space. People continue to isolate mothers/parents, and then wonder why the birth rate continues to decline. We are allowed to exist and take up space.
I've said it to someone on an airplane, but if you find it annoying to fly with kids I guess you should fucking fly private next time.
If you don't want to be around children, stay home.
🙌🏼🙌🏼
I've had someone get mad at my kids for being too unruly at the playground. It's out of hand.
People are wild in their exclusion of kids. And, I've seen with my eyes parents swing to an opposite extreme in frustration, letting their kids be overly crazy in public spaces, which I think has the effect of just cementing people's desire to not have kids in public. Ugh it's tough out there
I lived in Portland proper and then the southern PDX suburbs when I first had my now-toddler (now living in Central Oregon) and whenever I go back to visit, I’m like, where are the babies/toddlers/young kids in public?! I’m a gen-z/millenial cusper and none of my friends in Portland have kids yet, but whenever I’m walking around NW or SE I just don’t see other moms with strollers or little ones so i feel like it’s not just who I’m hanging with (but perhaps it’s where I’m hanging?). I think what I’m getting at is that it feels like Portland has small pockets of baby/toddler-friendliness (shoutout and much love to the mama groups) but overall I get a hostile vibe towards mamas/little ones in non-mamababy centered spaces. Like I was walking near east burnside with my newborn in a stroller and singing to her softly, and a guy I was walking by just glared hard at me, lol. I was singing to a baby, cmon man!
I just throw all this out there as a phenomena, not really a critique of Portland (I grew up in the burbs there! I really want to see it be great!). It became more stark to me once I moved over here and babies/toddlers/kids/mamas are everywhere, all the time, walking down my street and seen at the cafes most daylight hours. Could be the sunny weather is getting everyone out and about all the time - but just interesting overall! Trying to crack the case about what is the difference in two different parts of the same state.
Anywho! Fantastic article. Right there with you in opinion ❤️
The absolute nerve of telling toddlers to be quiet DURING TODDLER DESIGNATED TIMES is incomprehensible to me. I'd LOVE my 17-month old daughter to be able to experience this.
Isn't it weird how WE'RE the outliers? How most people just accept this contrived, sanitized version of human existence but since we don't fight nature, we're the ones that are out of line...clown world.
My entire existence is that of resistance -- not cuz it's fun or cool but because it's simply necessary. I was deprived of being a child, as a child and I refuse to do that to any other children. Here's to the revolution!
As a loud mom with a roaring daughter, I loved this piece. Your children belong in public, as children being children, and ESPECIALLY at a recreational community center.
"People like to think their tax dollars pay for everything and that entitles them to a lot. But in this case my tax dollars literally pay for this community center and I am entitled to just a little: a place for my kid to be a kid." Also, yes lol
This attitude is so rampant! I guess the assumption is children belong in only a few spaces - school, the playground, and where else? As if they aren’t actual humans that have as much a right to exist in public spaces as anyone else.
I've been to an Olive Garden with my 5 year old and some other moms with kids aged between 4-6yo. Luckily one of the moms was smart enough to call in a reservation, and the restaurant was smart enough to give us a private room. It wasn't a closed room with a door though, so we were still "exposed" to the public. The kids, predictably, started running around because they were so excited to see each other. I told them the boundary is staying inside the confines of the room, not into the rest of the restaurant. They were allowed to be as loud as they wanted. They can crawl under the table if they wanted to. They were kids! The other moms freaked a little, but I just said, look the kids have every right to be at a restaurant as every other diner out there. *shrug*
I was 100% with you until I read the “I could have a seizure” part of the complaint. Noise sensitivity, neurodivergence, and aging are all real, and part of liberating our kids is teaching them criticality - why are we behaving the way we do? Is it in line with our values of community care, of sharing space, to exclude elders? I’m not saying kids always need to quiet down, in fact I want mine to be loud loud loud too :) But I think we need to teach them how to “dance” with society. Claim space but also know when how to willingly yield it in the name of loving others.
Screaming at someone else’s toddler is never appropriate.
You’re right, and yet, it doesnt feel good to have someone else’s disregulation from the basis from which we respond
It seems that you're suggesting that I should have turned to my children and assumed used a moment where they were scared, confused be an adult stranger yelling at them to have a teachable moment. Rather than politely asking an adult to stop screaming.
Not at all! But I think later when writing a post about claiming space in public for our kids there couldve been more nuance. I would’ve felt bad if I gave someone a seizure even if they were being a jerkwad in the moment. I wasn’t commenting on your parenting, and sorry if it came
across that way. I was commenting on your writing/analysis of the situation… in the moment you gotta protect your kids.
Ultimately, to me it isn’t radical to enact an ethic of care that only includes our children and not what else is also broken about the world. How can we extend our grace farther from the injury and indignation we felt in the moment?
Fuck the fuddy duddys. 🫶