Banning Children: Why Our Society Hates Kids

All the hype in the news these days (aside from the debt crisis and crashing stock market of course) has been the declaration of the hospitality and airline industry’s war on children. Malaysian airlines led the charge by announcing a ban of children in first class cabins. Soon after a restaurant in Philadelphia made headlines for declaring theirs a “kid-free” establishment.

I don’t have a problem with the kid-free policies. In the case of Malaysian, I understand the business justification: first class passengers are presumably the highest paying ones and therefore need to be kept happy. I am sure we will soon see the trend of airlines that choose to cater to the first-flying families. It’s the basic laws of demand and supply. Similarly, with the restaurant in Philly – they have hopefully done their research and found that the non-kid variety of customer is more lucrative than the family type. Parents trying to get away from kids (their own and everyone else’s) are likely their best patrons.

Institutions have subtly discouraged the presence of children with respectful messaging like “we regret that children under 12 cannot be accommodated” for a while now. As a parent, I can understand that there are some places that are not appropriate for and with children. What worries me now is the language with which these new bans are issued and the venomous sentiment with which they are applauded by members of our supposedly civilized society.

Here are some examples from an SF Gate article a few weeks ago:

“Part of the reason for the vitriol against parents with screaming babies — especially those who appear to do nothing to control them — is that with the exception of a family emergency and moving to another state, there is almost no good reason to take a baby on the road.”

and

“You could make dogs fly in cargo. Could we do that to babies too?”

Emma Kennedy wrote an article recently stating that parents actually hate family vacations. “44, childless and happy”, Emma swears that the only benefits to family vacations as revealed by her parent friends is not having to drop the kids to school. Really? Emma, your own family holidays sound horrible, it’s true, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us are condemned to the same experience. And this arbitrary standard set about not having it count if you have someone to entertain and clean up after your kids is asinine: do you go to a hotel and not order room service? Get my point?

Here’s a snippet from CBS’s The Talk discussing this issue:

Forget the discriminatory nature of these comments, and the fact that banning someone “too old” is against the law; these people really hate children! Not just traveling with them – existing with them. I am as annoyed by snotty-nosed toddlers making nuisances of themselves as the next person, but I hardly want them banished from the planet! So why such extreme views on future of our country, our world?
One explanation is that as we become more self-centered and nuclear in our lives we are clearly unable to tolerate anything that creates dissonance in our inwardly-focused universe. We shut out anything or anyone that doesn’t agree with or fit into our world view. Deviating adults we can avoid or berate but children, we can’t. We don’t like that lack of control.

I  watched the documentary “Babies” and was struck by how in the “developed” societies the entire focus is social conditioning from the youngest age possible. We don’t want kids to be kids – we want them sitting, standing, and eating like adults as soon as possible and yesterday won’t be too early.  It comes down to living in a society where diversity in behavior is not accepted and one must live according to the norm….. or be banned from first class.

The intolerance scares me. What scares me even more is how a bigoted group of adults like the ones making the comments mentioned above have any chance of setting a precedence of acceptance and tolerance for the children they claim they have the misfortune of sharing the world with. Look at the state of the world today: terrorism, greed toppling global institutions and markets, global warming. Who’s messing up whose world?

What do you think?