Emily WK: I choose to have a child, yes. And if I didn’t, and every other parent didn’t, the world would stop existing. Children are important to keep society going. So, you’re welcome.  

Well-raised children who become functioning adults are important to keeping a society going. An individual being able to reproduce does not in and of itself mean that person is actually benefiting society.

General remarks:

My parents clearly set the expectations they had for me, along with the consequences for me not living up to those values. They did not need/want others to “accommodate” any negative behavior because of my age or any other circumstances. They understood that it was their job to raise me to be a fully-functioning, considerate member of society.

At times, whether or not some parents realize it, they teach their children that kids can go anywhere and do anything, without thinking about their actions. It is precisely because of this lack of self-management on the part of the parents why some children are unruly. Being a child, in and of itself, does not equate to being badly behaved. The “kids will be kids” in the face of inappropriate behavior carries with it the assumption that many kids will act in a negative fashion. When you have low expectations, you get poor results. The way a child chooses to act is 99% of the time taken from the cues of what parents will accept. It is not anti-children to expect an individual to act appropriately for the given forum within a given culture.

Hexy, I have to apologize — I agreed with the statement that children don’t belong in sex clubs because I was thinking entirely from the perspective of “parents who are patrons should not bring children to sex clubs.” That was really short-sighted of me — this entire thread, i’ve been perceiving from the perspective of “when women are patrons of an establishment or are visiting, they should/should not have the right to bring their children”, and I honestly never even thought about the right of *working* women to bring children to their work environment. Even though I work myself. Because I’m privileged enough to have access to day care, and the conversation wasn’t really about “does the bartender have the right to bring her kid to the bar” so much as “does the parent who wants to drink have that right” — but you’re right, it’s inexcusably short-sighted not to remember that sex workers are often mothers with children, and should have the right to bring *babies* to work, at the very least.

By the logic I was applying above, patrons of sex clubs do not *need* to be there, and we generally believe that explicit, exploitative sexuality can be harmful for children to see, so I was okay with saying that there’s never a good reason for a patron of a sex club to bring a child there. But first of all, I forgot about babies, who need to go with a parent wherever the parent goes, and don’t really understand what they see when they get there, and second and more important, I forgot that for sex workers, attendance at the sex club is work, not fun, and therefore is mandatory.

So I’ll revise my statement above. Children should not be forbidden from going *anywhere* if both a. they are at an age level where they will neither be harmed nor cause harm to the others at that location and b. a parent has a good reason to bring them there. A six year old coloring with crayons in the dressing room backstage at a strip club, where she’s not exposed to the men catcalling the women and is just likely to see women getting dressed or undressed, is perfectly fine in my eyes.

Andrea Todd:

Also, I agree that comparing people with disabilities to children, no matter what the context, is disgusting (why is this not obvious?).

You know, not only is this not obvious, but I don’t even agree with it. Actually, I find the statement itself kind of offensive.

Comparing people with disabilities to children in the context of saying *they* are like children is disgusting because “people with disabilities are like children!” has been a concept used to strip people with disabilities of their rights as adults. But comparing *children* to people with disabilities is a way of saying “here is a group who have had rights they should have been automatically granted taken away, who have been treated as less than full human, because of a situation beyond their control… and here is another group with a similar problem!”

it’s only a disgusting comparison if you believe that the condition of being a child makes you so inhuman, so undeserving of basic human respect and consideration, that to compare a human being to a child automatically lowers that human being. If I, or anyone on this thread, compares children to people with disabilities, it is not to say that people with disabilities are like children; it is to say that children, like people with disabilities, are an oppressed class who are often physically dependent on caretakers, and who are even more often made more legally dependent on those caretakers than they should have to be, because the world is organized around the rights and needs of able-bodied adults, not them.

You know who else has had “they are like children” used as an excuse to have their rights stripped from them? Women. Throughout history, many societies have treated adult women as minors; many societies still do. I, personally, have suffered discrimination and being treated as a freak because, as a short, young-looking adult woman, I was mistaken for a child, and treated the way a child would have been in the situation, or had people gawk at me because I was not a child. But I wouldn’t consider a comparison that drew a connection between women’s oppression and children’s oppression invalid at all, even though I have *specifically* been oppressed for “being a child” when I was not, because I am a woman and our society has a hard time telling when women stop being children; I would in fact consider it very valid, as long as it wasn’t a comparison that was trying to say that “women are like children”.

There is a difference between “Blue is like yellow” and “yellow is like blue”. If yellow has been oppressed because people considered it to be like blue, “yellow is like blue” is offensive. But to then turn around and say “blue is like yellow is also offensive” is basically to say “Yellow didn’t deserve to be oppressed because yellow’s not *really* like blue, but blue! Blue totally deserved it! It’s entirely valid to oppress blue, and that’s why it’s so wrong to say that the oppression of blue is anything at all like the oppression of yellow!”

Children are human. And saying “Comparing children to people with disabilities is offensive under any circumstances” is basically saying “People with disabilities are human, but children aren’t, so it’s offensive to lower people with disabilities to the level of children. Children don’t actually *deserve* any of those rights you think they should have, whereas people with disabilities do.”

People with disabilities deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, to be allowed to care for themselves to the full extent that they are capable, to have empowered caretakers who are genuinely looking out for their best interests *and* are aware of what those best interests actually are to help them in the respects that they are not capable of self-care, and to have society accommodate their needs to the same extent that it accommodates everyone else’s. CHILDREN DESERVE THE SAME. And both PWD and children are denied this, frequently, on the grounds that they “can’t do” something that able-bodied adults can usually do, even if it’s not something that people *need* to be able to do in order to accomplish the end goal but rather something that society has dictated is a middle step or a requirement for the goal. And many times, the excuse for denying PWD rights is that they are like children, and this is always wrong. But… how often does anyone seriously examine *children* to see if they really do deserve to have all of those rights kept from them?

I mean, in an environment where both women and gay men are oppressed, and gay men are oppressed because they are “like women”, gay men trying to reclaim male privilege might say that this is an offensive comparison because in fact they are not women, they are men. And if no one wants to look at the fact that women shouldn’t be oppressed either, they may actually be able to make that argument. (And in some places, they have.) If you categorically say “comparing oppressed class A to oppressed class B is offensive because the comparison was used specifically to oppress A”, in an environment where not nearly enough people are examining why B was oppressed in the first place and if the reasons for B’s oppression actually hold water, you’re basically agreeing that B deserves oppression even though A doesn’t.

I work in a very large shopping mall, which, even though it has many children’s stores, is still not the easiest place to bring children. And while i have seen parents perform admirably in their duties as parents, i have also seen others who fail miserably at simply keeping their children safe.

A particular example is from when i worked as a greeter in a retail store. In front of our store we had a porch set up with chairs and also those felt rope thingies that are attached to very heavy stands. One day, i saw two children fooling around with the ropes. They were young, about 4 and 6. I repeatedly asked them to stop because the bases are very heavy (20-30 pounds at least), are easy to topple, and therefore very dangerous for small children. They were not attended. Finally, i found the woman who i suppose was their guardian – she was reading a magazine and ignored my attempts to speak with her. Finally the children got my point, but i was very worried that they were going to get hurt from knocking over the stands. Their guardian never said a word.

Other cases are from this same door job. The store was in the “wealthier” part of the mall and was near an open seating area and a fountain. Every day i would see parents who let their children run around unsupervised. They would sit down and let their children run wild. Mind you, these were often very young children, as young as 2 or 3 years old. Barreling around stairs, between people, near the fountain – many times they would be completely out of view of their parents. This behavior strikes me as nothing less than idiotic and unsafe. If a good sized crowd of people went by, anyone could simply pick up your child and be off with them and you would never know. This, I realize, is not a case of children being out of hand but of parents, which i find is often the case. Parents simply do not keep a good eye on their kids which is not only irritating for other people, but unsafe for their children.

However, there are times when parents do watch their kids and they run around anyway but are usually adorable. Except when they put things in their mouths – which is unsanitary for all involved.

The point of this is that I do believe our society should be more open to children, but also that parents should be more open to restricting their children’s wild behavior to safer places, like a park or home instead of a very busy and occasionally dangerous shopping mall.

piny: Oh, no worries. I was doing that thing where I wait until three days after the comments thread has gone stale and then post a rant to amuse myself.

I’m really glad I’m not the only one who does this! =D

Okay, I disagree with some of what mai’a has said, and some of the comments — not from her but from some of the people defending her — are awfully sexist. Unintentionally so, maybe, but I get the strong feeling of women being pigeonholed into the role of “servile maternal figure” from a few of these comments.

HOWEVER, A) I don’t see that attitude coming from mai’a herself (I can’t know what’s going on inside her head, but I see none of the above-mentioned misogyny in her words) and B) this has gotten way out of hand. Sure, the OP made me uncomfortable in some ways, and I do think it’s worth debating, but it’s not okay to call mai’a a bad mother just because you disagree with her. Once you’ve done that, it’s not a debate anymore; it’s out of line, abusive, and [as has been pointed out] also plays into the “Bad Black Mother” stereotype.

Also, I agree that comparing people with disabilities to children, no matter what the context, is disgusting (why is this not obvious?).