This essay (via Motherlode) about living in the apartment next to a crying baby is actually pretty good. I expected to hate it, since my view of complaining about crying babies next door is, “When you live in one of the most densely-populated cities on the planet, you do not get to whine about the existence of a child in the apartment next to you” (just like you don’t get to complain about me coming and going in high heels or playing my music loudly between the hours of 9am and 10pm). Kids are kids and they make noise, and while I am on record as thinking it is reasonable that some public spaces be adult-oriented (or at least that it’s not unreasonable to think that there are some public and semi-public spaces in which incredibly loud noise and rambunctious behavior are not particularly appropriate), if you live in apartment building in New York it is just a reality that you’re going to have to deal with other-people noise. To the extent that other-people noise is really really disturbing and generally preventable (i.e., blasting music at 3am on a Tuesday), it is fair to complain. But to the extent that other-people noise is just a part of sharing a wall and a hallway, like a baby’s cries or a dog barking once or twice or high-heels clattering or someone having a Friday-night party or me yelling at my room mate to OMG come look at this YouTube video of a funny cat! across the apartment? You have to suck it up (or move to the suburbs or a farm or something).
So I thought this article was going to be great outrage-bait. However! It’s actually kind of a nuanced take on the relationships we have with our neighbors in this incredibly densely-populated city, where we live on top of each other but know very little about the people we share spaces with:
When I moved into my new apartment a year and a half ago, my next-door neighbors, barely seen, names not known, were childless. Together we lived anonymously, in our special urban bliss. I spoke with the husband half of the couple a few times in the hallway, but only in passing. We do not know each other’s names. We will live forever without knowing them.
Because of high ceilings and thin walls, however, I learned certain things about them. She is not a smoker but possesses the deep, husky voice of one. He really likes Vampire Weekend. Once they threw a boisterous party where, as best I could tell, everyone was playing bingo. They are in possession of power tools and are not afraid to use them.
There are certain things they have probably learned about me, too. I spend too much time on YouTube. I like to throw boozy brunches for my friends. I watch American Idol. I have had a few bad moments with customer service representatives from my health insurance company. Sometimes I curse to myself.
I imagined we knew just enough about each other that we wouldn’t want or need to know anything else. We were grown-ups living our separate lives. I am a single woman pretty much all of the time, and they are engaged in something resembling domestic bliss. Never, ever the twain shall meet.
And then, sometime last fall, they had a baby. That’s when I first remember hearing the baby crying anyway. Why do they cry so much? I felt a small sense of superiority that I had somehow made the right choice about not having a child. Babies cry. Listen to that damn baby. You guys are suckers, having that baby.
…
So, when I heard that baby cry, I thought to myself, See what you are not missing out on? High up in my castle on Planet Smart Single Lady. Well, guess who’s the sucker here? Me. Because even though I don’t have the baby, and all the benefits of having the baby (including, but not limited to, a deep, emotional connection with another human being, the joy of parenting, plus a brand new stream of pictures to post to Facebook), I am still living with the crying baby.
The baby does more than just cry, of course. She happily gurgles. Sometimes she has long, nonsensical conversations with herself. Why is listening to all of this any different than hearing “Oxford Comma” at full blast? It’s all just noise. I should be able to get used to it.
The answer is simple. It is a constant reminder of the choices I made — and did not make. And I would like to feel good about where I am in my life as much as possible. At the very least, I should feel good about myself in my own home.
But I believed I had made a certain peace with it. It has helped that I have learned even more things about my neighbors these past few months. I know they love to make their child laugh. They don’t lose their patience, but once I heard her plead softly to her crying child, “Honey, mommy is just so tired.” He still likes Vampire Weekend, but he’s pretty crazy about “Old McDonald” these days, too. Now I know this about them: They are good parents.
The whole thing is a solid read. And for once, someone talking about kids on the internet is not being terrible. Faith in humanity restored.
I would now like to snatch this opportunity to link a 27 second Youtube video of a tiny kid so fucking adorable that he makes me want to reproduce. He is having an argument with his father, who tricks him into saying “no.” The video is in Spanish but it’s subtitled.
This article also made me want to reproduce. =( AWWWE BABIES!!
I dunno, there’s something about a child crying that scrapes right down my spine to the annoyance nerve. It’s an incredibly grating sound, at least for me and my friends.
I mean, yeah, the sound of a kid crying can be incredibly grating. But… what are you supposed to do? Say that if you live in a certain apartment building you aren’t allowed to have kids?
No, absolutely not. My parents just got new neighbors (New England tripledecker). The little girl there is super-attached to her mom and also super sensitive, cries constantly and loudly and randomly.
She has every right to live there, they (and I when I visit) just have to grit our teeth and bear it. My point was just that babies are annoying for reasons that have nothing to do with parenthood, choice etc.
Well sure, the sound of a crying baby can be super annoying (even to the parents that produced that baby, I would imagine). I’m just saying, I don’t have much sympathy for people who live in a place like New York City and are all, “Ugh, there is a CRYING BABY next door to me, how dare those parents have a crying baby?!” (Especially when, btw, some of those people will go so far as to try to get their neighbors evicted for the noise).
D’aaaaaaaaww….
I would say that the sound of a baby crying is annoying ESPECIALLY to its parents! The funny thing about being a parent is that other people’s crying babies don’t annoy me at all anymore. I’m just glad it’s not mine!
Very sweet piece. Thanks for sharing it.
Also, I now live in a stand-alone house with solid brick walls, but sometimes, when I think I hear my baby crying, it turns out to be my neighbor’s basset hounds. Just saying …
It’s funny – for me, crying babies have always been torture, until my sister had her first, and the second that girl started crying the torture changed into something totally different – it didn’t bother me, all I wanted to do was *fix things* for her, and it was so different to my previous reactions to hearing that sound.
I have often been the crabby sort regarding children in cramped quarters before. Both my partner and I have, actually. A neighbor last year was a single father with a perpetually crying child. The way these apartments were built, sixty years ago, any strong smell inside one apartment trickles out into the hall.
The hall smelt an awful lot like dirty diapers for months on end.
But yeah, this article reads differently now. Earlier in the week I discovered that an illness I’m still in treatment trying to resolve has rendered me sterile. For the record, I was certain I didn’t want to be a father for a long time. But I assumed that later, eventually, I might reach the point that I would want one (singular) of my own. Attitudes change. Times change.
But now that’s kind of off the table. And I’m conflicted. I always had a choice before, I thought. Now the door has been closed for good.
The people across from me have five children, all but the last one boys, the oldest about 8. They live in a three-bedroom condo that’s barely bigger than mine.
The parents won’t see 30 for years. I wonder they don’t go insane, but they’re two of the most patient, upbeat people I know. The man is a former Marine who fought in Iraq. The woman is one of those natural-born domestic goddesses who keeps the place spotless and her family well fed. They’re both very religious Christians who are home-schooling some of the boys. (I’m not sure what their specific sect is, but it must be one that prohibits or discourages birth control.)
The kids are adorable. Always smiling, cheerful in the way that only a well loved and cared-for child can be. I hear them clamoring up and down the stairs, laughing, although I don’t hear them once they’re inside–our walls are pretty thick.
I like my condo, but it’s no place for kids. There’s a narrow strip of grass out front and an even narrower one in back–no place to play. I remember once, they gave the older boys bikes, and then the mother was teaching them to ride while keeping an eye on the younger ones on that little strip of grass. Those people really need a yard.
Unfortunately, they bought just before the housing bubble burst, and now their mortgage is underwater. He works as a union painter, but any kind of construction trade is hurting these days. Their place has been on the market for months, but foreclosures around here have been dragging prices down.
So I’m in the position of admiring, but not exactly envying, these people. I really hope they get what they want, which is to move out, even though I’ll miss them when they do.
Maybe, to paraphrase Robert Frost, thick walls make good neighbors.
There was the baby at last, on her mother’s lap. I barely glanced at her, I must admit, because I did not want to have a face to match to the noise. Another kind of person might have introduced herself again to her neighbors, and cooed over the child. I wanted her to remain an abstract.
How exactly did you miss this part. This is a complete denial of the personhood of the child. Would she have ignored another adult in this fashion? Just because we are referring to a baby does not justify treating the child like she does not exist. This is something adults constantly do and then wonder why those of us who believe in equal rights for children talk about adult privilege.
She’s already said she doesn’t know, and won’t ever learn, the names of the parents. It’s part of living on top of one another but maintaining privacy and anonymity. It’s got nothing to do with the denial of personhood of a child and everything to do with maintaining a fiction that your neighbors are abstract and you don’t know much about their lives even when you can hear them through the walls.
I’ve lived next door to babies, but have had thick enough walls that I couldn’t hear them. But I’m right now listening to the woman downstairs talking on the phone; I can hear everything she says through the floor. I happen to have had several conversations with her and know her name, which doesn’t make it very easy when I hear her having very loud and enthusiastic sex with her new girlfriend, or when I find out from my landlord that she’s complained about my dog barking but never said anything to me (and it turns out it’s not even my dog she’s hearing, but the one in the next building).
She’s not abstract to me, which means that when I see her I’m a little embarrassed that I know what she sounds like in the throes of passion, or I’m pissed off that she didn’t approach me about the dog instead of going straight to the landlord.
By contrast, the guy who lives in the other downstairs apartment I haven’t met, which makes it a little easier to bang on the window when he holds his 3 am smoke-break gatherings outside my bedroom and wakes me out of a sound sleep.
Word. It’s part of maintaining privacy when you’re living on top of one another, listening to one another’s noises, and smelling one another’s smells. That one of the neighbors is a baby is of consideration to the writer because of her personal choices.
I was the same way when I was an apartment dweller, but now that I’m in a house in a working-class area where the houses are on top of one another you kind of pretend not to see one another. I know, for example, that the neighbors on one side have addiction issues and one smokes pot in the garage nightly and that the neighbors on the other side argue like cats and dogs, but we wave politely on the street, don’t know one another’s names, and haven’t seen the inside of one another’s houses. That’s fine with me. I don’t want to know what they know about me and mine either. (I can only imagine.)
I’ve lived in not one but TWO buildings where I could hear a person being abused on a regular basis. It was horrific. Although there are nicer sounds than babies crying, there are much worse ones, and I’d much rather live near a happy young family with family noise than a d-bag abuser, children or not.
Yes. I now live in a brownstone with five apartments, so I know two of the neighbor families (but not the other two). When we have parties, I leave them a note to let them know that if we’re being loud, they should feel free to ask us to pipe down. But this is the first time, in ten years in NY, that I’ve had that relationship with my neighbors. As I discussed in the post about kids in public spaces, a city like NY involves so so so much public interaction with people that everyone takes their personal space very seriously — and home space especially. It is highly unusual to know your neighbors, or to recognize them on the street. Maintaining that anonymity is key for a lot of people. So I don’t think it’s so much anti-child as cultural.
I should also further elaborate on the fiction: you’re not only pretending you don’t know much about your neighbors, you’re also pretending they don’t know much about you.
@Florence and @zuzu
You don’t make eye contact with people you don’t respect and therefore she clearly did not respect the child. She bothered to acknowledge the parents but ignored the child and that shows a lack of basic respect. It would have cost her nothing to acknowledge the child’s existence without getting involved in the child’s life. It is not if saying hello would have obligated her to midnight feedings and diaper changes.
Oh, FFS, Renee. She wouldn’t have COOED at an adult, either. Avoiding eye contact with the baby — who doesn’t understand the fiction game — is a way of avoiding cooing, which is what you do with a baby when you catch the baby’s eye.
I don’t make eye contact with ex boyfriends who I still have feelings for when I run into them randomly, and I don’t make eye contact with strangers on the street or on the subway. It’s not because I don’t respect them.
Amen!
In my experience, kids make you acknowledge them. Like, I probably wouldn’t talk to most of the people in my building if it weren’t for their kids. Kids are curious.
It sounds like too though that the author is projecting her own feelings about having kids onto the kid which isn’t fair.
For some reason, the article made me feel sad, although I couldn’t pinpoint why.
I gotta say, giving in to my love of babies really helped me to come to terms with my childfreeness. For years I pretended not to be too interested in infants because every.single.time I cooed at a baby someone would take issue with the fact that I don’t want any kids (I knew I didn’t want children from a very, very young age – like 5, a fact that has disturbed people for decades).
A few years ago, I gave it up. The fact is I find babies adorable. Even when they cry I think they’re cute. I’m not childfree because kids cry or because they have sticky fingers or because they poop. I’m childfree because I want to do other things that I think are more fun. Now I coo at babies, talk with toddlers, and color with kids. And if people can’t deal…oh well.
I try really hard not to make eye contact with anyone, but I wonder if part of this is regional. Renee, I think you’re also from the US, right? When I lived in the midwest, people would make comments to me about how I’m being rude by not looking at strangers on a street, but where I grew up and where I lived after, it was completely normal. Not rude – it just was. Truthfully, I get creeped out if someone I don’t know looks at me too long (and my “too long” is probably pretty short – i.e. if I meet your gaze and we don’t both look away, it feels weird to me).
That said, I’m visiting my parents who live upstairs in a duplex. The downstairs neighbors have a newborn who is incredibly fussy. The crying doesn’t bother me at all. Maybe I’m really good at shutting out sound though?
There are many people who never make eye contact with any stranger, or anyone at all. It shouldn’t be a social requirement.
This essay is timely for me. Our neighbors across the hall are preggers again. They already have two cute little boys, and since the boys are both loud and energetic, and we’re 4 students sharing an apartment, we have occasionally been the bane of each others’ existences over the past 5 years. But things are working out well now. I think we’ve all learned that noone is boundlessly entitled to peace and quiet, and that the only people who are entitled to be loud any time the spirit moves them, are small children! We know each other well by now and we work it out. I wouldn’t want the kind of anonymous relationship the author has with her neighbors, but maybe that’s just a cultural difference. Knowing stuff like the fact that the husband recently made a full recovery from cancer, or that the kids are home sick with chickenpox, makes it easier to understand their needs.
It’s so funny, one of my former roommates now has a child with his girlfriend, and has found himself living across the hall from a group of young people who sometimes play their music too loud and too late… He’s told me that he only now really gets our neighbors’ point of view.
Do you think it’s because it reminds you that you only have one life, and you can’t do EVERYTHING? The article made me a little sad, too — maybe just pensive — and I think that’s why.
I like kids, but I don’t want kids. Except maybe under certain circumstances, I WOULD like to have them. But what would I have to give up in order to put myself in those certain circumstances? I like anonymity, but I also like feeling like part of a community, and these conflicting desires can’t always be reconciled. I like city living, but I also like country living, and I can’t do both, and I have to chose because I only have this one life, and I can’t be in two places at once, and life is too short to do everything.
We have to chose, and every opportunity we take is also a series of other opportunities that we rejected, and some of the rejected lives probably would have been GREAT, but…
Yeah. That’s kind of my reaction to the article.
Interesting how we all read things differently. I agree this piece was a “solid read” and as a mother, it was refreshing not to see it become an anti-baby rant. But it certainly didn’t restore my faith in humanity. In fact, I thought the author came across as a little bitchy when she left the place once she realized her neighbors were there. Actually, it made her seem rather childish to me.
It’s not like the lady was mean mugging the baby, she was (I like this phrase) “maintaining the fiction” of privacy in a very public city. This one point is getting a lot of attention, but the context of the story is one where a woman describes the ebb and tide of closeness and alienation in one of the most populated cities in the world, and does so by focusing partially on a very sweet family. She’s not violating anyone’s rights, she isn’t dehumanizing this family, if anything, she’s shedding light on her own values, insecurities, and resolutions. It’s also very well-written. That’s cool with me.
Renee’s Canadian. Southern Ontario, I believe. I grew up in a mid-sized city in Ontario and eye contact and striking up conversations with people was the norm. Then I moved to Vancouver and within a month I had been re-socialized to avoid looking anyone in the eye or talking to people, including people in my own apartment building. To the point where once I wandered into a more suburban neighbourhood (I’d been living downtown) and someone greeted me as I walked past their yard and I nearly flipped out on them – it was so unexpected and outside of the norm I’d gotten used to.
I’m also a shy introvert of the variety of liking to shut the whole world out and not engage, so I kind of liked the social isolation, which is probably why I got used to it so quickly. From that perspective, I can understand why someone would want to avoid connecting with a baby, especially when the context is rather emotionally-laden. Different people engage with other people differently – for some of us (e.g., highly introverted, socially anxious), there is actually a considerable cost to be taken into account. Making those “small” gestures can be disproportionately tiring. Personally, one of the reasons I like blogs so much is because it’s a fairly low-cost way for me to talk with other people because it’s disembodied but not depersonalized. I would not be able to keep up this level of engagement in RL settings at all – I’d burn out within an hour and have to go away. I’m also quite familiar with the experience of people who aren’t exhausted and depleted by social interaction getting on my case about being rude for not keeping up to their level of engagement.
I’m not saying my experiences are identical to the article writer’s (I don’t think she would describe herself as someone with social anxiety), but I think we have to keep in mind that making eye contact, engaging, etc., aren’t the same thing from person to person.
Ah – thanks Jadey (and I’m sorry Renee! I’m assuming that’s my lovely US-centrism at work and was fairly douche-y of me, esp. since I’m sure you have the information easily accessible on your site).
I often wake up early on the weekends to the sound of toy trucks scraping across the floor above me, balls bouncing, crying and/or other toddler-induced sounds from the apartment upstairs. I’m not a huge fan of it, but I deal, because at some point that day I am going to practice playing music and my neighbors are going to have to deal with that. As long as people respect “quiet hours,” I don’t have a problem with my neighbors’ noise.
And since my bedroom faces the noisy Brooklyn street, it’s not as though my apartment will ever be a quiet refuge. But that’s fine, because that’s how I grew up, and I can’t even fall asleep when it’s silent.
I find eye contact to be stressful and often threatening/aggressive, so I avoid making it when possible. I thought it was just that I’m not entirely neurotypical, but apparently it’s really that I don’t respect people?
Good point. It’s a very specific cultural and neurotypical expectation. When I taught I had students who would not look me in the eye because it was considered disrespectful in their cultures.
Eye contact is an extremely complicated issue, though, because of how it has been used as racist, classist, sexist, and other types of oppression in several cultures.
It’s an interesting article and one I consider respectful of both sides of a situation.
I should’ve just read the article and skipped the comments, because of course, that’s where I’d probably find the stuff that moves me. I took issue with the commentor who said the couple with the child should appreciate the single lady and give her cookies, or something. Like, really? Really?! If she came over to my house and quieted the kid down for me, I’d make her dinner every night for a week, but for eduring our choice to have a child and be utterly grateful to her because–God forbid, we encroached upon her quiet lifestyle and she didn’t complain, sort of–except in an online article that thousands of people are reading? I wanted to tell the commentor to go suck on a pacifier.
That comment was extremely annoying to me. The same way it annoyed me when my child, crying in public, finally quiets down and some stranger tells me, “Thank you!” in a passive aggresive tone that suggested, “Your kid was invading the quiet I so desperately craved in this grocery store.” I wanted to spit out that I hadn’t quieted the kid for her sake, but I just snarled at her. Thankfully, she got the hint and moved on.
I guess the point of this rant was that I just felt the need to communicate that parents are the first to wish their kids *wouldn’t* cry, and that their crying is not our passive-aggressive way to get back at people who don’t want kids, nor is it our personal mission to communicate to the world that we are proud breeders and that those who think otherwise are “missing out”. Having kids is just something that happens and if we could’ve skipped the inconveniences with some magic, we would’ve done it. Parents of young children envy folks who own their schedules, but I guess you can say we wouldn’t trade it for the child, either. The hostility by some, I guess, whether from the side of child-free folks or from parents, feels like a silly war anyway.
This is a really interesting read. I just moved into a detached house from a townhouse from an apartment, and it makes me think about the way I felt about the family of five next door vs. the girl above me who blasted music I liked vs. the guy below me who blasted music I didn’t like. (At floor-vibrating levels. At 6:00 on a Sunday morning. And when I went down to ask him to turn it down, he started hitting on me. So he was the clear #3 on a ranking of those neighbors.) And I thought about my feelings about said family-neighbors when the little ones were shrieking vs. my feelings when they were all playing loudly and happily. And just from a writing standpoint, I really enjoyed following the tone of the piece and the way it developed.
Like Anna, I should have skipped the comments. “They should give her cookies for putting up with the baby!” “She should cook them an extra meal or watch the baby when they run to the store!” Why? She’s putting up with unpleasant noise, which is part of apartment living. They’re raising a kid, which is part of raising a kid. Neither of those is really an extraordinary or fruit-basket-worthy accomplishment.
Odin, I’m glad someone else is uncomfortable with too much eye contact. Especially with people I don’t really know.
I put on pants this morning. I assume you’re baking me a cheesecake? Thanks!
Well, no, they aren’t–but I often find myself wishing for greater community in apartment/city living, where everyone helps out and watches out for everyone else. I’m doubtful that that’s where those comments were going–but it is something I find myself wishing we still had–when my father was young in NYC someone would always watch the street when the kids were out, someone single could always have a meal. Not the case today.
I have never heard of this rule in my entire life.
Re: eye contact or interacting with babies. We shouldn’t ignore the gendered aspect of this, that there’s a greater obligation placed on women for social participation. Even in places where not making eye contact is the norm, women are exhorted to smile at strangers, and chastised for not responding favourably when approached. Women simply do not have the right (by societal standards) to say, “I don’t want to interact with you”; it’s considered rude and bitchy. I think at the end of the article, where the father approaches the woman, there’s a bit of presumption involved on his part, that because his neighbour is a woman, she will be more understanding and sympathetic about a crying baby, or more amenable to having a relationship with her neighbors. The ability to decide for yourself acceptable limits of public interaction, and especially to decide on a limit of zero, is still largely the purview of men. I suspect that if the family’s neighbor had been a single man, the father would not have made any overtures unless the neighbour had somehow signalled (a look, a nod of greeting) that he was open to it.
chava @ 41
We also shouldn’t ignore who was watching out for the neighbourhood kids in the good ol’ days. It wasn’t someone, it was a woman, and she was providing babysitting services and meals to single someones (bachelors? I’d imagine people figured single women could cook for themselves) and doing the work of maintaining social relationships on behalf of her family for free. There’s a subtext to all that pining for the days of yesteryear when the kids could run around unsupervised and everyone came home to home-cooked meals, and it’s not that we should *all* pitch in.
I am someone who is the daughter of people who work at hospitals and they work or have worked the graveyard shift. My aunt, mother, grandma, father, uncle, husband and myself all worked them and some of us still do. It is absolutely unacceptable to make so much noise in a shared living environment that it cannot be covered by a fan or humidifier during any time of the day. It’s called sound proofing-if you could afford the baby, the power tools, the piano, or the speakers-you can afford it. So next time you crank your stereo as a response to someone asking you to turn it down, remember you want your surgeon, power plant operator, and taxi driver to have slept that day. It isn’t just rude, it puts other people’s lives in danger. Oh and we aren’t a small demographic of workers. In the now 24-hour world, there will only be more and more of us.
She’s “a little bitchy” and “rather childish” because she wants to be able to have time to herself without having to endure the sound of a crying baby that she was explicitly trying to avoid. She does so in a manner which does not place judgment on the parents, indeed she realizes that she is the one with the issue and so she removes herself from the situation rather than demand the privilege to be in a child free environment. Still, you say she’s “childish” (as bad as the children she’s trying to avoid?) and “a little bitchy” when she…well…I’m really not sure what she did wrong.
Unless, perhaps, the mere admission that someone would rather not be around a child all the time is interpreted as wrong, immature, and offensive.
Fair enough, William. But I’m entitled to my opinion. It struck a chord with me that was a negative one. I’m sure you’d agree I’m entitled to such an opinion, without you then jumping to the conclusion you jump to in your piece. I’m a mother who often doesn’t want to be around my own children all the time, so really, I wasn’t saying that. I just didn’t think the author came across as well as some others did. That’s all. End of story for me.
Having a baby isn’t a question of affordability, and this speaks to classist stereotypes about poor people being being inadequate parents who ought not to reproduce.
Also, not everyone can do construction work in the places they live, even with the skills and tools to do so. I live in a corporately owned apartment building and I am prohibited from making any structural changes to my apartment. Hell, I’m barely allowed to put a nail in the wall to hang a picture (they regulate the size and number of holes allowed).
Better constructed buildings are important, in part because, yeah, shift workers are also really important and people need quiet at different times of day. But having appropriate minimum standard building codes *and* enforcing these codes is beyond the ability of a lot of individuals – that’s a collective issue.
This doesn’t preclude individuals from being jerks and, for example, blaring their televisions at maximum volume at every given opportunity, which would be a shitty and irresponsible thing to do, but you can’t lump every noisy neighbour into one big huddle of douchebags. I’ve never actually had a noisy neighbour that fell into the “deliberate asshole” category, although I’m sure they do exist.
I don’t tend to make eye contact, either, partly because doing so in a city like New York is exhausting. You pass so many people in a day, you can’t get involved in all of their lives, and eye contact is a way of inviting them into yours.
About the only times I’d make eye contact were when something interesting was happening: an accident, or a funny subway conductor or a good street performer. It was a shared experience.
Different places have different expectations. A friend who moved to Bermuda from Connecticut had to learn to make eye contact and say hello because it was expected there, and it was rude if you didn’t say hello. Whereas in Connecticut, it was considered intrusive to demand a stranger’s attention.
IOW, don’t worry about making eye contact. There are no universals.
I feel like I was not clear enough about this. What I mean is that there is a stereotype that people should only have kids if they can “afford” them, because financial security is believed to be essential and central to good child-rearing*, and that people who don’t meet socially-accepted standards for being wealthy enough to reproduce are irresponsible.
*Financial security obviously can help, in the very least because it’s easier to parent when you are not incredibly stressed out. But plenty of financial secure people are crap-ass parents for other reasons, and plenty of people parent magnificently under incredibly stressful conditions.
It’s also called “I rent my apartment and (a) shouldn’t have to make expensive changes to a space I don’t own, and (b) could actually get in trouble for doing so.”
You’re entitled to your opinion, but William is entitled to his as well. Deal.
Actually, I don’t make eye contact with people I’m afraid of and with people I do not wish to talk to, probably also with people I’m lying to, or people I’m possibly inappropriately attracted to.
However, whether she made eye-contact or not, I think that last part of her leaving, *was* kind of bitchy. I don’t think she meant to be disrespectful of the child per se, but she was definitely being kinda snooty to her neighbors. I’d probably avoid eye-contact if I can, but not at the expense of being rude. When they’re there, they’re there. It was nice of the neighbor to have laughed it off. I would’ve been less friendly about it, but only to the extent that I probably wouldn’t be ready with a smile next time I see her.
You don’t get tax breaks for sound proofing.
Well…yes. And I’m entitled to critique that opinion. And you’re entitled to critique my critique. And we’re both entitled to continue the loop until one of us either has an epiphany or gets bored. One is also entitled to utterly ignore the other if we so desire. Theres a difference between having a right to an opinion and having a right to be free from response.
Yes, with neither values nor judgement you called her “a little bitchy” and “rather childish” because thats just how you felt and we certainly shouldn’t explore it any further because you’re entitled to your opinion and…
Sorry, if you’re going to throw around phrases like “bitchy” and “rather childish” about a grown adult who makes a personal decision rooted in what seems to be nuanced and fairly mature consideration you’re going to have to either back your shit up or live with the smirking ridicule of People You Don’t Know On The Internet.
Point of fact: I am not your child, I do not respond well to scolding, and I have tended to interpret the phrase “end of story” as meaning “I’m not equipped for this and am trying to project authority in the hopes that you’ll back off” since I was old enough to use the word “no.” That last one pissed my teachers off something fierce growing up.
I think that’s a definite (and problematic) part of it. Another element was highly cohesive neighborhoods (in NY, generally around ethnicity and/or religion)–if you feel a bond with all your neighbors, for one reason or another, you’re more likely to watch out for each other. This had its own problems, as well, obv. Regardless of the problematic issues with how community was created in the past, however, I still think it’s an ideal worth striving for in the present/future.
And while I’m with you on the childcare aspect of things, no, as far as I know in the modern settings where these things still take place in NY (Jewish neighborhoods, for example), single women get the benefits of the free meals, etc, as well.
Have you ever actually tried to soundproof a space? First, if you aren’t doing it during construction you’re talking about an enormous and very expensive job because the cheapest and most effective means available involve physical insulation that has to be installed between floors and walls. If you can’t do that then you pretty much have to take out ceilings, flooring, and drywall to install it. Paints don’t work well, the foam egg-carton insulation doesn’t soundproof so much as sound dampen, and actually dampening screens seriously reduce the livability of an space. More, both screens and studio foams are a nightmare for people with allergies or asthma. Finally, if the sound is coming from above (that is, the baby lives on the third floor and you live on the second) there is virtually nothing that can be done besides tossing down a carpet and hoping unless you install sound proofing on your ceiling. You’re talking about the kind of expense and structural changes that are out of the reach of even most middle class folks.
But lets say you weren’t. To really sound proof, thats not a job you can accomplish outside of a lab or a specially designed space unless you’re talking about a vault.
Renting the apartment is exactly the issue here; you don’t own that space, and emitting a certain amount of noise at a regular basis from it is treating it like you own both that apartment and the entire area around it.
Unfortunately, as one of those kids born to people who were poor, I can tell you that I suffered for it in a lack of medical care that will affect me the rest of my life. I will never be able to have a traditional job and may soon lose my independence do to loss of mobility that could have been prevented or curbed when I was diagnosed at 2. I agree we should have a family oriented society, and people should be able to live and bring their children where ever they want. I think no child should ever suffer hunger or a lack of medical care. We don’t have that yet. It is worth fighting for, but pretending your kids wont suffer because of the lack of such things is cruel.
RE: the cost of soundproofing:
Insulating our 1500 sq foot home after the construction stage (with the side benefit of soundproofing) cost several thousand dollars and required professional labor.
Right. And like I said in the post, there are reasonable limits. Don’t blast music at 3am! Don’t have enormous parties on Tuesday nights! When I have friends over and they stay late, I ask them to be quiet when they walk down the stairs; when I have big parties, I do it on the weekends and I leave my neighbors a note with my phone number, telling them to call if we’re too noisy and we’ll tone it down. My neighbors have kids, and they make sure that they only practice their oboes and trumpets during normal daytime hours instead of at 6am or 11pm. At one point, I was running down the stairs at 6 in the morning on the way out for my morning jog; apparently I was louder than I thought I was, because the neighbors left me a note asking me to walk quieter, so then I did, because it was a totally reasonable request and I hadn’t realized I was disturbing them. Everyone is ok! This is common-sense stuff. No one is saying that anyone should be allowed to emit all the noise they want whenever they want and you have to deal.
But if you choose to live in a city like NY, in an apartment building which necessarily includes people of all ages, you don’t get to whine about the sound of a crying baby. Babies cry! That is what they do. And they also need to have homes, and they are going to cry in those homes. If you never ever ever want to hear a crying baby or other noise through your walls, you really should not live in a place like New York, because you are going to be seriously unhappy. Because seriously, what are parents supposed to do?
First, when you rent, you’re entitled to *use* of the space, which is so strong that the owner of the space is not entitled to enter without notice or permission and has to leave you to quiet enjoyment of the space.
However, that doesn’t obligate you to make improvements on the physical space.
Second, emitting sound is an expected and normal part of daily life, and only becomes a problem when the noise is excessive. Excessive can mean anything from over a certain decibel level, longer than a certain duration, or before/after a certain time of day or night.
It *doesn’t* mean that if your neighbors can hear you walk or snore, that you’re acting like an overentitled snot. It means you live in an apartment.
I had a downstairs neighbor who’d gotten used to my place being empty for several years before I moved in, and he complained about me walking across my own floor (and I did, in fact, own the place) or using a fan. I put down rugs, which I’d planned on doing anyway, but I was not going to do anything more than that, because hearing your upstairs neighbors cross their floor or running a quiet appliance is part of being an apartment dweller.
If I were flamenco dancing at 4 am while jackhammering, then, sure, he had a complaint. And I probably would have had some kind of action taken against me by the co-op board.
Let me guess: You’ve never lived in anything but a single-family home.
Ay, ay, ay. Did you just say “Deal”? How condescending of you. Of course Williams is entitled to an opinion. But he was making an illogical leap, jumping to an conclusion I didn’t make. I’m all for people having their own opinions, but I’m going to speak up when my statement is misinterpreted. And I didn’t need to say “Deal” to make my point.
I can deal with a crying baby next door, it’s annoying but it’s not like they can help it. Babies are people too. I get a lot more angry at people who turn their music up really loud at odd hours or leave their poor dogs on their balcony to cry all day, because the former is something you don’t have to do and the latter is just mean to the dog.
But I do kind of mind that the lady next door will take her crying baby outside, come stand right in front of my window (making the noise significantly louder), meow at my cat through the window, and then just keep meowing at my cat without saying hi to me when I walk out my door and right past her on my way down the stairs. It’s honestly a little strange.
Except I never said anything at all about lack of suffering or pretending that suffering isn’t happening. Just made the point that the fact that shitty social conditions affect their kids negatively doesn’t make *parents* the villains in the scenario, and that I don’t believe any one should be told they can’t have kids just because they can’t financially guarantee their happiness. (Which no one can do, anyway, but it’s a widespread assumption.)
I did.
And I don’t care if someone who slings around “bitchy” and “childish” and stamps her little feetsies when someone calls her out on that finds me condescending.
And aren’t we being a bit of a scoldypants today, Lori?
Leave Lori alone. I hate this ganging up stuff that happens on here, particularly on those deemed as ‘regulars’. Both Zuzu and William are taking this thread to an ugly place.
I see, Safiya. Lori should not be criticized because you view responding to her attacks as “ganging up” by regulars.
Zuzu – when it justs gets into the realm of petty word policing, then yes, leave it.
You don’t make eye contact with people you don’t respect
Actually, I associate people telling me to make eye contact with them, lest I not respect them, with authority figures and cringing a lot.
For social eye contact etiquette, that’s very regional. I remember when I went to Romania for business, and I had this subconscious notion that everyone was sort of grumpy or rude, until I realised that they don’t have the social thing of “mild eye contact, smile” (or quickly nod, if one presents as male). I’d occasionally meet someone’s eyes and do the smile-or-nod thing, and get nothing back, and that was really strange, until I remembered that duh, I’m in another country, and hadn’t updated my body language dictionary accordingly.
I was socialised female, so I still feel mildly rude if I don’t make eye contact and smile, even though (a) men don’t do this, and (b) it’s not as required, where I live now. It’s bloody annoying, as I’m an introvert, and eye contact tends to carry the potential for inviting someone in, and dammit, dunwanna.
How is attempting to engage in a discussion, then being a bit snarky when someone pouts because they don’t want to back up their ugly little gendered (and, I would argue, privilege enforcing) insults after a little light critiquing, “taking this thread to an ugly place?” I mean, I know I’m kind of an asshole and all, but I don’t think I’ve been out of line here. I certainly don’t think that responding to a post directed at me in the context of a discussion is ganging up.
But hey, I suppose people who want to have a temper tantrum and tell me how things will be like I was a child have a right to do so. They just don’t have a right to me being pleasant to them in response.
This article was pretty interesting to me. I live in a trailer park in a rural area, but it’s still quite noisy and there are actually some parallels to what I’m learning here about New York.
Basically I try to deal with the racket as patiently as I can, although there are times, such as when someone has their music blaring from their pickup all the way across the trailer park and yet my windows are rattling. That I won’t tolerate. But there are other times you just have to try and be patient as much as possible, like the occasions where I go outside my door late at night for fresh air and I can hear my neighbors having sex, or like today on public transportation, there was a little girl who was making dog sounds, presumably because she had a little balloon poodle and was happy, which is great and all, but she sounded very much like a yappy little dog left outside at night and just as annoying. She was so loud that I could hear her over the roar of the trolley (which is really loud itself and I can’t hear very well over it to begin with) and over my iPod music, so she evidently was very very loud. But, oh well, such is life.
Also, I’m with Odin and everyone who doesn’t tend to like to make eye contact very much. It’s not that I don’t respect people, it’s that a lot of the time, when I’m out in public, and since I take public transportation everywhere, I mostly would prefer to be left alone. Loud children and other assorted racket on public transportation are to be just dealt with, but being trapped into a conversation I don’t want to have is not something I should have to deal with, so if I want to be left alone I try not to encourage people to drag me into one.
It’s “petty word policing” to criticize someone for calling a woman “bitchy” and “childish” on a feminist blog for wanting some quiet at home?
Have you been here before?
Not even for wanting quiet at home – she openly acknowledged that that wasn’t possible, and she dealt with it. She just wanted some quiet at the wine bar where she (presumably) goes to escape the sounds of home, so she excused herself – a bit awkwardly, sure, but she wasn’t rude, and the parents clearly were amused rather than offended. No, she doesn’t come across like a saint in the article, but that wasn’t the point.
Personally, I liked the article, but the comments were infuriating. They should bake her some cookies/she should bake them some cookies and look after their kid – seriously? Living in close quarters doesn’t mean you have to be best friends. She treats her neighbours with respect and they do the same; is that not good enough?
I used to live in an apartment in Chicago, under some people with a guy who really loooooooooved his tribal drum. You wouldn’t believe how upset he was, and not angry upset, but bereft upset, when the landlord told him he simply couldn’t play it in the apartment building at all. He came to my apartment begging me to let him play, it was his LIFE. (My daughter was about two at the time.) If he would only muffle the damn thing, or not insist on hitting the thing as hard as he could, then maybe we wouldn’t have sent the letter to the landlord. (Also, not playing after eleven with your drunk ass friends, that might have helped.)
But at any time of the day, that drum, it sucked.
I dont think the issue is being able to financially gurantee happiness so much as financially gurantee your child wont starve to death or die from gingivitus because you cant afford dental care. Yes there is a bit of classism in that statement but a shitload of truth too. If you have a baby and can’t afford childcare and dont have anyone willing to quit their job to babysit your child or an unemployed or work from home TRUSTWORTHY friend/relative then its really difficult to go to work without leaving your child home alone while you struggle to keep a roof over your heads and clothes on your backs. When you choose to become a parent the only person(s) responsible for meeting the basic needs of that child (food, water, shelter, clothing, medical/dental/ care) are the parents. Yes it’s nice when others help but the reality is, you’re at their mercy if you’re going to depend on others to do that for you and leaves you vulernable to not being able to feed, clothe, or give medical care or a place to stay to your child.
But on the subject at hand, I know it’s a person’s choice but something seems so cruel about ignoring a baby that is trying to communicate with you. A crying baby is annoying to most and puts others into “fix it” mode either out of empathy and concern for the baby or out of sheer desire to get the noise to cease. I dont liek when my son says “hello” in the cheery little voice with a big smile full of baby teeth and someone looks him RIGHT IN THE FACE and keeps on walking as though they didnt hear him.
Oh man, that sounds terrible. :(
On one occasion, I had to call the police to come to the trailer next to mine because it sounded like there was domestic violence going on between my now former neighbors. It turned out that that wasn’t the case, and they both sort of got angry at my mother because she had me call, but later on the woman thanked my mother for it because it reassuring to her to know that if she was being abused, someone would intervene…
Okay, but there is a difference between the individual responsibility of parents to access the support services and resources available to help raise a child, and the *social* responsibility to ensure that these kinds of necessary services and resources are actually available and accessible. I know that that this is a particular philosophical position of mine that is not universally shared and certainly is not a reality in many places, but I do believe that an essential component to a healthy, just society is providing support systems for individuals, families, and communities, and not just leaving people to fend for themselves.
Also, becoming a parent isn’t always a choice, or at least not an uncoerced or deliberately, enthusiastically made choice.
Also also, my admittedly oblique intended meaning was that nobody can financially guarantee any life outcome – despite what Batman would have us believe, money isn’t actually a super power. Crappy awful unpredictably bad shit can happen to everyone, although it ends up disproportionately on some people. It’s not a general reason for people not to have kids (although some people may see it as a *personal* reason not to have kids themselves).
Zuzu Yes I’ve been here many times and I’ll happily hold the opinion that double posting just to insult someone is unhelpful and unpleasant.
Both parents and non-parents must also deal with the fact that *circumstances change*. My parents had a lot of financial ups and downs while I was growing up. Expecting a baby now, I’m *not entirely sure* where the money’s going to come from to cover the birth – let alone the unexpected expenses that come up when a new person arrives. I thought I had that stuff figured out some months back, but life is forcing me to scramble.
Noise in the apartment? Ha. Trying being able to *keep* your apartment with a kid on the way – or in any other life-changing scenario, such as an illness, a death in the family, a career crisis, etc.
I’m absurdly grateful to have a roof over my head for the moment, which is why I’m not even that upset by my asshole neighbours and their “let’s blast shitty dance music that went out of style a decade ago at 2 a.m. on a Sunday night” policy. I’m sure I’ll feel differently once the baby comes, though. People “reassure” me by pointing out that hey, “once that baby starts to cry, your asshole neighbours won’t get any peace as well!” But it’s not a mutual stand-off I crave. I want the baby to cry as little as possible. I want them to refrain from forcing their shitty taste in music down my throat at odd hours. The illusion of privacy in a huge city is long gone (I live in Moscow), but the illusion of *some* decency is still one I want to cling to.
Oh, Christ.
Look, in my city, and where I used to live in Japan, looking people in the eyes is simply not done. It’s a way to create some privacy and frankly, it’s seen as aggressive and presumputous.
Also, having children does not require you to soundproof your home. Children are not actually the noisest residents of your average apartment complex, as the writer and as other posters here have pointed out. I’ve had more problems with the douchebag who used to live upstairs doing soundcheck at 10:00 p.m. (you don’t want to know what I did in response) and the people downstairs smoking a pallet of weed, blaring music loud enough to rattle my dishes, and leave their dog outside on a short run (who cried and howled because he was being neglected). When douchecanoe upstairs and music blarer downstairs moved and a family with a baby moved in, I could hear the baby cry but really? Nothing in comparison. Babies cry. They also grow up and grow out of it. Doucheiness lasts forever, however.
That doesn’t mean the writer was bitchy or childish for wanting some space away from her neighbors or their baby. She wasn’t complaining about how horrible it was to live with a baby as a neighbor. I think it’s kind of squicky and more than a bit presumptuous to require everyone to be great with babies and kids at all times, no matter what, and to be social at all times no matter what. FFS.
When I was searching for an apartment, I always asked the landlords of the flats I viewed if there were any children living next to or above me and made sure they understood that this was really important to me. Turns out the landlord lied to me and now I have to endure the noise of 5 small boys aged 1 to 8 at every fucking time of the day.
I have PTSD that is sort of, well, related to pregnancy/abortion and am overall pretty emotionally unstable. Plus I suffer from insomnia and after 8 years, I wanted to try living without my medication for it because of its side effects – which is now pretty impossible to me. I can’t afford to move into another place/have time to search for one and sometimes have to sleep at university, at work or at a friends’ place because I just can’t take the sound of children screaming, playing basketball above me, turning the TVs volume up to annoy their mother at 3 am etc.
I’m really sorry that I can’t just OMGSUCKITUP or whatever.
@ soraya
I’m really sorry for the circumstances you’re in because your landlord lied to you. I don’t think anyone here would suggest that you should be sucking up PTSD and clinical insomnia. You took steps to protect yourself and got screwed over and that’s just not fair. Your landlord is definitely the douchebag in this scenario for lying to you about the existing tenants.
I would think that would be the fault of the landlord, not the children. It sounds like a crap situation for you, and in an ideal world apartments would be better insulated.
On the same token, though, I don’t know where Soraya lives, but in a lot of places landlords aren’t allowed to discriminate against families with children. So it’s bad that he lied, but even if there weren’t families with children in the apartments, had a family with children wanted to move in, at least in a lot of places in the US he couldn’t have refused them just because of their kids.
Not only that but there ARE people who *choose* not to become parents, partially because they don’t want to have to take care of or deal with a baby/small child for the bulk of their free time. Those people shouldn’t have to run to bars or nightclubs (places where children are prohibited altogether) just to be free of dealing with a baby (the crying etc).
But would that really be so horrible? To have an adults only community? Sort of like dormitories with the absence of university, they would be small places (studio apartments if you will, not really suitable for families due to such small space) and a child-free environment. There are places, that by default are *only* available to people with children because it’s a requirement of funding for the lease and all or the vast majority of the tenants use that funding in order to get the lease.
Those people shouldn’t have to run to bars or nightclubs (places where children are prohibited altogether) just to be free of dealing with a baby (the crying etc).
Reality is, if you live in an apartment, you’re going to hear a crying baby at some point. As well as someone’s overloud music, enthusiastic sex, restless dog, or argument with their SO. I’m not a dog person but I’m not going to bitch at people for having a dog barks occaisionally. I’m child-free, but I’m not going to freak out over a baby crying upstairs.
I don’t have children, nor do I want to have them. But there are children in the world and it’s not terrible for us to live among them.
Ay-yi-yi. I feel the usual headache coming on whenever a parent/CF discussion comes up.
What Sheelzebub said. Seriously, this is not so hard!
I’m not so sure I’m on board with child-free communities. It’s one thing if you’re building a community for people who have special needs — like older folks who need some extra care — but just saying “no kids allowed”? Part of being a grown-up and interacting with other human beings is recognizing that children exist, and you are sometimes going to have to deal with their existence, especially if you are living in an apartment building.
@Soraya–if the family above you is making noise at 3:00 a.m.–as in playing basketball in the house and running about and screaming and playing–then that is something the landlord can and should address. If it’s a colicky or teething baby, they can’t.
If the landlord lied, that sucks, and you may want to check with your local mental health providers to see if there are other options. But keep in mind you could have other people living above you, under you, or next to you that can set off your triggers sans kids. And like Jill said, they can’t deny people with children.
Rhonda in the US many towns try to make things childless by default–by creating “active adult (50+) communities” and “luxury” condos that are small and beyond the reach of families price-wise. That way the towns get the tax revenue and don’t have to spend it on the schools.
I’m child-free but I don’t expect to live without children in my world. I’m no super special snowflake and I’ll cop to being irritated at the constant crying of a child or a child’s temper tantrum (I can only imagine their parents are ready to sign up for a winter excursion to the North Pole after the 100th bout), but that’s life. It beats the everloving hell out of, say, the asshole neighbor’s bigger asshole friend, who thought revving his motorcycle underneath my window at 11 p.m. was the way to go.
I mean, really, why is it that whenever children are mentioned, they are horrible PTSD triggers, hazards, terrible intrusions on our lives, OMG SO NOISY. When I went to the movies or the symphony, it wasn’t kids who created the annoyance, it was douchebags with their cellphones (seriously Very Important People turn those things off or set them to vibrate). And I’d rather my old neighbors with their baby lived above me than the obnoxious twits who live there now–they are 100x noisier. And yes, my old neighbor’s baby was quite the crier. But she was a baby not an obnoxious grown-ass adult who should have fucking known better.
Yeah, there has to be some kind of logical middle ground. It does suck to hear babies cry, and it can be annoying, and I am not particularly patient with overly-entitled parents who believe that their child has the right to do whatever he or she wants wherever he or she wants and F everyone else. But, look: Babies have to live in a home. Sometimes those homes are going to be apartments. Babies cannot be left alone for a week, and sometimes they are going to have to travel on airplanes or buses or subways or trains. When you are interacting in those kinds of spaces, you do have to suck it up.
Can you talk to my neighbors who run to the landlord every time my dog farts?
I’d love to arrange for them to live with my old neighbors. They’d deserve each other.
They do get to live over the guy who moved in recently and has parties until 4 am on weeknights.
I suspect my dog looks pretty good right now.
Maybe it’s because sometimes they truly are PTSD triggers? I too have PTSD and I also have dealt with panic attacks although they are not as bad as they used to be. A lot of noise and chaos triggers a state of anxiety in me or sometimes even a full-blown panic attack. That little girl I mentioned yesterday also set off my exaggerate startle reaction when she popped one of her balloons. A week or two before her, it was a noisy grown man who was making me anxious and nervous with all the unnecesary racket he was making (randomly yelling to his friends who were on the street while we were on the trolley passing them by – even if they probably couldn’t hear him anyway). Junior high age kids I’ve found are the worst for making me miserable on public transporation because of their behavior. But instead of complaining I just try to be patient and hang in there, or most often I avoid being on the bus altogether around 2 or 3 PM when they are all coming home from school.
I don’t blame small children for being noisy in public and contributing to my feelings of anxiety and panic, and I certainly never say anything to the parents or the child about it no matter how upset I get, they’re little kids after all, but I’m not going to pretend that a little kid that is making a ton of racket isn’t upsetting to me just because the child is a child either.
Yeah, I really don’t think it’s fair to tell someone what they can or can’t be triggered by. Personally, my (relatively mild) PTSD is not triggered by kids or the sounds kids make, but that doesn’t mean that’s not the case for someone else, and that doesn’t make them a bad person. Soraya can’t live around kids and she takes measures to make sure she doesn’t have to; in this case, her landlord lied to her and she got fucked over. Is she not allowed to talk about that situation just because there are worse ones out there?
Indeed. And I imagine a lot of people with psychiatric disabilites that are affected by noise (or in Soraya’s case, specifically children) do everything they can to deal with the trigger, Soraya tried to find a place where she wouldn’t be living next to children, I avoid my main source of transportation in the afternoons, to make it easy on ourselves, and to not give other people a hard time ourselves, but sometimes the triggers are still there and still difficult to deal with.
Odin, Shannon: I hear you on the eye contact thing. I don’t like to make eye contact either, or talk to people I don’t know.
Renee: As a kid, I hated making eye contact. I would have felt very uncomfortable if some strange adult forced me to make eye contact with them. I would have felt more respected if they’d let me look at the ground or at a point behind their shoulder.
I’ll cop to hating kids. They get on my nerves, the things they do that are developmentally appropriate annoy the shit out of me. There is little I would like more than to be able to retreat to a magical place where I wouldn’t ever have to interact with someone under the age of about 10 or 12 ever again. But…
The problem with making child-free living spaces legally feasible is that people with the privilege to not have kids, to avoid them, to pay a premium to be free of them, are privileged. Sure, there are a lot of parents that use their kids to bully others into certain kinds of behavior, but that has less to do with the kids than it does with powerful people oppressing less powerful people. The kinds of places that are open primarily to families with children because of funding? Shitholes because children aren’t really subsidized. Studio apartments? Often somewhere families need to live because they’re cheap and kids are expensive. What you would end up with in your child-free living spaces are people with economic privilege and children taking their kids off to the burbs, people with economic privilege but no kids living in their chic child-free spaces, and people without economic privilege getting fucked like they always do. Doubly so if they have kids.
But hey, we already have legally enshrined child free living spaces, they’re called “55+ communities.” See, the only legal exception to saying “no kids” being discrimination is to say “no one under 55″ because elderly folks don’t want to put up with your shit anymore than you want to put up with that obnoxious toddler next door. Elderly folks vote and have a lot of political power so politicians don’t tell them no. Do we really need more of that tribalism and stratification? Or could we maybe grow the fuck up, realize that our problems with kids have to do with us or (occasionally) shitty parents, and move on with our lives like the woman who wrote the original article.
@William
It’s kind of funny, the 55+ communities issue. My mother manages the trailer park I live in and have lived in since I was a child. I had friends that lived in a space across from an elderly couple that would call Mom to complain about my friends and the other children that visited them if we so much as hiccupped within their earshot (so I can still sympathize with the idea of children being children, I was a noisy child once).
Because it’s a trailer park that is always filled to the gills with children and Mom was getting sick of the phone calls, one day sometime after the husband died, my mother suggested to the wife that she’d be so much happier if she moved to the Seniors community housing in town. The woman took offense to that and refused to even consider it. So Mom had to put up with the complaining for a few more years until the woman became depressed and unable to care for herself, and moved in with her daughter and son in law.
Being child-free is a priviledge? So having children is an oppression? Proud mom here, and quite frankly when it comes to being a parent, considering that its easier for a single person to get an abortion than it is to adopt a child I’d say there is a privilege with being a parent, not being one (with the exception for those with unwanted infertility) is a free choice.
And PLEASE dont make me vomit and read that to mean every pregnancy should result in a child and your lives would all be lollipops and rainbows if everyone would just embrace reproduction, Im stating the fact that not everyone can reproduce or adopt (biology and law) and of those who can not everyone can maintain custody/access to their children, many dont know they exist.
I would say being able to “choose” not to have children and having control over your reproductive choices is definitely a privilege.
On housing discrimination: it is against the law to discriminate against family status. That means if someone denies renting to someone because they have children, they can get sued. If you make life unpleasant for someone with children on the hopes that they will move out, you and your landlord can both get sued for violation of fair housing laws (along with harassment). The only exception is 55+ (senior) housing. To get certified as senior housing requires providing certain extensive medical services and other specific accommodations. It is extremely involved and expensive to set up, and the government closely monitors senior housing to make sure people are not just calling their condos senior housing, or whatever.
In terms of disabilities, ADA (if you are American) requires the landlord make “reasonable accommodation” of your disability. In order to make such a request, you need to get formally diagnosed. If you feel like your landlord is not making reasonable accommodation, then you should call the Fair Housing council in your state, and they will investigate it and solve the problem at no cost to you. Installing sound proofing insulation may be considered reasonable, asking your neighbors to not make noise is not. Any accommodation that impinges on the right of your neighbors to live their lives in a normal manner is not considered reasonable.
I am having some major neighbor noise annoyance right now. I live above my elderly, crotchety landlord who has some health problems. He is normally ok, but on occasion he can be unreasonably grumpy about noise (e.g. threatening to call the police because my roommate made pina coladas for two friends at around 11 pm in our kitchen), or opening the door and yelling at me if I run down the hallway on my way out the door. I am a very quiet person, don’t wear shoes in the house, and have rugs on the floors. Also, about once a month, my landlord’s kids come around and play music so loud it makes the floors vibrate all day long on Sunday (like, noon to 9 pm). Since it’s my landlord, I don’t feel comfortable asking them to turn it down. My upstairs neighbors are a bunch of young men who are incredibly heavy walkers, have no rugs, and stomp around all day and night (the guy above me gets home at about midnight and goes to bed around 5 am every morning). The floors are thin and squeaky, and the guy above my bedroom, like, straddles two squeaky floorboards and rocks back and forth at about 1 am every morning. Pretty much everything he does bugs the hell out of me, but I can’t ask him to not walk around his bedroom, or go to bed earlier, and I already asked him if he could try walking more lightly, so there’s anything more I can do. (I’ve gotten the landlord to yell at them for making noises that sounded like dropping bowling balls on the floor at 3 am, which have mercifully stopped). They don’t really party (which if it’s Friday or Saturday, I don’t mind that much), they’re just loud people.
What ticks me off the most is that I have to be super quiet, but my upstairs neighbors can be so noisy.
Can we not have this discussion without someone saying they hate children? It’s ageist hate speech against an oppressed class and it needs to stop.
Yes. Reproductive autonomy is a huge privilege. If you’re straight and fertile, and don’t have reliable, affordable access to birth control and abortion (and many, many people fall into this category!), having a kid won’t really be a choice for you.
You know that gives way to the argument that hetero cis men, as a whole, an not choose to not have children because they dont have the privilege of deciding whether or not to have an abortion.
Not every woman has acess to birth control but most women do, not every woman can afford an abortion but one million get one every year. How many people WANT to adopt but can’t because of their sexual orientation, marital status, gender presentation or mental health issues? How many people are actively discouraged from having children or have their children taken away from them because of addiction problems, mental health issues or poverty? It’s easier to choose not to have a child and not have one than it is to choose TO have a child and actually have/raise that child. Your bodily autonomy stops with YOU, if a singular person wants a child they need gametes from another being or even a gestational surrogate of they are lacking the physical capability of being pregnant. More money and energy is sopent into trying to become a parent than it is in avoiding parenthood, the price of birth control and abortion doesn’t meet the price of fertility clinics and adoption fees. While its easier for poor women to get SOME form of birth control ( in many places condoms are FREE) there is no such thing as free fertility clinics, free surrogates (you’d still have to pa a doctor even if the surrogate does it for purely altruistic reasons) free sperm, free eggs, NO adoption fees.
Straight, fertile AND sexual. Though not 100% effective, pull out method and keeping track of your ovulation works for people with regular periods if they are diligent. There are people who never used BC, never got an abortion or to their knowledge miscarried, ovulate every month like clockwork and dont have children. If you want a child and you’re single, how do you make that happen without the help of another person? If you DONT want a child and you’re single, how do you make that happen without the help of another person? 42% of women obtaining abortions have incomes 100% BELOW the federal poverty level (yeah poor women account for half of all abortions). Only 8% of women who have abortions have NEVER used any method of birth control and the vast majority of those who have abortions and used birth control admit to improper use (76% for the pill and 49% for the condom). http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html
So, I disagree witht he notion that being childfree is inherently a privilege, moreso than a CHOICE because its easier to CHOOSE being childfree than it is to CHOOSE having a child from the time and energy it takes to gestate down to the money it costs for prenatal care, doctors visists, adoption fees etc etc etc.
Some people are FORCED into having children and obviously choice has no place in that conversation. The circumstances involving that force are horrible (from physical abuse to incest/rape to coercion). That should never be ignored, I deifnitely wont ignore it either but its far less common than being forced into childlessness.
So, just because something is true for a small subset of infertile people who are already pretty economically privileged doesn’t mean it’s true for most people most of the time. The vast majority of kids you see running around aren’t here because their parents could afford to spend thousands of dollars on fertility treatments.
Also, your dismissal of the many barriers poor women encounter when seeking reproductive care is insensitive, at best. Maybe I can more charitably assume you haven’t been watching the news, like, at all?
I have to disagree. Reproductive autonomy is a RIGHT. Granted, it is a right that many women are denied access to, and that privileged women are more often able to access. That, in itself, doesn’t make it a privilege. It just means that we have a long way to do in securing that right for everyone.
Also, re: your other comment, I would like to think that most kids out there are there because their parents wanted to have kids? Even in the dire circumstances that we live in, at least with regards to reproductive rights, I think that there are a lot of people out there who do choose to have kids, or at least are happy to do so. Having kids isn’t ALWAYS a failure of reproductive justice. Sometimes it’s a choice – and an awesome one, at that.
Brettk, I phrased it poorly; I definitely agree with that reproductive autonomy a right. I was just emphasizing that access to that right is not enjoyed equally. I also think things like health care and food security are rights, but having access to those things is still a mark of economic privilege.
…Except I didn’t say no one chooses to have kids or that having kids is always a failure of reproductive justice. I was taking issue with Azalea’s strange assertion that it’s super common to spend thousands of dollars trying to have kids.
For a lot of people being child-free is a privilege. Its almost certainly a lifestyle that requires a certain amount of privilege (being male-bodied, having access to birth control and abortion, being financially independent, whatever) to maintain.
Having children opens one to certain kinds of oppression (discrimination in work and housing, restriction of activity, etc.). Does that mean having kids is oppressive? Well, that going to depend on the context. Sure is for some people, probably not for others.
Ahh, you’ve found me out there. Despite my long history of disliking children, aggressive pro-choice politics, and general misanthropy my secret mission all along has been to promote reproduction by tricking people into having kids by saying that being childfree is a privilege. You’ve seen through my clever ruse and had the guts to realize that when I say “privilege” I probably don’t mean it in the way its generally used here but instead as a dog whistle for patriarchy.
Well, yes. I’m just not sure what that has to do with either what I said, what I was responding to, or the original post.
But I read this as the same thing as what Kristen was saying. The people you’re talking about here can’t choose (easily) to have children (or not). The choice is missing here.
Yeah, and throughout, I would argue that you’re overstating bc and abortion access, especially if we’re functioning in a world stage.
Errr, while I agree with most of what you are saying, I’d just like to point out that infertility–and the associated heartbreak–aren’t just limited to the “economically privileged.” It’s just that those are the only people who can plunk down 20k at a go.
Comment fail! Meant to say “It’s just those who can plunk down 20k at a go who can afford the treatments or adoption. Other women just get disappeared because, you know, access to birth control for poor women is *clearly* more important than helping them have more children.”
FFS. I am not telling people what they can and cannot be triggered by. I’m saying that people exist in the world, they have a fucking right to exist in the world, and someone else’s triggers doesn’t mean that children don’t deserve a place to live, or don’t deserve to be out in the world.
Also? Please keep in mind that some of those kids who are making a racket are either disabled or they have PTSD.
Only if you accept their logic that someone else’s body is within their spectrum of choices.
Again, as someone who wasn’t been able to afford birth control in the last year, I can say without question that being childfree is a privilege.
Believe me, people do understand that children exist in this world and have a right to. I don’t think anyone here is actually saying that children shouldn’t exist, people shouldn’t have children, etc. What is being said is that sometimes adults with psychiatric disabilities have problems being around children. I think we even do our best to make things easy on ourselves, and not be unkind to the children we inevitably have to encounter, but even all of that doesn’t change the fact that we will inevitably be around children, and the children will inevitably trigger or stress out adults with these problems. The way you said your original quote that I quoted made it sound like you were even opposed to adults with these problems admitting the children trigger those problems. I’m sorry if that’s not how you intended it, but that is how it came across. And as someone with noise-triggered panic attacks, when I’m about to have a panic attack, I can’t go, “Oh, this is a child,” and the attack magically goes away. My attacks can’t tell the difference between adult noise or child noise, both cause attacks.
And of course there are children with disabilites and PTSD. They deserve compassion just like anyone else. Yet that still doesn’t change the fact they might be triggering or stressing an adult they come into contact with. The children should not be blamed for it, or treated badly at all because of it, but that doesn’t magically make the triggers or the stress go way either.
Well, Annalouise, the person I was responding to was acting as if it was horrific to have children in the vicinity. Look, I get that different people with PTSD have different triggers, but this space–and every other space that has this conversation about children–has been pretty goddamn hostile to mothers and children. The original commenter–and another one piping up–went from “I wish the landlord hadn’t been a dickbiscuit and lied about allowing kids in the building” (which is not cool, but as Jill pointed out, in certain places it also may be illegal to deny them housing) to “those kids are annoying and the parents let them run amok at all hours” and “Why shouldn’t there be adults-only living communities?”
I get that you don’t think the kids who cause certain adults stress and trigger them should be blamed or treated badly, but given the rhetoric I’ve seen about kids in other comment threads on this blog and on others, I’ve seen some horrific and nasty comments that almost wished for a goddamn wire enclosure where we could keep kids away from the rest of us. I was starting to see shades of that crap here.
Annaleigh. Dang.
Thanks Sheelzebub, I see where you’re coming from now. My lurking at Feministe used to be a lot more sporadic so I’ve probably missed some of the child-hating comments in the past, and any commenters heading in that direction are plain wrong, even if they personally dislike kids.
And it’s ok, in my daily life I am mistakenly called Natalie, Emily, Nellie, and other various thereof on a daily basis. I’m used to it. ;)
Most PWD with noise sensitivity issues have gotten used to making our own accommodations, such as timing our trips to the supermarket and other places at times when we’re likely to encounter fewer people. However, it still would be nice if other people would be more considerate of our accessibility needs. This can be done in ways that don’t bar children in general. I’m thinking of very simple things such as allowing PWD with noise sensitivities/PTSD triggers to change seats in various situations. Doesn’t involve causing the family or child to do anything, but can make things infinitely less stressful for the PWD.
Autreat (www.autreat.com) is a retreat geared specifically towards autistic people (of all ages), many of whom have noise sensitivities and some of whom make more noise than is typical. But the autistic people who run the retreat are very concerned about meeting all accessibility needs and take care to arrange things in such a way which is accessible towards everyone. It generally works pretty well. Many of the basic principals and techniques utilized at Autreat can be transferred to the outside world–if neurotypical people are willing to own their privilege, stop doubting PWD when we say x situation is difficult for us, and make a few adjustments and accommodations for us. It really doesn’t have to be that complicated, and it certainly doesn’t mean barring children.
I’m finding the eye-contact discussion really interesting, because it’s definitely, in part, a regional thing. As a good Southern girl, I was socialized to always make eye contact and smile. Recently, during an incredibly stressful day, I failed to make eye contact with a coworker when I passed her. She took deep offense and started yelling at me in the hallway.
I agree with you for the most part, but just to clarify – soraya didn’t ask her landlord if kids were *allowed* in the building, she just asked if there were any kids living in the adjacent apartments. And the landlord lied.
Basically, the whole “should there be child-free apartment buildings” derail has been based entirely on a misunderstanding of soraya’s original comment, which had absolutely nothing to do with adults-only housing and everything to do with the measures she has to take to avoid her own triggers.
I agree the landlord is jerky if the family was living there before she moved in and he lied to her. It’s possible that the family moved in after her, in which case there is nothing the landlord could have done. I already said this earlier, but it looks like people missed it: *everywhere* (not just in some places) in the US, it is ILLEGAL to not rent to someone with kids. Debating the benefits of adults only housing is akin to debating the benefits of whites only housing: moral offensiveness aside, it is totally meaningless since it is completely and 100% illegal to discriminate against family status (and race, obviously) when renting an apartment in the US.
Not quite. Owner-occupied buildings with 4 or fewer units are exempt from discrimination laws entirely. Theoretically once could organize a child-free co-op.
And I, for one, agree 100% with that law. It shouldn’t be legal to deny housing to a family with kids, under any circumstances. However, soraya’s post stated that she asked her landlord if there *were* kids living there, not if there potentially could be at some point. He said there weren’t, and this was not true (again, just based on her comment) – a dick move on his part, obviously. I think it’s reasonable to choose where you live based at least in part on who the neighbours are, even if (obviously) that could change at any given time.
I realize I’m dwelling on this a bit. Personally I have no problem being around kids, but I tend not to assume bad faith on the part of people who for some reason can’t be around kids, and I think listening to them and acknowledging the difficulties they experience doesn’t necessarily mean wanting society to be even less child-friendly than it already is. I agree that kids should be allowed pretty much everywhere; I also, unfortunately, know that this affects some people negatively, and that their experiences shouldn’t be discounted just because being childfree is (sometimes) a privilege.
sherunslunatic: Yeah, I suspect that most of the US people on here come from the Midwest or Northeast. I’ve had a few people tell me how unfriendly my state was because smiling or eye contact isn’t an automatic thing. To be fair- half of the year we’re swaddled under scarves, and it’s too cold to stop and chat.
Personally, I’d find it very difficult to live in the South. I like to be solitary, and I think of the South like I think of the suburbs- nice to visit, but the plasticness and the churchiness would get to me after a while.
Not quite. Owner-occupied buildings with 4 or fewer units are exempt from discrimination laws entirely. Theoretically once could organize a child-free co-op.
Sure, though only if the owner rents it out personally (i.e. not through a broker). I figured since we were talking about apartment buildings this wasn’t really an issue. But yes, you are right.
I’m so glad I live in place where I can go out in the middle of nowhere and find rental property.
The only outside sounds I’m subjected to are birds tweeting.
But… but… how do you get around in the middle of nowhere? WHERE IS THE SUBWAY
/lifelong Torontonian
Shortly after college I spent eighteen hellish months as an apartment broker in Chicago and let me tell you, at least here, thats not quite accurate. The point isn’t to argue the minutia of the law but that a lot of people just don’t realize how much actual housing discrimination there is. I cannot tell you how many listings my office took where the owner specified “no kids” or “no black people” the same way someone else would say “no dogs” or “no smokers.” Nothing was ever put on paper, but everyone knew. Whats worse is that if a building is four or less units the likelihood of a discrimination case being investigated is virtually nil, so you have a lot of people in a city like Chicago who own half a dozen or a dozen two, three, and four flats, claim to live in one unit in all of them, and then discriminate away. Brokers still take the listings because apartment rentals are all but unregulated in even some big cities. Listings go off the market if the owner sees the wrong kind of person, only to come up with some other outfit the next day because there isn’t a centralized database like there is for sales. More than that, a lot of owners just stop returning calls even if they don’t have the legal cover that a small building provides. Every time I got a family looking to rent an apartment I knew it was going to be tough because security deposits would go up, listings would vanish, what was “first month and a move in fee” last week becomes “first month, last month, and a security deposit” this week.