We Have Weird Ideas About What’s Appropriate for Kids These Days

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Peter Holley has this story up today:

The final straw was a little girl using an iPad with the volume on high, a device her parents refused to turn down despite repeated requests from the staff at Caruso’s, an upscale Italian restaurant in Mooresville, N.C….“Finally, we had to ask them to leave,” Nunez told The Washington Post.

“That was the incident that triggered the entire thing.” “The entire thing,” as Nunez puts it, is the restaurant’s strict ban on children under the age of 5. It went into effect in January, drawing passionate applause from some diners online and angry condemnation from others.

So what does everyone think about banning small kids from an upscale restaurant? I am informally forbidden from commenting on stuff like this because I have no children and am therefore assumed to have no understanding of the vast stresses involved in raising kids.1 Fair enough. I’ll keep my mouth shut.

Except for this. Thirty years ago, this wouldn’t have been an issue. There were places that were appropriate for small children and places that weren’t. McDonald’s? Appropriate. Denny’s? Appropriate. That little Italian place on the corner? Maybe. How well behaved are your kids? Morton’s Steakhouse? Inappropriate. It’s a grownup place.

This distinction seems to have died out, and I’m not sure why. A lot of people think it has to do with this:

As the number of small children has declined, they all become precious snowflakes who deserve constant attention and only the best things in life. For what it’s worth, I don’t buy this. I don’t have any particular reason. It just doesn’t seem right.

And yet, the distinction between places that are appropriate for small children and those that aren’t sure seems to have gotten bolloxed up. At the same time that lots of parents take their toddlers to upscale restaurants and R-rated movies, older children are all but banned from walking alone to a nearby park lest some busybody call the cops to report this obviously reckless parental neglect.

I dunno. I’m not a parent, and my cats don’t do a damn thing I tell them. What’s going on?

1I also have no experience with the vast stresses of running a restaurant, but no one ever seems to care about that.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate