Taking sides: Children vs. (non-human) animals

both io and lex were talking about the parents' behaviour there yes

I find parents more problematic than kids at times, but I'd still take cats over anything.

both io and lex were talking about the parents' behaviour there yes

fuck off

/A propos of upthread I know ppl with kids who you can still have a conversation with while the kids amuse themselves, and then I know ones where the child is used to interrupting by yelling and demanding immediate attention and the parent obliges every time, which isn't about the nature of children as much as boundaries and compromises parents make. It's still extremely tedious though./

the nadir i've witnessed of the latter was one friend talking about her mother's breast cancer to another friend (with toddler), and mid-sentence the latter just...switched her attention to her child with no warning or acknowledgement

most conversations are not as serious as that, fortunately, but the tendency to abruptly abandon conversations when children wander up is pretty common in parents

these are the posts

i don't think you can compare one random act of massive rudeness to every instance in which a parent might interrupt a conversation to listen to their child.

sorry i swore at you - i just don't get what your view is based on these interjections.

One can see plenty of shitty parents out there (roughly in proportion to the overall percentage of shitty people).

But IME most parents are terrified and exhausted and completely winging it 94.3% of the time. Personally I'm up around 96% right now.

Sorry yr parent friends are boring you; maybe they aren't aware of how much you depend on them to entertain you. Maybe they're going through a boring phase just now (because they're tired and scared and anxious and, again, completely winging it) and will return to being the cool hip people you once knew later. Maybe not. I don't know.

WTF is this 300-post thread full of invective even?

hate to ljsplain this (actually i lie, i love to lol) but this is the situation

some ppl are uneasy around children for w/e reason

some ppl adore children oo coo otty potty bum

if these two camps respect one another's positions then we will have a functional society

if you look back at what i said, i said children seemed to have both a capacity to be more innocent but also to behave in a more base, destructive way. but that's minus any real power, screaming for a second dessert or something, which kind of goes to the heart of it for me. there's a power imbalance between adults and children. we shouldn't expect them to behave better than us.

And not to get all "it takes a village" here but children don't just absorb their social and moral cues from their parents and grandparents, they absorb them from everyone around them. Treating them like pestilent little pariahs probably not a good idea.

obviously lex should just cut all the parents out of his life; it's better for everyone

it won't help on the sidewalks, but life is sadly imperfect

some ppl are uneasy around children for w/e reason

some ppl adore children oo coo otty potty bum

if these two camps respect one another's positions then we will have a functional society

yeah louis it's fairly easy to come in and say this.

the truth of the thread is it began by someone saying they hated children, the word "hated" was used, then subsequently the hatred was toned down to a diet version of "would prefer not to be around them" - which is fine. no problem with people choosing how to spend their time.

the truth of the thread is it began by someone saying they hated children, the word "hated" was used

stop lying and exaggerating you ridiculously overdramatic person

Xps he did say that was the nadir of what io was talking about! just didn't think it fair to say either is "blaming the child"

the word "hated" was used

By lex?

you have to wonder about the motivation behind interpreting "i dislike being around children and am annoyed by them and their parents" as "i hate all children and they make me an irate monster"

also i hated children when i was a child, it's not a new development

― lex pretend, Monday, December 12, 2016 12:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also i hated children when i was a child, it's not a new development

― lex pretend, Monday, December 12, 2016 12:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also i hated children when i was a child, it's not a new development

― lex pretend, Monday, December 12, 2016 12:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also i hated children when i was a child, it's not a new development

― lex pretend, Monday, December 12, 2016 12:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As an adult, hanging out near the elementary school playground every day is finally YOUR choice.

you know who loved children?

Humbert Humbert

oh shit now I don't know what to think

xp Jimmy Savile

He loved corpses too, so he doesn't really count.

you know who loved children?

― Our Sweet Fredrest (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, December 13, 2016 2:35 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he was also a vegetarian iirc

Corpses are much more polite than children tbf.

if we can ban both strollers (Britishes "prams") and dogs then I'll consider this thread a winner

lex's selective memory perhaps some indication that he is, just maybe, dimly and partially aware of being wrong here

sorry i swore at you - i just don't get what your view is based on these interjections.

I wasn't ignoring this I just got pissed off at the xpost bug

don't worry about it - I think I gave my view above, such as it is: I'm not much of a dog person but took the original revive in the spirit intended; then everybody literally - literally - I mean this literally - went insane

your posts have been good lg fwiw but otherwise tombot otm basically

lex's selective memory perhaps some indication that he is, just maybe, dimly and partially aware of being wrong here

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, December 13, 2016 7:58 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this overreaction to mild hyperbole is completely fucking ludicrous and, I'd posit, far more bizarre behaviour than merely ~hating children

I hate hyperbole with the fury of a hundred suns.

Two things based on what I have read:

1/ Misanthrophy does indeed come in a couple of flavours. Patricia Highsmith was def one for people hating and animal loving. Lex is hating on children and loving of dogs so both his love and hate are too particular.
2/ Not sure about this notion that children are the only disruptive ones. Dogs can be quite disruptive in pubs, crawling under your leg and begging for your attention. Often in the same class as small children. They are similar and must be trained well to behave. I try to avoid both.

3/ Plants and stones are the best.

lol Aimless

Mild hyperbole can be irritating because of the sweeping statements involved e.g.

oh and another thing is that 99% of the time having children turns formerly interesting and fun adults into complete bores (the 1% mostly comprises naturally gifted raconteurs who can make any anecdote entertaining). this thread seems evidence of that

and the 'hey I don't know why everyone gets so wound up - it's only a bit of mild hyperbole' escape clause.

he really meant only 96%

can you imagine anyone being called a bad person for not enjoying the company of dogs or cats?

If you don't enjoy the company of dogs or cats, you are a bad person.

I've only ever heard "I don't like children" from gay men and quite supercilious ones. I'm not saying that that's you, Lex, but it has driven me mad in the past. It's too much of a pose and it's one that's definitely worth resisting strongly, IMO.

On the other hand, resisting middle class indulgent parents who'll let their children do anything they want is something we should all get behind. I once saw a 5-7 year old boy climb into the freezer cabinet at waitrose (the kinda trough ones) and walk over the produce, climbing over the glass patricians that separate the trough while his mother, pushing the trolley alongside him, occasionally meekly called out "Charlie [or whatever - one of those old fashioned classy names] the man will be very cross if he sees you in there.... We could get thrown out... You might be told off soon. " & similar while I looked on aghast.

"Glass patricians" o_O

smash them

shouldnt stow thrones

I've only ever heard "I don't like children" from gay men and quite supercilious ones. I'm not saying that that's you, Lex

hmm if only there was enough evidence for us to determine this conclusively

I've heard that from all kinds of people. Including my wife. And me.

no one likes kids, the parents itt are hardcore lying to themselves because that's what they have to do. 'you tell a lie so much, you start to believe it's real...' - vito from the sopranos

gay vito?

I like kids, I just don't think anyone should be having them based on my entirely pessimistic view of what the world will be like in 50 or 20 years.

Or two years.

Everything he did was pose—a pose so deeply calculated that if one were not on the lookout one mistook it for impulse. Ralph had never met a man who lived so much in the land of calculation. His tastes, his studies, his accomplishments, his collections, were all for a purpose. His life on his hill-top at Florence had been a pose of years. His solitude, his ennui, his love for his daughter, his good manners, his bad manners, were so many features of a mental image constantly present to him as a model of impertinence and mystification. His ambition was not to please the world, but to please himself by exciting the world’s curiosity and then declining to satisfy it. It made him feel great to play the world a trick.

Fair to say: I probably like my (late) dog more than I like most other people's children, and one reason I loved him was because he was very tolerant of the children who wanted to interact with him. Probably also fair to say that I had a lot of issues with other kids when I was a kid, because what kind of asshole decides it's OK to bully another kid who is in the middle of chemotherapy?

However, entitled parents are far, far worse than their progeny, and parents being cruel to their kids in public gives me rage. See also: friends with boy children who are all 'go for it kiddo, be the best you can be' but with girl children, 'sharing is important, wait your turn'.

I've only ever heard "I don't like children" from gay men and quite supercilious ones. I'm not saying that that's you, Lex, but it has driven me mad in the past. It's too much of a pose and it's one that's definitely worth resisting strongly, IMO.

i've most often heard it from straight women, but almost always online, in the context of a vent they wouldn't be able to say out loud. hardly ever from straight men. i don't know why you'd say it's a pose or pretend to have that sort of insight into how people really feel

don't want to imagine how many different kinds of cancer my mom would have to have for me to be shocked someone spoke to their kid while i was talking about them

I may or may not be a straight woman who has ventured an opinion on OPCs while in proximity to Lex.