the ignorant and childless

So yesterday on facebook, a "friend" had the following status update...

Dear mom flying with your infant across the row from us:
Please try purchasing a passaphire for your screaming bundle of joy on future flights lasting over five minutes. Or how about just not flying after juniors bedtime period. Thanks!!!!
Love, Your 120 fellow JetBlue passengers

now I know that this person is a generally kind and tolerant person, I think they may even have children they love in their family. But I was still so offended on behalf of the poor woman on the plane and for myself that I felt the need to vent about it a little, so here are my rants...

1. Learn to spell pacifier.

2. Sure make rude faces and be frustrated because public forms of travel are all about YOU!

3. I'm sure that mother planned on her baby screaming because that's not embarrassing at all for her, not to mention music to a parent's ears.

4. What would have fixed that situation for you, oh harbinger of intolerance? Her whipping out a boob to feed the kid? I bet you would have found that weird. Drugging the child with benadryl to make them sleep? You would have found that deplorable. Ignoring the child completely? Selfish.

The thing that bugs me so much about this is that it is the poster slogan for how selfish we as a culture tend to be and yet are totally unaware of it. Our culture is belittling to parents regardless of how they are raising their children. Working moms don't put their families first, stay at home moms are dumb or wasting their time, spanking is cruel, not spanking means you're a tree-hugging weirdo. Working dads are work-a-holics, stay at home dads are eunuchs. We parents can't win. No matter what we do we cannot make the childless portion of the population happy.

So you know what, screw you.

I'm tired of my character and life choices being judged by people who are observing situations that are totally normal for a child (i.e. crying, being frustrated, saying something "inappropriate", wetting their pants, etc.) and labeling me a success or a failure as a person based on that. These things children experience are not "value" situations. That kid cussing at his mom, okay, she probably needs to step up, but you know what...who knows? You don't know that situation, what they're going through at home, or what stresses that family may be dealing with that happen to be exposing themselves in front of you at the moment. We have a culture that is so intent on hiding our problems and appearing perfect in every way that when we see reality it frightens and offends us. "From the mouths of babes..." applies not only to moments like, "Mommy says Daddy is a jackass" but also to how we interact with people on a daily basis. How sad that even in infancy we expect children to stifle their feelings, subject their own very real needs to keep total strangers comfortable, and blame the parents for any slips. The real tragedy is that we parents continue to buy into this lie and perpetuate the cycle. Crying is normal, being frustrated and even angry is okay, we cannot plan for every situation and we will make mistakes. It'd be nice if the one thing we could count on was compassion and help from our fellow adults, but apparently their mamas didn't raise them right.