For Cindy Nooney's 3-year-old twin boys, playing with the Thomas the Train set at their local bookstore in Southern California is a major thrill. Jack and Sam push Thomas, Arthur and friends down the track, they run around the table, jump up and down — and, of course, they squeeeaal.
Nooney expects as much in the children's section of the store. But on a recent afternoon, she was surprised by an employee who confronted her, calling her darling Jack a tyrant.
“He was a little loud but this is a children’s section,” says Nooney. "They run a noisy, cavernous bookstore but they don’t want kids to make any noise? It just seems ridiculous and leads me to believe that they don’t want kids, they want silent kids.”
The bookstore is not the only place that likes quiet, controlled children — and isn't afraid to say so. Across the nation, there are signs of a low-burning uprising against children supposedly behaving badly in public.
Eateries from California to Massachusetts have posted signs on doors and menus saying “We love children, especially when they are tucked in chairs and well behaved” or “Kids must use indoor voices.” In North Carolina an online petition was started last year to establish child-free restaurants — the petition loosely compared dining with children to dining with cigarette smoke.
In response to an MSNBC.com story about the controversy over pets in public places, some readers wrote in to say they'd much rather see a dog at dinner, the movies or the mall than little "cretins." Dogs are better behaved, they smell better and they're much cuter, wrote one reader.
Josephine Charlton, a public relations consultant in West Hollywood, Calif., says she loves children but feels they are becoming public nuisances nonetheless. Her local Whole Foods has been overrun by “breeders” with an oversized sense of entitlement, she says, museums are now inappropriately clogged with strollers, and even first-class travel has morphed into "Romper Room" in the air.
“You can’t work on planes anymore because of kids running around,” says Charlton. She recalls a recent flight when parents allowed their toddler son to run up and down the aisle in first-class. “My friend said, ‘Hey, would you mind watching your child?’ You would’ve thought he wanted to nail the kid to a cross!”
Charlton, who doesn’t have children but describes herself as an adoring godmother of two, says too many parents act as if the earth revolves around their children, and the general public should treat them as such. Yet kids are more out of control than ever, she says.
Is it true? Are children these days allowed to run amok like never before? Has public etiquette gone to hell in a hand basket or — er — a Dora The Explorer backpack? Or is society simply becoming more intolerant of little tikes?