Ask Lemmy

Here’s a fresh one: someone called me a shitty parent because I think Americans are generally very intolerant of kids in public spaces. They flew off the handle because I said what some people call “annoying” I call “being a kid.” There are a lot of people on Lemmy who get very angry about the idea that kids might irritate them or otherwise make themselves known, and they immediately start ranting about how those parents are dog shit and the kids need to essentially be muzzled.

I have a pretty big ax to grind with all the eugenics/breeder bullshit going on in my country right now. It’s very scary and I get why people are weary of having kids. But anti-natalism is not a good look and this tendency for people to feel borderline virtuous for calling parents shitty for “not controlling their kids“ is really something to behold.

I’m not even here to have that debate. What’s so shocking to me is after just a couple of sentences the default stance is “you must be a shitty parent.” It’s pretty awful thing to say but I see it thrown around so casually all the time like how the right just calls people pedophiles for no fucking reason (obviously very different tiers of accusations but you get the point).