The Parents of a Crying Baby Are Having A Much Worse Time Than You Are

On taking a baby out in public

Back in April, the Washington Post ran a piece about the “viral trend” of parents of small children handing out goodie bags to people sitting close to them on airplanes.

The idea behind the practice is that, as much as a crying child is almost never the fault of the parents, it’s even less the fault of the people unlucky enough to be seated near a screaming baby on said airplane. A “sorry about my kid” gesture at the beginning of the flight signals to the other passengers that the parent knows that the screaming is a drag. A cutesy poem in a ziplock bag of Starburst and earphones won’t make the flight any more pleasant, but at least everybody else on the airplane will know that the parents feel sufficiently bad about themselves.

This has been argued to near-death each time the trend reemerges as a battlefield in the Mommy Wars. People in favor of it say it’s a nice gesture that helps ease a tense situation. People who aren’t in favor of it point out that goody bagging parents are making things harder for every other parent, in effect setting the standard that in addition to everything else parents have to worry about as they prepare to take a baby on vacation, now they’ve got to give a bunch of strangers gifts.

I hope to sidestep the debate entirely by foregoing air travel with my baby until she’s old enough to wipe her own butt. If people want to meet her, they can either fly to me or be important enough that I get in my car and drive to them. I like road trips!

At least, in theory. The thing about a road trip with a baby is that you are still trapped with a baby. If the baby is in a good mood, great! Good for you! Good for everybody! But if the baby is in a bad mood, well, then that’s the mood of the car. You cannot put a baby in a specially-designed yelling chamber. It is not safe or legal to drive with noise-canceling headphones. Even if the passenger is able to block the sound out, on a car trip with a crying baby, somebody’s sanity is marinating in screams.

Another complicating factor is that no matter how conscientious I try to be, eventually I will take my cranky baby into a space shared with people who did not sign up to be around a cranky baby.

All parents will, and when they do, they will get dirty looks from people who find the baby annoying. If the parents stay in a hotel, the people in the next room over might act like total assholes about the fact that there is a baby next door. (I’ve advised the front desk when I’m checking in that I’m traveling with a baby in hopes that they’ll put me in a room away from the other rooms in case Juniper has a Yelly evening.)

Stop in a restaurant? Even a national chain restaurant that specifically welcomes children by supplying high chairs? Dirty looks.

When I’d take the subway in New York and a woman (almost always a woman) would board pushing a stroller, most people would be nice (because contrary to stereotype, New Yorkers actually nice) but there’d be scattered dirty looks from people who were annoyed they had to share space with a baby.

Of course there are spaces that are not for children or for babies. Fine dining establishments, night clubs, stores containing breakable items tantalizingly within reach of a stroller, romantic B&B’s where the understanding that every couple who stays there is there to bang… but there are also spaces that are not designed with children and babies in mind that are nevertheless places where parents with small children should be free to go without being treated like they’re ruining everybody’s day.

Babies exist and are allowed to be out in public. Parents shouldn’t be expected to suddenly sequester themselves in Chuck E Cheese for the first decade of their kids’ lives because somebody who chose not to have children (or whose children are grown) doesn’t want to be around them at all. Parents shouldn’t be expected to apologize that their child exists when they are doing the best they can, but their baby is nevertheless acting mildly disruptive.

Juniper is in a phase now where she will scream when anything is taken out of her hands. It’s an eardrum-shaking, face reddening scream. Before it happens, she’ll draw all of the breath that her tiny lungs can hold, and she’ll expel all of it in a category 5 shriek that lasts for several seconds. Sometimes she’ll go in for round two, but the aftershocks are never as powerful as that first blast of baby rage.

She did it in a store the other day when I took a Halloween ornament that was definitely not safe for babies out of her hands before she could put it in her mouth and hurt herself or throw it on the floor and break it. I felt bad for the people around me– she’s very loud. Nobody likes screaming. But I was the one whose ear she screamed into, not the woman standing in line twenty feet away who looked at me like what was happening was something I’d personally done to her. I checked out and left the store as soon as I could, apologizing profusely the entire time, but I felt bad for the rest of the afternoon, like I’d done something wrong by simply going out in public to buy crafting supplies.

I understand how other parents feel now. Every parent who is trying their best to move through the world alongside a baby is having a worse day than the person on the plane getting handed a goody bag. Even if the baby is not yelling, the threat that they could have a meltdown at any time is not a relaxing mindset to exists in perpetually.

I hate to admit it, but there have been times in the past when I’ve been the train scowler, the airplane eye roller, the person to turn to my companion and grumble, “Why’d they have to bring their loud kid here?” As I got older and a little less of an asshole in that specific way, I stopped taking it as an affront when a baby was loud. Babies are loud. That’s what babies do. They do not understand manners. They are rude. Parents can only do so much. If I don’t like it, I can open up an adults-only B&B.

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