I encounter a lot of situations where people just make individual decisions about what people should and shouldn't do around their kids, including whole baroque systems of assumed etiquette, and then act outraged that these decisions aren't universally understood or obeyed by strangers in public.
this dynamic might be less of a problem if it didn't include that element--the assumption of a cultural consensus. in more diverse environments or areas with higher population density i have found that people can more easily cope with the fact that there are always going to be differences (sometimes major ones) in how people live. if those differences cause problems or conflict, these can at least be dealt with on their own terms, rather than as some sort of violation of an imaginary universal consensus.
I remember seeing you tweet about this some time ago and meant to ask then: where are you seeing this discourse? Like, is there a huge hotbed discussion I'm missing? It makes me and my algorithm feel left out. It also seems like this might be one of those perpetuating discussions that continually consumes the zeitgeist at all hours of the day.
Anyways, as I replied then, I think the majority of people who don't care for kids eventually reach a level of maturity where they learn to share their existence. It just takes longer for some -- I'm sure we all recall being cross-eyed in our own myopia, right?
As parents, we're forced into it. Or, as one of my friends put it, "You don't realize how selfish you really are until you have kids."
https://www.theonion.com/single-woman-with-3-young-children-unaware-she-subject-1819578101
I encounter a lot of situations where people just make individual decisions about what people should and shouldn't do around their kids, including whole baroque systems of assumed etiquette, and then act outraged that these decisions aren't universally understood or obeyed by strangers in public.
this dynamic might be less of a problem if it didn't include that element--the assumption of a cultural consensus. in more diverse environments or areas with higher population density i have found that people can more easily cope with the fact that there are always going to be differences (sometimes major ones) in how people live. if those differences cause problems or conflict, these can at least be dealt with on their own terms, rather than as some sort of violation of an imaginary universal consensus.
I remember seeing you tweet about this some time ago and meant to ask then: where are you seeing this discourse? Like, is there a huge hotbed discussion I'm missing? It makes me and my algorithm feel left out. It also seems like this might be one of those perpetuating discussions that continually consumes the zeitgeist at all hours of the day.
Anyways, as I replied then, I think the majority of people who don't care for kids eventually reach a level of maturity where they learn to share their existence. It just takes longer for some -- I'm sure we all recall being cross-eyed in our own myopia, right?
As parents, we're forced into it. Or, as one of my friends put it, "You don't realize how selfish you really are until you have kids."