Is Banning Children from Restaurants and Businesses O.K.?

No smoking and no dogs are common rules in restaurants and other public places, but what about a ban on children? 

There is a growing trend afoot that considers children to not only be a nuisance, but bad for business.

For example, Malaysia Airlines recently banned children from first class, and a restaurant in Pennsylvania made headlines when the owner decided to no longer allow kids under six years old to dine at his establishment.

He reportedly said that he made the decision after many customer complaints.

While he doesn’t dislike children, he said, he feels that allowing them to scream at a public dinner table is “the height of being impolite and selfish.”

Another restaurant owner in North Carolina posted a sign on her business’ door that read, “Screaming children will not be tolerated.”

Not surprisingly, there is even a Facebook group, BAN KIDS FROM RESTAURANTS, which is nearly 3,000 strong.

So what is going on with all the kid-haters?

My perspective on this is a bit unique because I am a parent, but before I had children I was on the other side of the counter for many years.

Frankly, given how I felt about children, parents, and their collective antics in my stores in those days, some former co-workers are shocked I had children, let alone radically changed my life and career to be at home with them.

Like the restaurant owner in Philadelphia, I never said I disliked children in general; I just liked to say I treated kids as individual people, as I do adults — some I enjoy, and some I do not.

I was more irritated with the parents than I ever was with the children —I still am.

There has always been a divide between people who have children and those who do not, as well as between parents with different parenting styles.

The tone of the debate is getting nasty lately.

On one hand, it seems people without children feel they are entitled to eat the meals they paid for in peace. On the other hand, parents feel they are entitled to also enjoying the meal they paid for, with their kids and their obscenely over-priced kids' meal.

With parenthood came my fair share of humble pie, because while I liked to think I regarded children as people, I really didn’t when it came down to it.

I didn’t understand, really, that they are individuals, with thoughts, feelings, challenges, and motivations.

But really, what I also have had to learn is that they can’t and shouldn’t be expected to always understand what adults should get, and not from the get-go.

It’s the “what adults should get” part that this debate comes down to for me.

As a parent, I should get that while my little humans are learning their manners, my good manners dictate choosing wisely where and when I take them to learn these lessons, according to what they are capable of at that moment in their lives.

And, more importantly, I should get that the best teaching of manners I can offer is practicing them myself, repeatedly.

As an adult who shares the world with these little balls of pure impulse, I should get that they don’t have the actual ability (yet) to do what I expect them to sometimes, and that they do in fact need to live in the world to be able to learn what the expectations are.

My mother used to wisely (and annoyingly) tell me, “the world does not revolve around you."

I’d say that is true — whether you have kids or not.