Having children myself, belive it or not. I am all for designating "Child-free Zones". On the rare occasion I am able to get away from own kids I have to listen to yelping and screeching of some other parent's tantrum tornadoes. I am a single parent and the right to get away to a "Childfree Zone" really appeals to me.

DM, that's what one woman said who was interviewed for this radio. She has two children, I believe, and said she really looks forward to getting a sitter now and then and having an all-adult evening but that it's getting increasingly hard to find a place to do that. I bet there are a lot of people with kids who feel the same way.

Yeah. I don't think having kids means you have to automatically believe the kids should be everywhere, all the time.

Weren't things different in the 50s? Or am I just idealizing TV shows that I saw in re-runs?

I think things were different in the 70s! (1st half, at least.) My sister and I didn't get brought places unless they were explicitly kid-friendly, or unless we were able to handle ourselves. My parents thought it would be inconceiveable to impose kids on a "grown-up" dinner, and they got sitters. Now, I realize there are economic issues here (can everyone afford sitters? maybe not), but the principle is a good one. Of course, my family was (is) very traditional in some ways, so my mom may have been a throwback to an earlier era. And my mom's not American - I don't think Europeans have succumbed to this "kids everywhere" mentality (and I'm sorry, but they're not all someone emotionally scarred or stunted from having been brought up with limits!).

Rant, rant, rant... oh well, fascinating topic...

profgrrrrl and NewKid....yes, you're both right. And NewKid, I grew up in the 70s too (as did Mr.Cheeky) and we talk about this a lot (as part of our kids/no kids conversation). We weren't taken to extra fancy places. We weren't allowed to scream and carry on in public. We didn't have to win everything, unlike the growing movement today where there are no winners or losers while playing team sports in elementary school because there's some ridiculous belief that it's now bad to let kids think they lost at something. This happens at your nieces' school. Can you believe it?! If kids can't handle losing floor hockey at 10, how the hell are they ever going to learn to handle life's real losses?

It's all part of that child-centric culture we've been discussing. My cousin teaches kindergarten/1st grade. She was at an inner city Atlanta school and now she's at an American school in Vienna. Her stories about how parents treat her vis-à-vis the kids are appalling. Frequently, parents will come into the classroom while dropping off or picking up their children and argue with her/tell her how wrong she is in front of the child! My parents would have never done this. I was taught to respect my teachers and if my folks ever did have a problem with one of them, I sure as hell didn't know about it. It was all part of that unified front thing.

And those of us who teach in higher ed now wonder why the students are so rude, so confrontational, with such a sense of entitlement? Why they say things like, "I pay your salary," "What gives you the right to evaluate me?," and "You don't know what you're talking about" (I've heard all of those). It's because they are taught to be that way!

Someone else already mentioned it but this is a big part of the reason we're leaning away from having kids. We don't want to be part of that culture. We don't want to perpetuate that or, for that matter, have to fight against it raising our own kid.

Yeah, 70's kid here too. And my folks didn't let me run around wild. I actually ate in restaurants a lot, because I was an only for a long time and I was very quiet/well-behaved. When my noisy/crazy sister came along, we started getting babysitters for everything. I also recall my mother just picking us up and leaving places if we misbehaved. I don't mean a fancy restaurant, either. She's leave the cart behind and vacate the grocery store and take us home --- do not pass GO, do not stop to get the ritual ice cream --- if we acted up. I think that was fair.

The whole schooling and entitlement thing would be a huge issue for me if I had a kid. I fear I'd want to home school, only I don't have any whacko beliefs to project onto imaginary kid (hee, just kidding. I know there are many reasons to home school). I feel for teachers these days. I have one friend who is constantly dealing with parents who come say their kid really is the smartest and she's just not helping precious perfect live to his/her potential. In one case, precious perfect expects a personalized engraved invitation to do homework. No. Not right.

And the parents really are the ones to blame here. Kids are kids. Parents determine the true heinosity level. I firmly believe this to be true. My aforementioned sister was always kept firmly in check by parents. It may be in her nature to misbehave and have a big ego, but nurture worked to break those personality, umm, flaws(?).

I think you all have some absolutely fabulous insight into this issue, but I would like to point out that this problem might (I hope) be generational. We are all having issues with the children of the generation that preceeded us and now the doors that were opened by the most self-gratifying generation in the history of the world are being walked through by our peers. I am generally pleased with my sister, and brother when I see how they deal with my nieces and nephew in situations that I complain about.

I started to notice my anger building in the late eighties and early nineties as the baby boom generation started to produce their own boom. I think that the same sense of entitlement was cultured in the boomers by their parents who had just saved the world from a horrible dictatorial scourge on Europe and were living in a time of unprecedented prosperity for most americans. Their children could do anything, their children could become wealthy beyond their own dreams, and have higher education at a higher rate than themselves. Their children were not going to go to the plant, or mine, or farm everyday in order to eek out a subsistance living. There would be no great depression for them, nothing could stop them. Nothing did stop them, and now, nothing will. The bulge in the snake of american society in turn reared their children with the sense of entitlement based on the ideals that their parents projected onto them.

I think that the entitled obnoxious children that we're all so pissed off about would've been better served by being raised by their grandparents who worked hard all their lives, to make a better world, a more equitable world for their children to take charge of. The same children who did take charge of the world by force of shear numbers, and have done nothing to advance the ultimate american ideal; that each generation makes it easier for the next to live the american dream.

Damn, sometimes I'm just reminded of how lucky I am to have an intelligent, thinking hubby. And all with only a bachelor's degree! [smirk] ;-P