The Bantam Menace

I read a piece yesterday afternoon (itself covering a CNN article) about the battle over whether children should be allowed to fly.

Now I'm going to ask you to go back and read that first sentence again.

Thank you.  Yes, there are battles, fought by frenzied parents and besieged corporate travelers over whether Johnny is crying too much in aisle 19.  At one extreme are those who want everyone to believe that children making noise should be considered joyful, an expression of life at its fullest.  Kicking the seat?  Normal energy use.  Running up and down the aisles?  No problem.  Don't like it?  Too bad.  "Just wait 'til you have kids, buddy."  At the other end are those who yearn for the days of "children should be seen but not heard."  They want children consigned to the back of the plane (seriously) with a curtain to block sound ... and that's if they deign to allow children on the plane in the first place.  Parents who bring children on vacation, or to visit Grandma, or for any other purpose, are vain and narcissistic, and hate both their children and everyone around them.

And I'm probably underselling the rhetoric in the comments section.


One of the things I least looked forward to about having a child was trying to travel with a child, especially flying, since I figured it wouldn't be easy.  The stuff you need multiplies astronomically once you have a kid (much more so than going from single to married ... though I'm still not sure why you'd need that much mousse for an overnight trip).  Stroller, car seat, diapers, DIAPERS—you have to bring enough diapers to last as long as your trip plus enough for the baby to poop out his pants twice a day, just in case!—food, clothes, toys.  And that's even before you've left the house.

Oy.

We took Nicholas on his first plane trip back in January (to San Diego), and he behaved wonderfully.  The trip also confirmed that traveling with a child is a nightmare.  I listed all the stuff already, so I'll stipulate that.  But it is a ton of work to travel with a baby (and he at least was willing to sit still!).  If you think about how little you like being crammed into an airplane seat for hours, think about Nicholas, who at 6 months old had to find a way to take his naps scrunched up in his mother's arms, a little too warm to be comfortable, and not used to sleeping sitting up.  Because he responds to music, we ended up spending 40 minutes singing him songs to keep him calm.  We used toys to keep him occupied.  It sort of worked, and he had no outbursts.

But I look at the list of suggestions in the CNN article and chuckle, at least at some of them.  Most of the suggestions are common-sense.  Be prepared, with toys and activities, food, and so on.  Okay, no problem there.  But walking up and down the aisles is only an option (a) when they're not bringing the drink cart through the cabin, and (b) when the "fasten seat belt" sign is turned off, which, as you know, is sometimes never, even on what appears to a layman to be a quiet flight.  And I understand that there's a difference between an infant crying on take-off and a 6-year-old who needs to run up and down the aisles pretending he's SpongeBob SquarePants or whatever.  And parents need to make an effort, of course.  Actually, one of the suggestions is to make an effort because that frequently soothes frustrated fellow passengers as much as the child.

But the psychologist who said on the record that "The other people on the plane do not have to be subjected to your child crying. It is absolutely not something that they should be expected to endure. They can't leave," well, she can kiss my behind.  Sometimes parents need to travel.  Sometimes parents want to travel.  Sometimes they want to bring their kids.  Sometimes they have no choice.  But kids cry.  And make noise.  and find air travel as inconvenient and annoying as the rest of us, but aren't mature enough to curse at flight attendants and gate agents like grown-ups can.  Should we deal with them when they lose control?  Absolutely.  Should we ban children from flying, or force them to a segregated section in the very back of the plane?  How about instead we ban business travelers who take up extra space with their laptops, who continue their cell phone conversation until the very last moment before the plane accelerates into take-off?  Wouldn't that make flying a better experience?

Yeah, exactly.  So let's all relax people, and remember that we live with a social contract, and not in some sort of reality version of Lord of the Flies.

I'm done now.