A bit of a rant, pre-sorry but so sad and annoyed right now.
Went to my favorite barber shop today. It’s built on being nice, upscale, and men’s haircuts. They do the works, good cuts, beard trimming/shaping, hot towel, the whole thing, and it’s built to be man’s place, they have a pool table, they have a couple of kegerators, they’ll pour you a whiskey while you wait. Very nice.
(Note I say man’s but really if you’re a woman/any other gender and you like that sort of thing, then awesome. I mean man in the masculine sense)
Until recently this was my favorite place, but apparently it’s gotten on the mom groups online and now the last few times I’ve gone it’s just filled with children and moms. Where I could go and get a whiskey while I wait and find someone to shoot pool with, now kids are literally running around and as for the pool table they’re just throwing the balls around. Meanwhile the moms are either talking with each other or hovering over Bradley getting his hair cut and how cute it is.
On top of it all, because there was a group of them instead of my normal 20 min wait it was almost a 2 hours wait. I just walked out.
I’m just so tired of it, this place obviously was built for adults but god forbid we have any adult places that aren’t “actually meant for children”. I mean obviously it was built for children, there’s 2 kegs and a shelf of nice scotch but yes, bring all of your children here.
How come every place that used to be for adults is now a child zone? My favorite breweries used to be great places to let off steam after work and now I have kids playing tag in the middle of them. I flat out don’t go to movies anymore because even the super late showings are just dumping grounds for inattentive parents to leave their kids. And god forbid you ever mention outside a community like this that you want to drink a beer without a kid running around or you’re literally the devil who should be shunned.
Anyway, this isn’t going anywhere specifically, I’m just really sad, and I didn’t get my haircut today.
It’s the people that changed. It used to be common sense. There were places parents knew that you just didn’t bring kids. But now, parents are taught to be entitled. They demand to bring kids everywhere.
I’d suggest that a minor contribution to this would also be stagnating wages; inflation; and increased cost of childcare. Now the ‘adult’ activities we want to enjoy are more expensive; we’re earning less money (in real terms); and childcare is more expensive, leading to a lot of people on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum to be faced with the choice of ‘take your kids or don’t go at all’.
I definitely agree with you though. Western societies have been becoming more individualistic and entitled and that’s likely the biggest cause. I just don’t think it’s the only cause. As with everything in life, the reasons why something happens are usually varied and can rarely be boiled down to one thing.
Individual selfishness is responsible for… People having children, raising them, and bringing them places?
Am I insane or does that just on its face not make any sense?
Your first paragraph is the actual reason here. It’s too expensive for a lot of parents to get a babysitter, so they need to bring their kids with them if they want to go do something. And for many people like me who work from home (I don’t have kids yet but the point stands) that one night every week or so that we go out to dinner is basically the only time I go to do anything fun outside the house that isn’t working out. When I worked in an office (which I ever want to do again) I’d go out to lunch with coworkers and occasionally do a happy hour after work, but that isn’t an option anymore.
If I had kids we’d be bringing them with us when we go out because it would be significantly cheaper than hiring a sitter for a few hours.
Individual selfishness is responsible for… People having children, raising them, and bringing them places?
Am I insane or does that just on its face not make any sense?
It has always been cheaper to bring a kid with you to something to hire a sitter.
Previous generations seem to have understood that having kids means you don’t get to do all the things you want to do all the time. Or, doing so will cost however much a sitter cost.
But, as an example, I was in a comically expensive restaurant not too long ago to celebrate a friend graduating law school. (Appies are 30+, entrees range in the 50s and it would be gauche to only get an entrees.) But, even in a lovely place some parents decided to bring their screaming child much to everyone else’s delight. The cost of a sitter would’ve been less than either of their meals, their wine or a fraction of what his suit cost. But they decided to keep that money and inflict their child on the rest of us. To me, that’s selfish.
As a parent I don’t understand that need to bring the kids everywhere. I don’t want my own kids running around while I’m trying to enjoy “adult” activities let alone any one else’s.
It still blows my mind when I go to a brewery on a fuckin weeknight and there are kids everywhere at 9 pm. I don’t get it.
Yep… can you imagine how entitled the children of entitled parents are going to end up. It’s a bleak future.
It’s more likely to swing back the other way, in my experience. Entitled parents use their children as a weapon in public, but the attention often stops in private, when the parents want “me time” and still have a burdensome kid to take care of. The kid grows meek and people-pleasing to earn the parent’s positive attention and grows emotionally stunted because “crying makes mom and dad mad, emotions are shameful.”
It’s still an absolute mess of course, but once a parent who shouldn’t be a parent reaches a certain level of entitlement, the damage done causes things other than more entitlement.
I get you. I also hate kids running around. I understand they’re kids and they don’t know better, but their moms don’t even care. That’s the problem because the kids never learn to respect other people’s space.
And if you say ANYTHING, even politely, the mother gets offended. I was once on a plane trip where I desperately needed to get sleep before driving home from the airport, and I was next to a mother who gave her son a very noisy toy. He kept banging it against the seat constantly, and I said please. I said “Could you please play quietly?” and she gets mad at me. “He’s only 6.”
Eventually the kid caught on that I had a terrible headache and quieted down, but his mother didn’t even say a word to him to ask him. I told him “Thank you for playing quietly” afterwards and ignored her.
That’s just bad business sense if they allow that to continue.
Except it sounds like it is tremendously busy and probably coining in the cash.
Sometimes it’s not just about profits. Something a lot of companies could stabd to learn.
The other night, my SO and I went out for dinner at a nearby place and there was literally a group of kids running laps through the tables while the parents just looked on.
No way am I saying don’t get your kids out for dinner but atleast enforce basic courtesy applicable in public spaces!!
The only truly adults only spaces are bars (like a bar, bar. Not the damn brewery restaurant) and nightclubs.
They suck in other ways without having children running amok, tho.
I hate that breweries have changed to family restaurants. Because all of the family restaurants weren’t enough, they had to come for breweries too.
I mean, most people are going to raise kids at some point in their life.
I entirely get people who don’t have kids around wanting to have establishments with “no kids” rules. That’s great, nothing wrong with having an establishment that caters to them. But I also think that people who have kids should have options that cater to them as well, should be some establishments in the industry that do the same for them.
Right, like almost every other barber shop in the country. This was one barber shop out of dozens around me that are all labeled as “family friendly”, but this is still the one they chose to come to.
I hear this argument a lot but the fact is that most places are family friendly, but when a restaurant wants to be explicitly adult only it makes national news.
