> How many articles have I read about whether children should be allowed on airplanes, or at weddings, or in restaurants?
American culture’s view of children as burdensome is a self fulfilling prophecy. Parents may sarcastically quip about their children’s imposition on their careers, finances, and sex lives, but they practice genuine resentment when they get some “me time” by encouraging a child’s screen time addiction, or by refusing to punish a child’s antisocial behavior. Their mal-adjusted children are unsuitable companions in a social venue, a genuine burden unwelcome to society for many years longer than they need be, and it breeds anti child sentiment.
You can break this cycle by not thinking of your child like a burden, and by training them to not be a burden to others.
Shortly after I could talk, I was raised to address adults respectfully and to say please and thank you. My dad would also have us practice sitting still and quiet for a few minutes before bed. These basic manners elicited a decade of compliments from wait staff and flight attendants effusively telling my parents what nice children we were. Given what a small effort it takes to make eye contact and say “thank you”, even at the time I understood their praise as more a comment on society.
Now that I have children of my own, I’ve taught them from a young age how to attend a funeral or wedding (or grocery store) without ruining it for others. I can bring them without hesitation to a meeting with my banker or lawyer, excellent learning opportunities. They say please and thank you, and in response, adults across our community dote on and encourage and appreciate my children, and their good behaviour has earned them privileges and opportunity that I couldn’t personally have awarded them.
I’ve done my best to avoid the attitude trap of treating my children like a burden. They are each individually and altogether one of the greatest joys I’ve ever known. And teaching them a modicum of manners early on seems to have reopened whatever doors for them that American anti-child culture would have closed.