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Airlines offer no-crying sections

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Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#51

Post by sentenza »

idan wrote: post #45

Whether airlines charge for this dubiously-implemented perk is meaningless. It's a business transaction for transportation, end of story. As a parent who has had the dubious pleasure of flying with children of my own and experiencing the children of others, here's a far more important takeaway: As shitty as it is for you to experience a miniature crying human, it is ten times shittier for the parents. The emotion you…

I second this. If most parents are anything like me, they avoid flying with their small children as much as possible. What a nightmare.

However....

Sometimes you just _have_ to fly somewhere. Anybody demanding that babies be banned from airplanes probably doesn't realize that this would be a severe discriminatory measure against women with small children that try to keep their career from dying.

My wife had an important once-every-few-years scientific conference when our daughter was one year old (and still breastfeeding). Being from Germany, it was bad luck for us that the conference happened to be in Korea. It was either don't go and miss out on countless opportunities or make two 12 hour flights with the baby.

In the end I went along as a babysitter and we flew to Korea, enduring some hours (fortunately not the entire flight time) of crying and stares.

Small children are a part of human life, and a noisy one to say the least. If you have them and still want to build a career, you cannot always go for the "I don't want to bother anyone" route.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#52

Post by kevinrpope »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #48
kevinrpope wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're trying to focus on something it is a problem. I hadn't even considered the sleep part of this, I was thinking about reading, programming, etc, all of which will be derailed by a screaming baby.

Weird, for me it's exactly the opposite. I remember the horrors of an 11 hour flight from LAX to AMS with a baby yelling away for the entire flight and not a chance to sleep. I hear you loud and clear, though. It just didn't occur to me that this could be a problem for such a short period of the flight.

Yeah, I've been lucky on my long-haul flights it seems. Different parts of life, and different things to focus on. :-)

Maybe the low cost stated ($10-25) is because it's for such a short part of the flight where you get the benefit.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#53

Post by abstractbill »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #46
rayiner wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They mostly cry without any reason watsoever. Not really, it's just that we find it difficult as adults to empathize enough to understand what's bothering them. Children cry because they're hungry, because they've got gas, because they're sick or uncomfortable, because they're overstimulated, or because they're bored. Since they eat every few hours, have developing digestive systems, have developing temperature reg…

There will never be anyone around able to empathize enough to understand what's bothering them. Why bother crying? Why don't kittens, baby rabbits or calves cry that loud that much? Instead they happily crawl around. What makes human babies so problematic and miserable?

Compared to most other animals, human babies are born more helpless and dependent on those around them (for example, most other species have young that are able to crawl or walk already).

I believe the theory I've heard goes something like: It was beneficial for humans to start walking upright, but that development puts selective pressure on having a narrower pelvis for increased stability. Having a narrower pelvis implies having a smaller birth canal, which in turn puts pressure on having a shorter gestation period.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#54

Post by jlgreco »

ceejayoz wrote: post #33
guard-of-terra wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mostly cry without any reason watsoever. Even today children crying gets them shaken violently in some cultres. I can't imagine pre-historic humans to be more well-tempered and tolerant than today. It doesn't make sense.

> They mostly cry without any reason watsoever. Not knowing the reason is not the same as without reason. A child may cry for seemingly silly reasons (there's an excellent Tumblr blog "reasons my son is crying") but there's generally a reason.

When the reason can be literally anything, you might as well say there is no reason.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#55

Post by dylangs1030 »

jlgreco wrote: post #54
ceejayoz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They mostly cry without any reason watsoever. Not knowing the reason is not the same as without reason. A child may cry for seemingly silly reasons (there's an excellent Tumblr blog "reasons my son is crying") but there's generally a reason.

When the reason can be literally anything, you might as well say there is no reason.

They don't cry for anything - they cry for a narrow set of reasons that occur often. Babes are frequently uncomfortable, upset by their surroundings, etc. They have very few valid reasons to cry, but their environment provides those particular stimulus very often.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#56

Post by guard-of-terra »

abstractbill wrote: post #53
guard-of-terra wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will never be anyone around able to empathize enough to understand what's bothering them. Why bother crying? Why don't kittens, baby rabbits or calves cry that loud that much? Instead they happily crawl around. What makes human babies so problematic and miserable?

Compared to most other animals, human babies are born more helpless and dependent on those around them (for example, most other species have young that are able to crawl or walk already). I believe the theory I've heard goes something like: It was beneficial for humans to start walking upright, but that development puts selective pressure on having a narrower pelvis for increased stability. Having a narrower pelvis i…

I wonder if we can fix it after introducing uterine replicators.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#57

Post by ericHosick »

johansch wrote: post #17
ericHosick wrote: post #4

Ear plugs and noise-canceling headphones (Bose QuietComfort for example) work really really well. Turn up the music/white noise to get past the ear plugs just a little bit. No sounds get past this.

It gets quite tiring to blast high volume music or white noise for long periods. (And the noise-cancelling is utterly useless for screams.)

The ear plugs get around the need for high volume.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#58

Post by ericHosick »

nagrom wrote: post #43
stephengillie wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is noise canceling useless for screams?

Noise cancellation tech works best for low-pitched constant-ish sounds, like the airplane engines, or noise from a fan. Noise cancellation doesn't work well on higher-pitched, oscillating sounds, like screaming or voices. This is probably why the grand-old parent recommends earplugs in addition.

> This is probably why the grand-old parent recommends earplugs in addition.

Ya. Exactly. The noise cancellation works great to remove the engine noise. But as soon as you turn them on, high-pitch sounds become a lot more apparent. Earplugs help alleviate that.

Re: Airlines offer no-crying sections

#59

Post by cliffu »

jaegerpicker wrote: post #44
cliffu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the real solution, charge more for small children and use the extra charge to reduce prices of the seats nearby. It should be prohibitively expensive to bring a crying child on the plane.

BS, Parents have to fly sometimes and upping the cost will do nothing aside from harming parents by making them pay more. It won't deter people from flying at all. Believe me as a Parent the airlines make it difficult enough to fly, that very few parents do it without a pretty compelling reason. Even if it did reduce the number of children on board, that's a worse solution than the problem currently is. Children lear…

I guess I should have wrote infants that are unable to stop crying. I'm fine with children if they can manage to not kick the seats. Upping the cost enough would prevent parents of infants from flying and it would be wonderful.
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