Should I Feel Guilty About Traveling With A Crying Baby?

On TikTok, a man posted a video in which he demanded reimbursement after a theft disrupted by the screams of a baby sitting in an alley near his own. This guy is a fool. A few years ago, a woman distributed to other passengers on a South Korea-U.S. flight of handwritten apology words and sachets containing earplugs, chewing gum and candy to apologize for traveling with a baby who might be crying. This woman was very caring, but naïve.

I do not understand the guilt that parents feel who apologize for not being able to control the behavior of a helpless little being, nor the indignation of those who accuse a crying baby of ruining their day.

These anecdotes are part of a more general trend that tends to keep children away from the public space, a trend that can be found in some holiday clubs or restaurants where the presence of children is simply prohibited. The SNCF paid the price by offering a premium offer of cars without kids. Faced with the outcry and to respond to the polemics accusing it of wanting to invisibilize this part of the population, the SNCF has backtracked by excluding only from these spaces children under 12 years old.

I am by nature a noisy person, for I have the voice that carries, but the simple thought of hindering someone by my presence is unbearable to me. I never chat during movies and I don’t use the speaker to phone when I’m in public. On the other hand, I see no problem that my daughter is not perfectly silent in all circumstances. Yes, we can probably train a child like a Labrador to keep quiet, but it’s a whole other matter with infants: they spend their time screaming at full lungs, without always knowing why. The education of toddlers is, for its part, a war of every moment: every minute is dedicated to narrowly avoiding scenes of carnage worthy of a disaster film. Many travelling parents experience the pain of seeing their child have a hairy seizure when he should fasten his belt, and stuff chips in his mouth or a sticky iPad in their hands to try to stem the upcoming apocalypse. Their voice is becoming more and more acute, betraying the panic that wins them while the cries of their child cross the wall of sound at ten thousand meters above sea level.

Needless to say, babies cry. Without being able to express their discomfort by words or gestures, they must be content to sob on their bib. A baby cries because his diaper is dirty, because he is tired, because he is hungry, because the label of his body scratches him, because a stream of cold air has passed through the room, because there is a 12-second break between two educational YouTube videos… If a baby’s year could be summarized in the manner of a Spotify Wrapped, the result would be a compilation of more or less high-pitched howls.

Obviously, a baby’s screams do not reflect the quality of his education or the care that his parents bring to him. Happy, pampered, well-fed and completely normal infants cry. Moreover, if the idea of a perfectly silent baby can make you dream when approaching Christmas journeys, it is nevertheless worrying from a medical point of view.

Learn to coexist

I wonder what drives Internet users to complain about babies crying during a flight. Did they think that buying a ticket guaranteed them to be isolated from the rest of the world and other passengers? Were they hoping to pay for a soundproof seat in addition to the legroom? Social networks act as a sounding board that locks us in an exacerbated individualism. We have not only become obsessed with our own experience, but also with anything that might disturb him. Instead of coexisting, we learned to refuse to tolerate the inconveniences of everyday life.

The public stigma of mothers in particular conveys an implicit message: a woman whose baby is crying disrupts the course of a man’s day, she is noticed without seeking to attract her attention. It almost seems that a woman is supposed to fulfill her maternal responsibilities in perfect silence, like a fresco representing the Virgin and Child.

But those who judge crying babies seem to forget that they once were in their place. In a sense, grumblers have remained children: they are unable to regulate their own emotions, to feel compassion for others or to rationalize a situation. A baby does not yet have the ability to express themselves properly, but those who complain do not have the maturity to understand that they would be better off to shut up and activate the noise reduction of their headphones. Instead of stinging a seizure, they might have to try to grow up a little.

Source: Vogue France