No kids allowed: Is India ready for child-free zones?

Once upon a time, everybody had kids, wanted to have them, or was in the process of having them. There was this universal brotherhood of suffering. We endured the screaming of children in restaurants, their howling on planes, their tantrums in theatres — sometimes willingly, sometimes not so willingly — but at least secure in the knowledge that we were all in it together. No more. Now the world has been divided into two: those with kids and those who don’t want to have to put up with your kids, and apparently never the twain should meet. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is getting ever wider, amid increasing anger and vitriol. In July this year, a restaurant in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania banned children under six, and the owner now says business is booming.  Malaysian Airlines recently banned babies on first class flights, and Ryanair is introducing child-free flights. Angry Facebook groups, lobbying for child-free flights and restaurants, are mushrooming. Some suggest that all children under 12 be banned from flights and restaurants; others suggest that children pay double for flying. (Sample comments: “I don’t want to sit next to housewives and their crotch droppings.” Or another charming observation, “Children are vermin. I see no difference.”) The Telegraph conducted a poll on whether London should introduce child-free cafes/restaurants, and 37% said yes. The child-free brigade on the net are now suggesting that kids and breeders (their term for parents) should be banned from museums, cafes, libraries, and wait for it — grocery stores. [caption id=“attachment_131606” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Banning all children from restaurants, flights and museums strikes me as throwing out the baby with the bathwater, almost literally. Reuters”] [/caption] One would think that the child-free movement will never make it to India; we are, after all, one country where everyone is forced to worship at the temple of the child. Our children are dragged to see the most violent Hindi movies when they are babies, allowed to scream the place down in fine restaurants past 10 pm, and run from one end of the plane to another. Any bad behaviour is dismissed as “Bachey hain na? Karne do”. But increasingly, I think many child-free Indians, and even those of us with children, are losing patience with the deluge of badly behaved children. Last month I was barred from entering Wildflower Hall, an Oberoi property in Shimla, because I had my children, 12 and 7, with me. I asked if they could wander the capacious grounds while I had a coffee in the quiet surrounds. No go, the guard told me apologetically. So I wangled some babysitting and went in for a coffee on my own. I’d like to say it was peaceful and quiet. Sadly, I was seated next to a loud middle-aged businessman who shouted into his mobile, burped loudly and probably made more noise than 10 children. Still I venture we will see more hotels, cafes and restaurants banning children. So has the time come for child-free zones? Yes and no. I may be a mother, but I think there are certain places children should neither be seen nor heard, such as any movie that does not involve cartoon characters. There’s nothing more annoying than straining to hear dialogue while the baby next to you howls  like a banshee. Why would you want to take your infant to see people being beaten and tortured in action blockbusters anyway? I have also had many quiet meals interrupted by children who will insist on fighting with their siblings, or running from one end of a café to another. It’s important for parents to understand that your little darling, however cute you may think she is, is not cute to anybody else. So yes, if children are behaving badly in restaurants, then restaurants are perfectly within their rights to ask them to leave. But, having said that, banning all children from restaurants, flights and museums strikes me as throwing out the baby with the bathwater, almost literally. Everyone knows that howling babies on planes are teeth clenchingly annoying. But please remember: the weary mother is just as sick of it as you are, and she is probably feeling horribly embarrassed about it anyway, especially because she can’t even leave the premises. “Why should we suffer because someone else chose to have children and we didn’t?” say many of my child-free friends. Umm, maybe because you were once a child, perhaps even a brat. Unless your parents were boring stick-in-the-muds who never took you anywhere, that screaming baby could well have been you. Besides, the only way to train your child to behave better in planes, cafés, restaurants, and public places is — surprise, surprise — to take them to planes, cafés, restaurants, and public places. Children aren’t born with manners; they need to be trained. My son was a horror on planes and in restaurants when he was a toddler; now he can be taken into any five-star restaurant, or an art gallery, or on a 14-hour-long plane journey, and behave with more decorum than most of the adults yelling on their mobile phones. I see no reason why children should only eat at McDonalds and Pizza Hut. There lies the way to a lifetime of poor eating habits, and eventually what we will have is what already partly exists in the UK, where children are practically demonised and segregated from the rest of society. Special flights for children? Fine. Special sections for parents on flights? Fine. Expecting children to behave properly in restaurants? Fine. Banning them on all flights? Not fine. Barring them from all restaurants? Not fine. Blaming all children because a few behave badly? Not fine. What about smelly people? Overweight people taking up two seats on airlines? People who listen to music loudly on their iPods? Should we ban them too, or make them pay twice as much for being a nuisance? Parents too need to step up and take some responsibility; if your baby is screaming in a restaurant, the right thing to do is take them outside, not develop sudden deafness. If your child is kicking the seat of the person in front, stop them; don’t just giggle helplessly. There’s no reason why the chasm between the child-free and us “breeders” has to be quite so yawning. People, can’t we all just get along? Kavitha Rao is a freelance journalist and parent who detests parenting manuals. Her main parenting mantra: “This too shall pass.”