Women and Children: Oppressed Citizens

There is a conversation that needs to happen, where we discuss how children are part of our society, how they have a right to exist, to take up space. How we are here to protect them and teach them to exist in the adult world because they don't yet understand how to navigate our world alone. But we can't really have that conversation, because every time we do, someone has to assert that children just should not be in certain places because children infringe on their rights, ignoring the rights children should have, but don't.

To demonstrate this, take a look at the wonderful post written by maia at Feministe about how to support parents in public spaces, and the 400+ (at the time of this writing) comments in it that have burst forth with numerous remarks about how children are unholy terrors in restaurants and ruining things for everyone else.

I tell you, That Kid — the one who races to every restaurant rubbing their jam hands on your nice trousers and screaming their heads off in tantrums — must be busy ruining everyone's night before bedtime. Because whenever it comes to talking about supporting people with children in public spaces, people never fail to turn up to tell those of us with children how awful we are for daring to take our kids anywhere but Denny's before 7 PM.

It amazes me the way that people are so ready to proclaim their hatred of children. Children, who are believed to have no rights. Children, who can be hit and hardly anyone bats an eye. Children, who have barely anyone to speak for them when they are wronged.

And by proxy, when we denigrate children, we are showing our complete lack of respect and all around ire for the parents, namely mothers, who raise them. Who have to deal with all of the child hate, and the people who insist that giving birth means trading in your right to be in public with said children, and how they are parenting wrong.

We have to fight for our right to feed a child in public. We have to cough up incredible amounts of money to pay livable wages to child care providers for work — sometimes working just to pay for that care — so why should we pay more just to meet some demand to appear in public without our children? Children need to learn that the world doesn't always cater to them, and they can't learn that in the kiddie section. They need to be allowed to exist in places inhabited by non-familial adults from time to time.

We are not your bane, and our children are not abominations, but humans with rights to be protected. We, as women and mothers, have a right to be in public, with our children, as part of society, period. Child hate should not be tolerated. Children are an oppressed class of society, as are the women who care for and raise them.

Photo Credit: mrhayata