No children in pub after 5pm

People who drink in a pub with children almost 100% drink at home as well.
You cannot police people.

There are family oriented pubs and adult only pubs. Both have their customers.
Why should parents stay at home and miss enjoying day out with friends just because they have children?

And please don't mention going to pizza hut or mcdonalds. You have shit food, no drinks and absolutelly worse customers than in average family pub.

I don't think they make much profit on kids meals, if any.

Good! I am a parent who is considerate to others and don’t want to be like that poster 👍

I mean I’m not keen on kids in pubs full stop. I usually want to go there to get away from my own children! I think they can do what they like, plenty of time to go earlier with kids

our pub seems to have turned into a kids nursery at the moment. I would love a no kids after 5pm ban. it wouldnt be so bad if the kids were under control and sat with their parents at the table. But no, they insist of running around screaming and gathering around my table. Its sometimes hard to have an adult conversation above the noise.

Quite the contrary. Kids come first in everything nowadays. When I was a kid we weren’t pandered to, asked our opinions, tested for every ailment under the sun or taken to pubs. Adults were in charge and kids knew that.

If you wouldn’t have a drink at soft play with your child there then you shouldn’t have a drink in a pub with them there.

I don't think it's being anti child to expect there to still be some adult only places where they can be free of children running around and not being supervised. It always used to be extremely rare for a pub to allow children inside and now things have gone to the other extreme. I suppose many pubs really struggled after the enforced smoking ban and the loss in custom, and making their premises more child friendly was the only way they could survive. But I can't see that it's ever necessary to take young children into a pub, let alone in the evening.

Ah yes the early 80s....I remember that.
Why are there protected characteristics e.g gender, age etc but kids are allowed to be excluded?
If adults behave in an uncouth way they shouldn't be out in public anyway.

Our local pub/restaurant wouldn't accept children under nine years of age. It worked for them. They don't do kids meals either

i think 5pm is reasonable. I don’t really want kids hanging around when I am in the pub and I didn’t take my kids out with us when we were having a drink neither. We took them for meals in a pub but not for an outing when we wanted a couple of drinks.

I’m all for this. We had a meal out at a nice restaurant at 7pm last night. Most of the meal was ruined by what looked like a very young baby wailing constantly. There was no effort made by parents to remove baby/soothe baby/feed baby/change baby etc. We all had to endure it. In the end we binned having a dessert, just to leave and get some peace. Babies and young children do not need to be out in these places at 7pm. Honestly I’m sick of it.

Where necessary, yes.

But if a nice local pub provides colouring books, a playground and a children's menu, to facilitate parents who want to have a meal out with friends/family with their children in tow, then it's not unreasonable to take them up on the offer, rather than sacrifice your reasonable preference just because someone on MN disapproves and thinks you should stay home or eat at McDonalds for sixteen years.

It's not a human right to have access to Sunday lunch at the pub with your children, but neither is it a human right to have Sunday lunch in a completely childfree environment: each pub can choose how they want to play it and which segment of the population they'd prefer to disappoint.

I don't know how the UK became so anti-child, it's become quite a pathetic society.

I have children, and if a pub is fully family friendly with kids area and family menu etc it can be lovely. However, I have many times been to ‘grown up’ pubs where families let small kids run riot while they drink themselves silly and don’t give a monkey’s that it is ruining everyone else’s experience and is annoying for the staff. I guess your pub is going for a ‘this is grown up time’ vibe, which they will only do/maintain if it works for their business.

Pubs aren't restaurants. It's not unreasonable to expect some of them to be adult-only spaces later in the day.

I remember as a child we weren't allowed in the pub but had to hang out in the children's room playing arcade games etc whilst our parents sat in the bar. Occasionally they would come to see if we were ok. We thought it was fun, but today it would probably be classed as neglect!

Sit the kids on the doorstep.
With a bottle of pop and bag of crisps.

Some of our friends spend their weekends in the pub with their kids in tow. Watching football etc. It’s absolutely grim and I have no idea how their kids tolerate it. Mine would be whinging about being bored after half an hour.

It so was.

Well I obviously agree that it’s a terrible decision as arguably parents of toddlers are the ones who desperately need a drink at 5pm on a Saturday afternoon. However, this is because I have said toddlers and I’m grateful for any establishment that caters to them. When they grow up I probably won’t want to go to a child friendly pub so I can see both sides here.

If anyone wants to stick a licensed bar in the middle of a soft play however, they will have my full support.

Why would anyone want to take a child in a pub? A garden is different, but having children inside a pub where a proportion of people will be drinking to excess, using language that most people wouldn't want their children using, just isn't appropriate.

@SleepingStandingUp maybe some short-term sacrifices need to be made when you have children?

Exactly. For one thing, in Southern Europe if a child was misbehaving any adult in the vicinity would be welcome to chastise the child. In the UK you can't so much as look at someone else's child without being accused of causing them irreparable damage.

Yabu. I hate seeing children in pubs at any time. Why can't we have some child-free spaces? It was so much better before the smoking ban (apart from the smoke of course!).