To find Telegraph Poll: 'Should London Cafes Become Child Free Venues' offensive and discriminatory?

[greengoose]

AIBU to think that this poll, where currently 43% think children should be banned from cafes, is discriminatory and would never be allowed to be written about any other section of our society?
The article and poll can be found here: TELEGRAPH POLL
In the comments bellow there is an 'anti child' rant suggesting children should be unwelcome everywhere from small shops (which should have a no buggy policy) to cafes and galleries).
This has made me spitting bullets TBH, I cant believe the 'anti child' culture in this country sometimes (and especially in the capitol IME), I do understand people should keep their kids under control in cafes, but to turn that discussion into a 'ban kids' poll is downright awful....... the telegraph, which I dont support anyway, should be utterly ashamed.

Why not. Sometimes I have child free evenings when friends come for supper. Other times I say feel free to bring your children. If I owned a cafe I'd probably make it child friendly during the day and a child free den of iniquity in the evening.

no im not a children must come to wedding type..... I just thought the newspaper twisted something in a way that was discriminatory. I do still think its ok for businesses to choose to be child free, the point is the angle the newspaper took generalized in a way I found to be discriminatory, thats all. Ive obviously put this wrongly. Basically I dont want my kids banned from costas because some people are just not able to behave reasonably in public. My kids are well behaved in a cafe, or we would leave.

Be we don't all agree that children should behave, otherwise all children would behave and the problem wouldn't exist. There are vast swathes of parents out there who don't care that their kids are little demons and run un-checked, spoiling things for others.

Therein lies the problem.

I am not sure you can discriminate against children in the same way that you can discriminate against other social groups. They are just small versions of the diverse and varied human race. It would be a bit different if the poll were suggesting banning children of a particular ethnic group or disabled children for example.

But suggesting that there are places that are not suitable for little people, and that there are places that adults might enjoy more without the particular brand of chaos that said little people can cause, isn't discriminatory so much as it is simple fact.

Children don't have to be welcomed everywhere - some venues are simply more geared towards adults.

In any event, this is a newspaper poll, not a debate in the House of Commons. Probably not worth getting too het up over!

It's a poll. It's not discriminatory, it's asking a question of the Telegraph's readership.

Sadly now the poll will produce skewed results and not be genuinely representative of the readership as a host of mothers have been alerted to it on here. If this poll was to be mentioned upon a forum for late teens or young professionals without children then the result might be very different.

For the record, it's not such a bad idea IMHO, going on the behaviour of many DC I see in cafes, restaurants and coffee bars. The alternative is for eatery staff to have the confidence to throw someone out if they allow their DC to behave badly on their premises, without the parent or carer jumping up and down and claiming discrimination or that little Tarquin and Jocasta need to express themselves.

I wouldnt worry DOGS everyone disagees with me anyway

that would be disagrees, oops.

Dogs - I don't know if it will now skew as a result of being published on here, as pretty much everyone on this thread agrees with it. [hgrin]

It makes me long for Spain where children are loved and welcomed in cafes and bars, not treated as if they are in Church and need to be seen and not heard.

I would like to have a poll on banning Telegraph readers from cafes.

But greengoose - the entire article is talking about parents who refuse to control their children and a cafe which wants to ask parents with disruptive and badly behaved children to leave. And you agree with that. So I'm a bit mystified why you're so upset

I dunno... when I first looked on it the votes favour of no child cafes were doing better than they are now.

Actually, if the article is discriminating against anyone, it's horribly Londoncentric.

Although having left London a year ago, I am delighted to report that our new town is delightfully free of cafes cum creches :o

FrillyDrag - children in Spain are generally fairly well-behaved compared to British children. IME

OP, I suggest you complain directly to the Telegraph about their stance on children, if you genuinely feel it is discriminatory.

I personally feel you're taking this a tad too seriously; no-one is going to ban any children from cafes on the basis of an article in the Telegraph. It'll be virtual chip paper tomorrow...

I live near to a small, affluent city with a high proportion of MC/professional residents and a large student population. All the cafes, AFAIK, from Starbucks to the independents, permit children of all ages.

I can see a HUGE gap in the market for a child free cafe.

I think childen in spain are better behaved because they are expected to be central to society, and behave as such.
Cristina my point was that on the back of the article the poll would be bias.... ie of course we want good behaviour, to say that means banning kids is not the same thing.

Unsupervised children given expresso and free kitten to take home

I LOVE this idea

Dogsbeastfiend - shall we start one? I have always wanted to run a cafe. And a book shop.

Waddya think?

MN is full of the sort of people who do teach their children to behave. It's all the other buggers who are the problem!

change the word 'child' for the word 'black' and you have 1950's America- great inspiration!

While we're at it can we ban childless people from claiming the state pension paid for by my DCs?

margerykemp childless people don't "provide" pension payers but they also don't "provide" pension takers later - that line of argument, often deployed by people who want for example not to take night or weekend shifts, is and will remain rubbish.

Panda, ooh yes! A bookshop too! Yes please!

I have no problem with child free cafes

I do have a problem with people whoa ssume that becuase I take the boys to a cafe on occasion that they must run about: they do not, they behave well, becuase they have been taught to do so and know that if they do not we go back home.

Child does not equate lack of manners.

It's not entirely rubbish Andrewofgg, just only a part of a picture. State pensions are not saved by teh state- no input = not out take, it WILL be our kids payng our pensions.

And more importanly wiping our asses and making the secisions for our lives- so we want the decently socialised and not excluded.

But as child free cafe will also result in knowing where I am welcome, it's a win win. Mind you I AM that person that mn states doesn't exist- ythe one who ddoes think your screaming baby is adorable.I don;t expect it of anyone else for mine though, I am odd.

Andrew - judging by some of the people who start threads complaining about disabled people parking in P&C spaces or being asked to fold their pushchairs to get on a bus, I would say that there is a fair smattering of the over-entitled 'I have a baby, I am very, very important' attitude on MN ...

"While we're at it can we ban childless people from claiming the state pension paid for by my DCs?"

Yeah, sure, we'll do that once people with children stop claiming child benefit, NHS care etc. paid for by the childless. -deadpan-

We've already had Nazi comparisons, time for the 'my DC will wipe the arses of the childess' square of MN bingo?

peachy I guess thats my problem, is that this article, about parents who dont control their kids, followed by a poll on banning kids in general, not anything to do with behaviour, groups my well managed kids who know what is expected in public with parents who just dont care. I do think its discriminatory to group all kids in with the kids in the article.