To think it's unacceptable to say you don't like children?

[BirdPlanet]

Increasingly I've heard people saying some variation of the statement 'I don't like children'. I don't see why this is in any way acceptable. You wouldn't say that you 'don't like' any other category of person. If I said I didn't like the elderly or middle-aged women as a group, I'd get slapped down, yet somehow people think it's okay to talk about children as if they aren't human beings. Is it because they can't speak or advocate for themselves? Children aren't some kind of homogeneous entity. They have personalities and different temperaments, just as adults do.

Inevitably people will say that it's used as a shorthand for disliking the behaviour of some children, but even so, that’s more of a reflection of poor parenting than anything else.

pretty much this. I neither like not dislike children but I find much of the behaviour of many children very annoying. They aren't doing it on purpose to be annoying. I don't even think that their parents should completely suppress it but I don't want to be around it.

It's ok to express an opinion. Personally, believing my DC are the best people on the planet 😁, I think it is an unreasonable one.

What I notice is that it seems OK to say you don't like children, but woe betide you if you don't like dogs! The thread that got pulled yesterday was a prime example...
I don't trust people who don't like dogs
There must be something wrong if you don't like dogs
My dog doesn't bark or bite, everyone loves him (so you must too)
Why? Why do I have to like dogs? Why am I untrustworthy if I don't?

It's not something I'd say, partly as pps have said, replace 'children' with 'other group of your choice' and see how you sound. Even more fundamentally than that, I suspect that one of the things I find unsettling about children is that they remind me of the things about being a child that I absolutely hated. I don't have children and this is one of the many reasons why; there are times when being eleven, frightened and angry and totally at sea with the whole world seems very present (it was decades ago.) I couldn't bear to go back there and to some extent, when you're a parent, you have to, so that you can help the eleven year old (or whatever the age) you've got now.

That said, when I encounter a child who has some of the more positive aspects of me at that age (being an extreme bookworm with a love of cheese) we get on like a house on fire. I just have to dig a little deeper and remember that growing up isn't aways grim.

I can’t stand dogs but totally accept they’re not all whiny, smelly, nuisance mutts.
I guess it’s the same thing really.

YABU. It's a free country. People can say what they like.

I don't dislike children as a whole group but I do dislike SOME children. Especially the wee brats in my street (not far from me,) who are a clucking nightmare. Their mother CBA with them and just shoves them outside constantly so she doesn't have to bother talking to them/playing with them. Not their fault I know, and that's why I'm not horrible to them. I just avoid them.

They are a nuisance though. Noisy, irritating, badly behaved. have vandalised things in the village, and are a menace. They get on their little bikes or scooters, and deliberately run into disabled people, a blind woman and her guide dog, and people with dogs. One day one of the dogs will turn on them and the mother will blame everyone but herself. (No, I don't know where the fathers of the 2 children are.)

YANBU. If people routinely said things like 'I don't like disabled people, they're noisy and annoying' or 'I don't like women, they don't know how to behave in public' they would rightly be lambasted for saying something untrue, derogatory and discriminatory. But somehow it's fair game when the group being despised is children. It doesn't make sense.

It's also irritating when people make disliking children a key facet of their personality. It's perfectly possible to dislike children and go about your life quietly and inoffensively without proclaiming your prejudice from the rooftops and making kids and their parents feel uncomfortable and excluded, but a lot of people seem unable to manage this for some reason.

Agreed!

It got pulled?

I was on that. Why?

I used to not like children and especialy babies. I hated dolls growing up too.
I had no younger children or babies in the immediate or wider family until I was mid 20s. I just didnt understand anything about children, or babies, had never held one and had not spoken or played with younger children. I found them gross, sticky hands, snotty noses, noisy and needy.
But then I had my own, I always knew I wanted my own children, ai had assumed thry would be little perfect prince and princesses, never dirty, always quiet and polite, able to recite all the world countries by age 4.
Boy did motherhood come as a shock, 2 boys, loud and messy as thry can be, I quckly adapted to being a human pooper scooper and being used to spending all days in a muddy field with children rolling around in puddles.
I actually love kids and babies now.
So I think it is the unknown, if someone has never been really involved with small children it is a hard leap to try and understand the joy of them.

From MN: This thread has been deleted
We've removed this - OP isn't a genuine MNetter

I don’t like people in children - be it children adults, anyone really.

I say it regularly. What I mean is that, while I like the individual children I know, in general I don’t enjoy being with children, especially not looking after children, and especially not groups of children. By contrast with those adults who really enjoy spending time with children, even choosing to work with children.

I don’t think anyone means that they’ve got a blanket hatred for all under-18s.

this

It is not unacceptable; at least not in the way that disliking other groups are.
As EVERYBODY who claims to dislike children has been a child, whereas not everybody is Black, White, Gay, Disabled, Elderly....it would be hard to claim the dislike is based upon prejudice.

Children have rights, little responsibility, take up a lot of space in an increasingly child centred/parents who do not parent with a view to socialising their children world ( well, at least the Anglo first world) and where the notion of childhood has been extended to one's third decade of life by too many.
Worse is the notion of a child being entitled to the aid of a "village" where none of the villagers are entitled to even raise a voice at the child when said child acts out.
So no, I do not see how it is unacceptable to say that one dislikes children , especially this century.
And I'm a parent.

The deluge of childhood bad mental health speaks to the fact that the current notions of Western childhood and parenting cannot hold.

I'm a parent of 2 adult children, whom I love. I was a teacher in various settings (not always schools) during my career. I do not seek out or enjoy the company of children.

This sounds bonkers - but what I mean is - I've never thought of these young humans as a category which makes them automatically adorable. To me they are, and always have been, individuals. Some I like, some I don't, just as I would with adults.

Despite the eternal sentimentality about children, they are not angels just by dint of being under 16. I've met nice and nasty ones...and one or two who actually scared me - and everything in between. Just to be clear - of course I make allowances for youngsters - I don't mean I treat them as adults, and I was a good teacher who had happy classes/groups and had fun with my charges.

But I acknowledge that children en masse are not always good company, especially if they're not your own - in which case you put up with a lot because you know it's not for ever. They're a bit like dogs, in the sense that if they're well-behaved they're lovely, but rude, entitled or out-of-control children are horrid.

I once went for coffee in a local cafe and the place had been taken over by a gorup of mums and pre-schoolers. The mums sat chatting while the children ran wild amongst the tables, bumping into people and furniture, getting in the way of the staff, knocking things off tables and screaming. I decided not to scold anyone but not to engage with the kids either. I just ignored them - and I did get some indignant looks from the mums who seemed to expect me to coo over them. It's rarely the fault of children if they're a nuisance, is it?

As a child-free woman, when I've said this it's usually been because I'm being deliberately abrasive/brusque in order to get a nosy person to shut up and stop asking me questions about why I don't want children.

The polite version is that I don't enjoy spending time with children, I have no interest in them and I want a life in which I don't have to think about them.

I don’t like men so prefer women only spaces and places.

❤️👆

I think policing what people like or don't like is going down a dangerous path.

I have children, some days I don’t like them and I made them!

I absolutely do understand the joy that other people find in them, and understand that that joy makes the rest of having them worthwhile. it still doesn't mean that I want to be around the ick and the annoying behaviour though.

https://www.google.com/search?q=mitchell+and+webb+sound+i+hate+children&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:a2dfe508,vid:gQw6PoHQPco,st:0

This thread reminds me of this.

I think it's a cold and crass thing to say. I think less of people that say it.

Personally, I think it comes from a place of older women pretending they never wanted children but deep down they would have liked it, it just never happened for them for one reason or another and they become inbittered.

It's a sad person that cannot tolerate the laughter and playfulness of young children.

I really like children, even the worst behaved, most troubled of them are preferable to me than the general adult population. That’s why I work with children and young people but a lot of people including parents, teachers and staff members really don’t, will admit as much, and that’s okay. As long as they’re good parents/good at their job and not treating any child badly it’s okay to not enjoy spending time around children/to not like children imo.