No one likes flying on a plane with a screaming child next to them. Some airlines are considering offering child-free sections that you can pay to sit in, but Pedro wonders if that would come with more than a monetary cost.
This is a comment by Pedro the post “Child-Free Sections on Airline Take Flight Amidst Controversy“.
Pedro says:
I understand it, although it’s kind of funny from say, the perspective of conservative politics. The free marketeer types say “great, go ahead and segregate, if people are willing to pay for it, more power to you”. The pro-family types (and also the Ross Douthat women-should-start-breeding-
It took me a long time to get used to the idea of having kids (let alone take care of them when they arrived in all their crying, poopy glory). Part of that was my family – widely scattered and inclined to have kids later. I was the youngest sibling and the youngest cousin. But it was also the child-free fantasyland most of us inhabit as young adults. My kids really humbled me. What are these creatures? The learning curve was steep. I don’t think I was alone in starting out as a dad with very few clues, and I have to think a lot of that is our society’s tendency to encourage segregation by age.
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Can you be a child hater and still be a Good Man?
I encourage all parents to express outrage at this policy. I would like to see parents organize a boycott of AirAsia. Parents, don’t buy tickets on for that airline, and refuse to fly with your children on that airline. Spread the news far and wide that AirAsia discourages children from flying. That way, demand for their tickets will drop, decreasing their ticket prices for those of us who want to fly without children. Staging a boycott will help guarantee even fewer children on their flights. Outraged parents get to feel righteous indignation, I get cheaper, childfree travel, a total win-win… Read more »
P.S. Also, no more tax breaks for having dependents. That’s essentially a tax penalty for not having children.
If we’re looking to eliminate barriers between some age groups and the rest of society, for example between children and adults, then let’s get rid of all the separate age standards, even ones that benefit those groups. For example, let’s say age discrimination is just inherently wrong, so any economic discrimination on the basis of age is also wrong. Okay, then that means no more discounts for children. No more separate kids menu with lower prices than the adults’ menu. No lower admission prices to movies or theme parks, everyone pays the same. No airline ticket discounts for babies or… Read more »
Thanks for the recognish, Editors.
I’ve long had these thoughts about our societal tendency to indulge in segregation by age, so thanks for the forum. We need to discuss this issue, methinks – not just in regard to children, but the elderly as well.