I'm not a fan of banning people from places wholesale, but I do agree that people engaged in disruptive or dangerous behavior in a public setting should be asked to leave.

I have no problem with babies going pretty much anywhere. But I do have a problem with some parents who choose to bring their babies to places where the baby will be uncomfortable, or the baby's behavior will disrupt the normal activities of other people.

Taking a baby to a noisy environment will often scare the baby, or at least prevent the baby from falling asleep. Extreme environments like places of great heat, cold, or dangerous sound levels (such as a race track) pose physical danger to a baby's health and well-being.

ON the other hand, there are also parents who bring their babies to restaurants, churches, or other public venues where customers have a reasonable expectation of a quiet atmosphere, and fail to remove the baby when crying ensues. "He's a BABY!" they snarl when challenged, as if we didn't notice, "It's what babies do! What am I supposed to do? I can't FORCE him to stop crying!" No, but you CAN take the baby outside until he calms down. Some people just don't get this, or they get it but place their personal enjoyment of a restaurant/movie/church service/whatever ahead of simple manners and common courtesy.

The diaper thing is just disgusting. There are plenty of appropriate places to change a diaper, but again, some people are either too dense to realize it or too rude to care.

What's disgusting about a dirty diaper? The same thing that's disgusting about adult-size toilets. Those things are in bathrooms and not installed at the bar or in the lounge for a reason, you know.

Children are permitted to accompany their parents in a wide variety of places, it's true. But inappropriate behavior is not permitted in those places. Since children are not legally or ethically responsible for their behavior, their parent or guardian IS legally and ethically responsible for their behavior - which means that if a kid misbehaves in a public venue, it is the responsibility of the parent to either control the behavior, or remove the child from the venue. Sometimes you can't stop a baby from crying or a toddler from throwing a tantrum - but you can always pick the kid up and walk outside until he calms down. Failure to do so is not the fault of the kid, it's bad parenting, and it's also highly anti-social behavior on the part of the parent, because it means they don't care enough about other people to take that simple step - pick up the kid, and walk outside.

In the case of an airplane, it's not possible to walk outside. It is therefore incumbent on the parent to not bring the kid on the plane until the kid is old enough and responsible enough to behave appropriately for the venue.

You can bring up a hundred different "What if" or "How about" scenarios, and maybe you could even bring up one where traveling with a kid who is unable to control themselves is important enough to unwillingly subject 147 strangers to a screaming baby or unruly toddler for the duration of a transcon flight, but those cases are incredibly rare and not worth talking about. The overwhelming majority of crying babies and unruly toddlers are not traveling by air to receive a heart-lung transplant or in some other life-and-death situation, they're traveling for leisure. And your vacation isn't reason enough to make 147 strangers miserable for 4 hours in a tin can that they can't escape.

I have no comment on your post, I just wanted to say, love the screen name, Meredith!