No doubt exactly the same thing can be said for anyone flying.

What tickles me is the assumption that parents are simply asleep at the mute switch, and that they have perversely chosen not to simply employ this mechanism otherwise totally under their control. I believe that in most cases decent people are acutely aware of their babies, and embarassed at any ongoing noise.

A gentleman grins and bears it, and smiles at the little bawler and his harried mother. A gentleman does not get huffy and indignant at an infant. A gentleman does not lose his aplomb over a simple, ever present fact of life, that it is an infant's job to call attention to itself. Finally, a gentleman does not use the occasion of an infant's whining as an invitation to whine himself, as though age alone has entitled him to preeminence in justifiable harrumphing and grumbling, and as though the mere passage of time should hold him proof against the futile and unrefined efforts of a young and impertinent upstart to express disfavor.