My issue with the baby/dog crowd isn't so much with the child or the dog, it's with the parent/owners. Babies cry, dogs bark, kids are fidgety--it's what they do.
However, I feel a lot less aggravated if I see the parent/owner actually making an effort to get the situation under control. How many embarrassed or panicked mothers have you seen trying to calm down their child? I actually have some sympathy for these people, since they're doing their best--they know they're annoying everyone. It still sucks for the rest of us, but at least they're trying.
No matter how much you fly, if you can't afford a private jet, you have to deal with the problems of commercial air travel; annoyances are one of those problems.
I once boarded Alaska's "Salmon-Thirty-Salmon" for a short GEG-SEA hop, and when they boarded "people with small children," there were about 16 kids aged 2 and under that ended up on the plane. Needless to say, it was Thunderdome.