Okay, I don’t get hating kids, but to be fair I also don’t get loving kids, because they’re just short people with shitty motor skills. They’re individuals, some are cool, some are boring, some of them are shitty little monsters. It’s like hating people between the ages of 32 and 35, a blanket feeling about people based on age is weird to me.
Like not wanting to be around babies who are wildly unpredictable and nearly always messy, I get, but like active dislike is weird.
It is weird and fucked up and ngl mildly ableist.
I kinda thought it might be
I like babies. I never understood people who think they’re bad. So they cry? Big deal. It’s like, the world doesn’t owe you a perfectly comfortable sound level at all times and all places.
Pretty much
Actually, it would be very nice to be able to go out in public without the constant fear that I’m going to suddenly feel my skull and eyes melt into a pile of psychedelic, agonizing gore due to a baby screaming and instantly triggering a migraine from hell. But it happens. And it happens. All the time. And that’s why I loathe babies. Their fleeting misery causes me sometimes DAYS of pain and visual disturbances. I would 100% willingly pay more to, say, only ride adult-and-teen-only planes, buses, and trains for my fucking health.
That’s kind of a different deal, loud and unpleasant vs. triggers mental or physical health problems. It’s not about irritation and doesn’t come from a place of impatience with other people
The idea that the concept is ableist is in of itself ableist. If alarm bells aren’t ringing when we’re equating non-neurotypical people with babies, then I don’t know when they ARE going to ring.
Like, there’s a strong definitional delineation here; babies have not reached certain developmental milestones. They do not (by definition of being a baby, they still can have these things outside of that) have developmental disorders, or variant developmental paths, or modified brain chemistry, or… Well, you get the picture.
So, outside of that, the structure we have to view babies from is that they are these screaming, self-absorbed people. And they can’t help that, they haven’t learned any better, and they’re doing what works to have their needs met. But, like, so are self-absorbed middle-aged men with a tendency to get loud and unpleasant. And we’re not afraid to say we hate those dudes.
Now yeah. Babies are different insofar as we need to socialize them so they don’t BECOME those dudes. And they haven’t had a chance to learn any other way to be, and they’re using the toolset they do have to survive (I’m hungry, wah. I need to be cleaned, wah. I’m hot/cold, wah. All things that could kill a baby easily). They are incredibly vulnerable. These are all great reasons to tolerate, be kind in what interactions you have with them, and so forth.
None of these are good reasons to LIKE these unpleasant little butterballs. Or even feel neutrally towards them, if you’re not so inclined.
I think that the person who said that is neuroatypical… I’m not sure they were equating non-n/t people to babies, just that like… it’s suggestive when people are intolerant of people who are in a vulnerable state
Thoughts From The Peacock Angel 