I am not an animal, and neither are my kids

Here I was getting ready to go to bed when I stumbled upon a truly appalling discussion on one of my favorite fashion blogs, Manolo for the Big Girl. Plumcake describes (in a mostly humorous way) her bad experience with a crowd of ill-behaved children and ends her (mostly good-natured) post with this question: What is YOUR child-related pet peeve and what, in your non-legally-punishable fantasy would you do about it?

Apparently the readers of Manolo for the Big Girl have been anxiously awaiting their chance to unleash their inner child hater.

Here are the thoughts of a commenter called Jennie:

I think all establishments, retail, culinary, and open to the public ought to have a brat check and it should be mandatory. A sound proof padded stall should work. That or the breeder should control said demon(s). I was in a nice restaurant a few days ago hoping to enjoy a lovely glass or 5 and a moderately pricy meal with friends. In comes the couple towing juniorzilla. They strap the snotty, drooling, gifted child in and give him all of the table accessories to throw all over the place and at everyone. Said yard ape then screamed and kicked until mommy dearest gave it something else inappropiate to throw. Instead of being able to stay and enjoy, we left as soon as possible, our Manolos and Jimmy Choos slipping in the sugar, salt, drool, and other fluids leaked by this precious tot.

Let's unpack that, shall we? We've got kids as "brats", "demons", "juniorzillas", "yard apes", and "it". Parents are now "breeders" or "mommy dearest". Great stuff, Jennie. I hope you remember this post someday if you do ever breed. May it bring you a great flush of shame to go with your self-righteous anger.

Then we have HurricaneDeck, apparently channeling Aunt Marge:

I really wish I could do the same to children as I do to my dogs - pick them up by the scruff of the neck, give them a firm “NO!” and them put them in their kennel for the rest of the day.

Because kids are, really, just dumb animals, right?

But the topper is JayKay, who brings some really great fat-hate to go along with her whopping side of judgment, because she totally knows what this family does 24 hours a day because she lives above them:

My fiance and I live above two of the most UNRULY, WILD, UNDISCIPLINED, CIRCUS ANIMAL children on the entire face of the Earth.

First of all, they’re both fat. I blame the parents for this one. Nothing worse than fat kids who are not allowed out to “play”, but the PS3 is on for, like, 4+ hours a day...

Indeed, JayKay, there is nothing worse than fat kids. I'll bet they relish the time they have outside being judged by people like you. And boy, do I love seeing that kind of language on a blog designed to empower women who fall outside of the "mainstream" fashion because of their size.

The kids are totally overfed, understimulated (because video games don’t count) and totally undisciplined. There have been many days where I want to take a knitting needle and yarn and go downstairs, push my way past their fat, constant cigarette smoking “dad” and practice my suturing technique on their fast food guzzling yell-holes.

I'm sure she knows exactly what they eat and do all the time. Or maybe she just imagines that she does because everyone knows that all fat people play video games and guzzle fast food all day. Extra points for the vivid violent imagery of stabbing them. Because six- and eight-year-old children totally deserve physical abuse for being loud and fat.

Look, I know that there are bad seeds out there. I know that I am the first one to give the stink-eye when a parent has a kid out doing something that no kid could reasonably be expected to handle well. And I am grateful that my generation has really made strides in making "breeding" a totally optional part of life. I would say that more of my friends are "childfree by choice" than have chosen to have kids, and that's great. People who don't want kids shouldn't have them. There are way too many couples out there who have kids because "that's what people do". That's not a good reason to bring another life into the world.

But just because someone doesn't want to have kids does not give them the right to bag on people who do--and definitely does not make it OK to dehumanize kids and advocate violence, even in a joking way. I'm not a "breeder"--I'm a person, just like you, who has happened to choose to have children. I support my children and love them and do my level goddamn best to make sure that they are well behaved and polite and in a position to someday make great contributions to society.

Good parenting is hard fucking work and the only time you'll ever think you can be a perfect parent is before you have kids. The rest of us, the ones who already have our "spawn", well, we're just trying to make things work in a society that does fuck-all to support families while simultaneously demanding that we raise thin, attractive, quiet children who never drop Cheerios or run in their own homes.