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Comment by tluyben2 | Hacker News Reader

Finally, I wish more places would do this. Not to mention airlines. I know a few places that make it just very child unfriendly, but they don't have the balls to just say it outright. I don't see the issue either; then you don't go there if you want to go with kids; there are enough restaurants, no clue why anyone would turn this into an issue.

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I would happily pay a significant premium to travel on airlines without screaming children.

You can already do this today: it's called first class. The high cost keeps the little kids out, usually.

Not us. We fly first class more often now that we have kids. The extra space and better service makes it much easier to keep the kids quiet.

The biggest drawback to first class is that you're much less likely to get nice seatmates.

What is next: a restaurant without Asians? or without gays? or without Muslims? or without senior people? There are plenty of other restaurants that would accept them, I don't see why they would complain if just a few refused them. Or maybe a restaurant that would not accept just you!

While that certainly is a direction that things could go if you took this to an absurd level, places can already ban kids buy doing lots of things related to alcohol and smoking in many jurisdictions. Doing it outright doesn't really change much other than the liquor license requirement.

Not to mention: This isn't a ban on children, merely children under 6.

That is indeed the problem.

It is perfectly legal and acceptable to throw someone out if they or their party are being disruptive.

Banning them simply on some artificial criteria is a bad idea.

"Being disruptive" is not a firm rule though. It looks really bad when someone gets thrown out of a restaurant. It's assumed what they did goes above and beyond what is the norm. It also makes everyone in the restaurant feel uneasy, which hurts on repeat visits. It's better to have a firm rule so that everyone who does go to the restaurant feels confident that they'll have an enjoyable visit.

I think if you posted a notice that said "All disruptive customers will be removed from the premises. This include children." that most people would approve of it. A few people with noisy kids would object, but that's who you're trying to get rid of in the first place.

You would have to actually enforce the rule, and that would be ugly, but it would have been way, way less ugly than what's happening right now. And it would have been just as good for publicity, if you advertised it.

Actually I think a restaurant should be able to do this. They would be tying their own noose, which is the way it should be.

Not everywhere. You think that a restaurant in, say, Princeton, Texas (a small podunk town where I grew up) that refused entry to Muslims would lose business? I'm pretty sure people would show up and order a bowl of grits and a coffee just to have a hearty laugh at minorities before heading off to work.

So the Muslim doesn't contribute to the Princeton, TX economy. They go on Facebook and tell all of their friends about it, and it spreads outward. Pressure is not just on the restaurant to look like racists, but anyone who goes there, knowing that they'll be labeled as complicit. Maybe it's not enough, and Princeton, TX is just a backwards isolationist town that doesn't want to participate in civilized society. They can choose that, if they want, and inbreed themselves into extinction.

But not everyone in Princeton is complicit. The 12-year-old me is now fucked, because the town I live in becomes a shithole.

Unless I'm mistaken, children aren't a protected class in the U.S. in the same way that Asians, gays and Muslims are, so legally there's nothing stopping this. Children that young (under the age of 6 is what the article specifies) frequently can't behave appropriately in public, and this deprives other paying customers of the experience they're paying for. If a gay Asian Muslim started grabbing men or practicing martial arts in the middle of the restaurant, he'd be asked to leave as well for the same reason.

The difference is that they'd be asked to leave -after- they've caused the problem. This is causing a lot of collateral damage to innocents.

Gays aren't a protected class in the US.

Do restaurant owners recieve complaints about Asians? Gays? Muslims? Do restaurant owners recieve those complaints at the level that they do about young children? Are those complaints justified as they are in this case?

Why not? I can ban people from my apartment for any reason I choose, why should I not be able to do so for my business (if I had one)?

Yeah because that's the same. Young children are often an annoyance for people who want some silence or don't have them themselves. Not a 'I don't like the color of your skin' annoyance, but a 'I still can hear them scream hours after actually hearing them' annoyance. I cannot hear myself think annoyance. And that's fine, if you are parents or if you like that kind of thing, then that's great. I don't mind it often, but sometimes I do mind it and then it would be great to have the choice to go to a bar, restaurant, hotel, whatever, where there are no young children. I don't see how this is the same as discrimination against Asians etc; they never (actually 0 times and I go to Asian restaurants a lot) screamed in my ear, ran around throwing Coke all over me (luxury restaurant that happened in) etc.

I see your comparison more in a quite different light which I often encounter; if you let kids in, why not dogs? My dogs don't bark, whine, poop, pee on the floor, don't run around, don't break things, don't bite things, don't beg for food (or icecream) really loudly; something which I have seen young children all do (yep including the barking, seriously) in public places, including airlines and restaurants.

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