If You Don't Want Kids in Restaurants, You Should Just Stay Home

If you think it's absurd, don't go to that restaurant. Go to any of the other hundreds or thousands of restaurants within driving distance.

This article even acknowledges that kids are never harmless to the enjoyment of other diners.

Some people (and I'm not even including myself here) want to eat around only quiet adults, and it's their right to seek that out and it's a restaurant's right to provide it. It's reasonable for a restaurant to want to occupy a niche.

There's no obvious reason for a child to be there. People mostly take their children so that they don't have to hire somebody to watch their children -- which implicitly obligates everybody else in the dining room to watch their children.

The article's case is that we all need to learn to have other people around, in order to live in a community. "Continuing to allow kids in restaurants is a way for people other than their relatives to invest in the socialization of those children."

I believe that the author is missing that this is about "fine dining", perhaps the top 5% of all restaurants. The vast majority of restaurants not only allow children, but welcome them. We can all socialize each other's children at McDonald's, at Olive Garden, at TGI Friday's.

I don't think it's hard to answer the article's question of "how we can show up for parents and kids in ways that cost the rest of us very little". The answer is in the 95% of restaurants that don't mind, while allowing a small fraction of spaces for (wealthy) adults who sometimes want to not be obligated to socialize other people's children.

(Indeed, if there's a problem, it's that only the wealthy can afford that space. It's a privilege we don't extend to anybody else. If you wanted to have adults-only Olive Gardens for the middle class, and force the rich to teach other people's children what it's like to hobnob, I'd be all for that.)