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lemdi:

it’s another one of those things where I’m just URGH because half of that is reasonable requests and the rest is absolutely ridiculous.

Parents have every right to expect their kids to be welcome at certain kinds of events. Non-parents (and parents!) have the right to plan events where the kids aren’t there, because sometimes parents want to get away from their (and all) kids. 

People hosting you have no responsibility to provide childcare, toys, and snacks, unless your kids were expressly invited to something. Nor do they owe your kids anything beyond basic respect. The exception to this is professional/academic conferences where not offering childcare expressly excludes women, but that’s a different issue.

You should expect, as a parent, that your friends are respectful of your status as a parent and the fact that in many cases your kids will be with you. You shouldn’t be demanding things from them. Kids are people, and they do deserve respect, and the absolutely 100% deserve to have an introduction and to be asked permission before being touched. 

But this woman is going beyond.

Ok. So here’s a thing I can’t stand about stfuparents, though. It’s taking something completely out of context and layering on whatever assumptions the reader might have. Everyone talking shit about this woman is assuming that her audience of fb friends is their audience of fb friends. And maybe that’s true, right? Maybe she’s being a fuckhead. I have no idea because I don’t know her. If you’re imagining she’s saying this about her friends’ friday night parties and weddings and whatnot, sure, what an asshole, fine.

But context makes a difference. When I read her post I was reading through my eyes as a religious educator. When I read “our community” I think church. Her post reminds me of the dozens of times I’ve addressed the boards of purportedly “multigenerational” congregations to try to get them to understand that if you want to have a multigenerational community—if you want to grow your church—you have to offer childcare at your events. If you want your community to be welcoming to families, you can’t be accosting parents whose kids cry for five seconds during a worship service. Etc, etc.

Now, I admit, it’s likely that the context of the quote more closely resembles others’ understandings than mine, but what I DO NOT UNDERSTAND is how we can all be Cyber Bullying is terrible! and then jump all over the case of some random person we don’t know for saying something we have absolutely no context for. Why would you do that? A lot of people I really respect are jumping on this post to articulate their perfectly legitimate feelings of annoyance at parents, which is fine. But y’all are kick ass articulate people with a lot of good points to make, why the bullying?