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Bailey: There’s no logical reason to hate children

Editor’s Note: All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board. 

Children are our future, but they aren’t everyone’s thing.

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More and more people are choosing not to have kids, which is, overall, a good thing. If someone doesn’t want a kid, they probably shouldn’t have one — not wanting a kid and having one isn’t the greatest setup for being a good parent.

A side effect of this decline of new parents, though, is that there is a rise in people who think it’s okay to put down or hate kids. You know those friends who go on rants about how loud or annoying they find all children to be.

Those people need to get over themselves.

men play football
Children in the stands cheer on the Rams during the fourth quarter of the CSU vs. Illinois State game on Sept. 22. The Rams lost 19-35. (Matt Begeman | Collegian)

All adult humans are children or babies at some point. It’s a phase of our life, and, just like it would be insane for a butterfly to hold ill will toward all caterpillars, it’s odd for an adult human to dislike all people in a certain phase of life.

It’s not like kids have the chance to defend themselves from people like this anyway. Almost no child has the confidence to stand up to an adult they barely know to defend all people of their age group, not to mention that children have some of the lowest amounts of given rights of any group in America. They have very little control over their lives and generally make very few meaningful choices to society at large. It’s a weird power tactic to hate such a weak group of people.

Everyone should have the bare minimum of patience and understanding to tolerate a child’s presence without complaining, and the decency not to bad mouth this giant swath of humanity.”

Children are loud, they are messy and they don’t know that many things. Overall, your shared life experience with any given 7-year-old is limited, but that may be because they are one-third your age and don’t have fully-developed brains. They are trying their best, and they need lots of help as we all did when we were younger.

I’m not saying everyone should sign up to be an elementary school teacher. Working with kids can be frustrating and tiring, and it takes an immense amount of patience. But everyone should have the bare minimum of patience and understanding to tolerate a child’s presence without complaining and the decency not to bad-mouth this giant swath of humanity.

This also extends to the things that kids love. If you’re 23 and complaining about how dumb Fortnite dances are or whatever the next phase of things kids love is, then you are a petty person and a forgetful one; the things we loved as kids were just as pointless and just as stupid. I for one, as a member the generation who loved Silly Bandz, have no room to judge.

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Next time you’re on a plane and a kid or baby is fussing or getting upset about something, take a moment and remember that they are trying their best, and they still have a lot to learn. It’s a big world, and they’ve just started their journey. What will it cost you to have some empathy instead of anger toward this group with such little power?

Fynn Bailey can be reached at letters@collegian.com or on Twitter @FynnBailey.

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When commenting on The Collegian’s website, please be respectful of others and their viewpoints. The Collegian reviews all comments and reserves the right to reject comments from the website. Comments including any of the following will not be accepted. 1. No language attacking a protected group, including slurs or other profane language directed at a person’s race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social class, age, physical or mental disability, ethnicity or nationality. 2. No factually inaccurate information, including misleading statements or incorrect data. 3. No abusive language or harassment of Collegian writers, editors or other commenters. 4. No threatening language that includes but is not limited to language inciting violence against an individual or group of people. 5. No links.
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