Minor Irritants: No kids allowed
There's a reason why parents increasingly find themselves sticking to chain restaurants. They are the only places where children are welcome.
Every Christmas, when The Line takes a brief vacation, we like to offer what we call our Gratitude Series — we get some writers we love to share a story of something they’re happy about or grateful for from the past year. It’s a nice corrective to the usual doom-and-gloom. But, as we take a week off to start the summer, to hell with that — for your enjoyment, we’re leaning the opposite way: It’s The Line’s first Minor Irritants Week. Feel our pain. Share our pain. And never fear — The Line will be back imminently.
By: Mitch Hempel
I was recently on a Toronto-to-Orlando flight that was a rarity for a public space — especially an airline.
There were kids everywhere. Kids in every row. Families with two, sometimes three, of the little rascals. Some were making noise, others were buried in one screen or another watching Netflix or playing a video game. Our then-nine-month-old was one of at least four babies on the Air Canada Rouge flight. Meaning we felt less self-conscious about her making noise as there would likely be a choir to join in.
It was that rare atmosphere that parents of children seek out for how blissfully guilt-free it is. One where we outnumber the singles, retirees and others travelling without children. When that happens, you revel in it. When kids are abundant, it is commonly understood that they will be loud, they will not always be perfectly behaved, and — gasp — that accidents may even happen.
I bring this up because it feels like, every few months when I'm in the car driving my son to daycare, or my daughter to her newborn checkups, or even just running errands, I'll hear another Top 40 station (it is almost always a Top 40 station) talking about another restaurant that has decided to bar small children. In fact, it's become something of a long running debate. Maybe it's me, but I can easily remember, as a kid, the lineup of highchairs that would invariably be positioned adjacent to the host's stand at whatever restaurant my family was walking into. A restaurant that does not have a visible highchair, somewhere, when you walk in, is a restaurant that is sending a clear signal about who they prefer to have as customers.
My parents regularly took us to restaurants. For the most part, I think we behaved. We went to a lot of mom-and-pop restaurants like the post-church favourite Country Boy Family Restaurant, or the institution that is Gulf's Steakhouse in Kitchener. It was nice to grow up in an era where we didn't consider it reasonable to consign families to the dining rooms of major chains. Because that's what we've done. You all have a married friend that will defend to the death the ribs at their local Montana's, or the salmon at their local Milestones. This is a learned response to big chains being among the few restaurants that treat children like people rather than an allergy accommodation.
This is not to say that there aren't local restaurants that welcome families as a part of their business. There are. Please visit them. But anyone who has taken kids on a road trip pulls into a Boston Pizza parking lot almost out of habit at this point. The little kids will have highchairs. There will be a changing table in the restroom. There will be other kids, there will be noise. Other diners will be parents too busy with their own brood to call attention to the fact that your son or daughter is imitating their favourite Disney character with the remnants of a milkshake on the end of their nose.
Your Line editors and other contributors regularly talk about the fact that this country has fertility problems. We tend to think about demographic decline through the lens of how public policy can address them. Children are expensive. Housing is expensive. Wages aren't keeping up with inflation. God help you if they want to play hockey. But a fertility crisis isn't solely caused by public policy. A fertility crisis is also a very real social and cultural issue. Most babies aren't able to get themselves to a seated position and stay there, unaided, until they are at least six-to-eight months old. A restaurant without a highchair is forcing a parent to either wear an infant while feeding them (best of luck) or to keep them in a stroller while they're being fed. This makes the floor of the dining room more difficult to navigate.
As a result, fewer parents take their kids out to eat. A newborn can already be a socially isolating experience. A social atmosphere that puts a burden of judgment on parents every time they take their kids out in public or sets up some public places as explicitly unwelcoming to families doesn't help. It also doesn't improve the problem that these establishments are supposedly trying to address. Teaching children to behave in public and to respect other diners are learned behaviours. Kids actually have to be out in public to learn them — preferably from a young age.
This is a cultural problem unique to North America. Maybe even unique to large urban centres in North America. EU countries like France or Italy have a social expectation that children will be welcomed in restaurants. In some cases, they'll even order off the main menu like their parents do.
So, I've got a rule now. If you want my money, I want to see those high chairs.
And, yes, I will defend to the death the ribs at Montana's.
Mitch Heimpel has served Conservative cabinet ministers and party leaders at the provincial and federal levels, and is currently on parental leave from his role as Director of Policy at Enterprise Canada.
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I don't care if there are very young kids in a restaurant. The only thing I mind is when a small child is screaming, yelling and jumping up and down on the furniture - and the parents pretend nothing is happening. That tends to ruin dinner for everyone in the vicinity of that family. Otherwise, it's a good thing to bring kids to a restaurant - part of the exercise in teaching good manners.
Last year, my partner and I were out for a very special anniversary dinner at a nice restaurant in Annecy, France. We were a bit shocked to be seated next to a young-ish couple with both a 3-year-old and a small dog. My first N. American reaction was a bit of an eye roll, like 'what are we in for?' However. The dog didn't bark, was better groomed that us, and was given a lovely water bowl by the waiter. The 3-year-old was quietly playing at his seat, while the parents ate and drank respectable amounts of alcohol. When the 3-year-old did start to fuss at about 9:30pm, his dad basically told him en français 'we're in a restaurant so behave'--and he mostly did. At that point, our sympathies were more with the kid! Like, isn't it bath and bedtime maybe, and it's totally legit he's fussy? But the whole experience was refreshing. Kids and dogs allowed, but the social understanding is that everyone knows how to behave so we can all enjoy ourselves.
And yeah, sometimes babies cry. I've been on planes or next to people in restaurants where my impulse was to volunteer my arms and entertainment skills for a while, so the parents can get a break. But that too seems to be frowned on in N. America.