I was 12 when the first of my siblings was born, so I have very vivid memories of the way my mother was excluded from a lot of spaces because people find children annoying.
If you think "children should not be allowed in this space," you HAVE TO reckon with the fact that you are now excluding parents (and very often women specifically) who don't have access to childcare. You are isolating people who are poor, or rural, or single parents, or any number of other factors that might prevent someone from having on-demand childcare. You are cutting them off from being able to exist in public. You are denying parents and children the ability to fully participate in society.
My mom spent several years only leaving the house to buy groceries or take me to school, and even then, people would still come up to her to complain TO HER FACE about how she shouldn't bring a crying toddler to Walmart. Entitled strangers would literally try and demand that my mom leave and come back without the kids.
"Why can't your husband watch them?" Because he was at work, usually working extreme amounts of overtime so we didn't get evicted, because landlords don't like it when you stop paying rent.
"Why can't you send them to daycare?" Because that costs money.
"Why can't your teenager stay home with them and babysit?" Because I also deserved to be able to leave the house for something other than school, and taking me to the grocery store was how my mom taught me to manage a household budget, shop sales, and meal plan.
"Don't bring your kid in public if you can't CONTROL them and make them stop crying!" Kids cry when they're upset, and being dragged around a store is upsetting! Don't be an asshole! Children are human beings who are still learning how the world works, and they don't have a lot of agency. You'd cry, too.
"Spank them until they learn to stop crying!" That's just straight-up child abuse, Jesus Christ.
What the fuck was our family supposed to do? Never go to the grocery store? Starve because strangers couldn't handle a toddler existing in public?
I have had terrible experiences as a parent and how society as a whole excluded my kids and me.
Just setting aside how alienated and excluded I was from being a teenage mom, which was already horrible all by itself, I got harassed by family, friends, colleagues and strangers alike for not "disciplining" my kids enough.
I had little to no social life even before becoming a parent, once you become a parent you notice how hostile society is to kids.
Unless you find like minded parents, it's hard to maintain friendships and have a social life that isn't just going out to work and getting groceries.
Even when I think I was being a great parent and keeping my kids well tended to so they wouldn't cry and make everyone uncomfortable, everyone felt entitled to come question my decisions or give me advices.
Im a Mexican parent and I always carried my kids with a rebozo and breast fed all of them and people loved coming to question that.
Why would you carry your kid like that, trying to be subtle, some being downright racist, or why breastfed you're being indecent, etc etc.
Also taking your kids to public spaces made for them doesn't even work. Going to the park so they can play comes with it's own dangers.
If you're lucky the park is clean and is kept clean by the community or local government, but that's not usually the case. Also a lot of people love taking their dogs off leash and ive had to endure their terrible owners not taking care of them while the dogs make the kids nervous.
I've had a couple of times dogs just downright pee or poo on my kids because the owners didn't pay attention or care to pay attention to their dogs needs.
Or taking the kids to watch a movie comes also with a bunch of adults complaining that there are noisy kids at the function as if they didn't choose to enter a AAA movie.
And if there are no parka nearby or the games are dangerously falling apart, kids want to go outside to play but it's getting more and more dangerous and hostile, they don't even have a place where to sit anymore if they want to hang out.
The world is too hostile to kids, even in spaces where they should feel comfortable and safe. Even when we pay to be in that space, which is even more ridiculous.
Most of the time they rather not go out at all, and now learning how to act and behave in social spaces is near impossible.
And that gets exacerbated if you're poor, disabled, autistic, etc.
