Brett Cooper — The Anti-Child Movement Is Growing

So, a study just went viral on X because it found that 75% of Americans want adults-only dining. And the assumption, obviously, online was that, you know, this huge percentage was all of these bitter, childless people in the child-free Reddit that don't want our heathens, our little crotch goblins, ruining their night. But, no, actually, that's not the case. It's actually parents leading the charge. And listen, I am a new mom.

I have a little baby. I would love a quiet, peaceful dinner, but obviously, in my opinion, not enough to ban children to get one. But, what I think is important to talk about is that this fight isn't really about banning children versus letting them run feral in every single environment, whether it is, you know, a nice restaurant, an Applebee's, a club, whatever it is. It is really about whether in our society, we still know how to share a room with other people and how to prepare your children to do just that.

Now, before I tell you guys what Alex and I are doing to try to prepare our family for this, before we dive into the story, I want to thank you guys so much for being here. Thank you for liking and subscribing and always jumping in the comments to engage in all of these topics. I love hearing your thoughts on all of them. to stay up-to-date on everything we're doing, make sure to subscribe to the channel and ring that notification bell, so you always stay up-to-date every time we upload a video.

All righty, so this survey, which went viral a few weeks ago on X, is from a company called Lightspeed Commerce. And they surveyed a thousand adults, so just keep that in mind. It's a, you know, small sample, but it's worth talking about. But, they found that 75% want some form of adults-only dining. And 79% of those people are parents. 49% want kids restricted during late night evening hours. 46% want designated adults-only sections.

46% say that romantic settings should be child-free. But, here is the nuance that all of these headlines skipped. Only 20% actually want fully, totally child-free restaurants. And the other half said that it really depends on the setting. So, most people, even though this was not the viral thing that got everybody talking, most people are not saying we want to ban children outright. They are saying, "Give me the option of maybe a quiet table sometimes."

And again, I'm a parent, I get it. Like that is totally reasonable. If you are going to a steakhouse with a bunch of colleagues, men in suits, and they want to have a serious dinner at 8:30 p.m. at Bourbon Steak in Nashville. If you and your spouse are finally getting a night away from the kids, you want to have a romantic little quiet dinner, that makes sense. However, the caveat is if you are wanting a quiet adults-only dinner and you go to Applebee's.

IF YOU WANT A QUIET adults-only dinner, canoodle with your spouse and you go to a brewery that serves up ARTISANAL PIZZAS ON A PATIO, you're not going to get it. Sorry, like that is a totally different conversation. Like that is the unreasonable version from this child-free movement. The people who think that a child should not exist in their eye line at all because of their decision not to have children. And so wanting an adults-only space and wanting no children around are two completely different things, but I do want to address both of these.

So I want to start with us though, the parents, because half of this conversation in my opinion is a parenting problem and we should not pretend that it is not. Because there is a difference between you know, a kid just being a kid out in public and a kid being undisciplined. Like obviously a baby gets fussy, a baby cries, you might have to see a mom breastfeeding in public, so sorry. A toddler might get squirmy and throw a crayon off the table.

Like that's just a small human being, a small human trying to figure out the world around him. But you know, a four-year-old doing laps around that steakhouse at 9:00 p.m. at night disrupting the serious businessmen in suits that are trying to eat their filet mignons while the mom sits back at the table scrolling on her phone or talking to her friend, totally ignoring the kid. Like that is a totally different problem.

That's not just a kid being a kid, that is you. And the fix for that is not some outright ban on kids, it's not some, you know, city ordinance, it is better parenting. Which thankfully, when this story was going viral two weeks ago, a lot of people brought up. The one thing that I would add to this conversation that I did not see as much was that yes, it is better parenting, but it is also common sense. It is also situational awareness.

Because as a parent, in my opinion, again, my son is 9 months old, so maybe I'll change my mind on this later, but I do feel like this is common sense. But as a parent, you should be thoughtful about you take your kids and how it is going to impact the experience not just for the people around you who are also paying customers, but also for you and your kids because you want them to be happy. Because I guarantee, let's just go back to the 4-year-old doing laps around the steakhouse, I guarantee that your 4-year-old is not going to enjoy some high-brow tiny French bistro where couples go out for romantic date night, and you should not demand that your 4-year-old son enjoys it or that he conforms to sit in the tiny little bistro chair and behaves for the 3-hour six course meal.

Like it is literally just common sense. And it is also, especially for new families, young families, it's trial and error. Like now that Alex and I have a baby, I keep a list of restaurants in my phone. It is called my happy baby list, and it's all the places that we love taking our son in Nashville. It's places with patios, specifically patios with heaters in the winter, and big tables, spots that are, you know, already a little bit loud, somewhere where I can easily get up, take him outside, walk around, go to a quiet space if he's losing his mind.

Like again, it is trial and error. We have like had to figure that out last 9 months. It is also just situational awareness. Sitting down somewhere and going, "Oh, this is terrible. I'm so uncomfortable. I feel like I can't even like move around. My diaper bag is hitting somebody. Like they're already, you know, shooting looks at me because I brought my child into here." Like maybe this is not the best place for us because it's going to annoy other people, but also it's going to make the experience stressful for you, which is then going to stress out your child, and then nobody's happy, so why try to shove the square peg into a round hole?

And again, that might be common sense, but you do kind of have to figure it out. Like when we first became parents, we did try to do that. Like I was saying, we tried the nicer places. We were trying to, you know, fit our baby into our exact old life with the later dinners and the quaint restaurants that we loved going to date nights on before we had him, and sometimes it worked. Sometimes those were, you know, happy surprises.

Like, "Oh, good, we can take him to this favorite spot of ours." Sometimes it absolutely did not. Unfortunately, we've not been back to those restaurants in months. Hopefully, we will soon. But when it didn't work, we just like got through the dinner. We made it fast. We apologized to the people around us. Most people were totally accommodating and sweet. We were even at a restaurant on vacation before Christmas and this woman saw that we were struggling.

Oh my god, I'm even going to tear up just because it's like so sweet. But she saw that we were struggling and she was like, "Can I just Do you want me to walk around and I'll carry your baby?" And I think some people would be like, "Oh my god, I'm never going to like hand my child to a stranger." But she was this, you know, sweet woman. She was like, "I'm a mom." And we did. And we were able to like sit there and enjoy our lunch in peace on our first ever trip we took with our son and she just walked around the restaurant with him.

So, a lot of people outside of social media and these surveys are more accommodating probably than you would think and are nicer. You do just have to read the room. Try to pick the right room and if you get it wrong, you just handle it and hopefully people are nice about it and if they're not, that's okay. That is not child-free aggression, that's just a learning experience. It is being a considerate adult who happens to have a child.

Here is now where the conversation goes to the OTHER PARTY BECAUSE THAT street runs both ways. So, to the child-free complainers, this is such common sense as well, but you do not get to live in a world without other people's children. THAT IS NOT a thing that exists. Kids are in grocery stores. They are on the plane. They are at the table next to you. That is called living in a healthy, hopefully thriving, growing society.

And if you do not want to hear a tiny baby get uncomfortable on a plane when its ears are popping and it doesn't know what's going on. If it can't sleep because its nap schedule is all screwed up or if the AC is not working on a plane, which I feel like it never does and it's crying and it's hot and that ruins your day so much to the point that you are posting about it. If it bothers you that much, save up for a private jet.

Seriously, genuinely, save up for a private jet. And I guarantee, just so you know, that the parents feel just as awful with the addition of crippling embarrassment and guilt because they know that you are upset. So, your anger, posting about it, crap talking them on the plane, it does not help. Anyway, anyway, back to this viral story. Sorry, I got off on a tangent there. You do need to see the most insane part of this study because while some people just wanted to ban kids outright, they were totally okay with something else and this goes back to the child-free complainers.

So, the survey rates, "At the same time, restaurants are becoming increasingly dog-friendly. Nearly half of consumers, 45%, support allowing dogs at restaurants in some capacity, including 16% who are comfortable with dogs both indoors and outdoors, and 29% who support outdoor-only spaces, and this is growing. Among Gen Z consumers, support rises sharply to 64% compared to 35% of baby boomers. So, TLDR, while this whole debate is happening with the child-free people and the conservative Christian family-oriented people, all of that stuff, there is a growing desire to have more dogs in restaurants.

And it's not just this study. The prioritization of dogs has been wildly increasing over the last decade, I would say, and I say this as somebody with four dogs, so obviously I love dogs, but people have noticed this, as you can see. Look at these Reddit posts. Like, here's one headline from a 2019. It reads, "Puppuccinos, furternity leave, and more. Millennials' pampered pets are like children." Yes, they are. And no, furternity leave was not a joke.

This article reads, "Corporate America is responding by offering pet perks such as veterinary insurance as an employee benefit. Take your dog days, and in some cases, pawternity leave and furternity leave, which is paid time off for newly adopted pets." Okay, this is just kind of a tangent, and I made a TikTok about this, but I didn't intend to talk about it in this episode, but it's just so perfect, and it really ties in with the people treating their animals as children while simultaneously being pissed at people who do actually have human baby children.

But I was scrolling on Facebook, you know, browsing Marketplace, keeping tabs on all the groups that I'm in, and a post in the Franklin, Tennessee Facebook group literally stopped me in my tracks. This woman posted, and she said, "I'm looking for a luxury residential interior designer to design a suite for my son." I was like, "Oh, you know, whatever." I keep scrolling, I see a picture of a cat. I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait.

Let me let me scroll back up." Her son! She I she I'm not kidding, guys. She said, "My son." And she was like, "Yes, and my son, by the way, is a Maine cat." And then she goes on paragraphs, paragraphs saying, you know, "I want him to have a cat tower. We want to build out this room. I want a source a beautiful marble slab for his bathroom that has room for his robo litter box. She's hiring a luxury residential designer for a glorified cat nursery for a cat that she just adopted.

Like obviously, I'm not like pissed about that. I was more so just aghast, but that is just an example of the prioritization of pets over children and what people are now doing for their pets while simultaneously, you know, wagging the finger at people with children that are simply being children in public. Anyway, moving on from that. Back to the whole point. More specifically with restaurants, I I'm sure that everybody has seen this, but people will also use, you know, emotional support as a way to get their dogs and pets into dining spaces, grocery stores, coffee shops, planes, you name it.

We've all seen it. Like these dogs are about as portable as an inflate IQ tire inflator. Now, I have to be honest with you guys, I love a curb. It's why I drive a big car. My tires know it. My husband knows it. Honestly, Nashville at large knows it. So, when I say that my family needs inflate IQ, I mean that. Inflate IQ is a smart portable tire inflator that fits in your glove box. You just set the PSI, press a button, and it stops automatically when it hits the right tire pressure.

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It is private, it's Christian, it's affordable, it's nonprofit. Take action and find your purpose today at gcu.edu. Again, that is gcu.edu to learn more. All right, so just to recap here with these folks, the dog-friendly, child-free crowd. What they are saying is that they will happily share their dinner with some random person's golden doodle, but they assure you it was super well-trained. But, the golden doodle is, you know, begging, occasionally barking, yanking on the leash.

Like, that's totally fine. BUT, A BABY in a high chair three tables over is just a bridge to barks. And my response to these people would be, you bring your dog everywhere. I have to live with your dog. I wave at your dog. I give it a little pat. So, you also have to live with my child. That is the deal of existing around other people and cohabitating in a society. If you don't want to deal with that, go buy a homestead.

Buy some land. Create an adults-only commune. Start your own restaurants. You have the opportunity to do that. But, if you want to take part in normal society, then we all have to get along with each other. And if you guys think that I am exaggerating about the dogs, one of them on X, by the way, posted about how she got yelled at because her kids ruined a stranger's dog's birthday party. Like, we have fully inverted the situation.

She wrote, "Look, I get it in a way." She's talking about, you know, wanting to have a quiet adults-only dinner. But, I also think back to the time that a lady got mad at my kids for running around on the sidewalk outside of an ice cream store because we were ruining her dog's birthday. And like, maybe we just live in very weird times. Now, this inversion of what we are prioritizing and the lack of work we are doing to try to get along with everybody, it's not just in restaurants.

Because, while half of the country is fighting to get kids out, churches are going viral for trying to get kids in. And this one went viral a few months before the survey did that we're talking about, but a church in York, PA announced their loud kid policy and it was posted online. And the announcement of this policy reads like a stern HR memo, you know, comprehensive procedures regarding loud children in worship, but really it says this.

Effective immediately, if a family is considering visiting Mount Washington Church and they have a loud kid, the following options are available. Option one, the family should bring the kid. Option two, the family should make sure they bring the kid. Option three, the family is to see that the child is brought to church. Option four, the kid is absolutely welcomed and expected. We believe that the sound of children in worship is not a distraction, it is evidence of life, growth, and the future of the church.

If your child makes noise, you are not bothering us, you are blessing us. Policy enacted, no exceptions. And that goes back to the phrase which I'm sure many of you guys have heard, you know, if your church isn't crying, then it's dying. So, that is obviously the policy that they are adopting here. When this went viral a few months ago, half of the internet cheered saying this is so amazing, this is how you should run a church, and then the other half was saying, "I'm sorry, but, you know, church is not a daycare and some of us want to focus on our time with God and actually worshiping."

And so, to hold me to my own rule here in what we're talking about with the restaurants, if this is a child that you refuse to discipline, your child is just being loud for the sake of being loud, if they are way too old to be being loud, then that is a fair complaint. Then take them to the back of the church, leave them at home. Like literally, oh my gosh. Not to just bring in another aside to this, but we're going to do a lot of anecdotes today.

Literally last weekend at church, our son kind of got to the point that I felt like he was becoming a distraction. He also started wiggling and grunting and doing the face that let me know that, you know, I had about six minutes until I was going to be changing an absolutely nasty bomb of a diaper. And so, I quietly got up, I grabbed my bag, and I went to stand at the little children's room that is in the back of the church.

And the kids that were in this room, like granted, they were not in the main area of the church, they were in the back in this little room where you can kind of see in and see what's going on, they were going insane. Now, thankfully again, they were not in the pews, but one mom was sitting there. I think her son was probably eight years old and he was standing in there throwing books, like grabbing baby books out of the bookshelf, throwing them against the wall, throwing Frisbees that would hit the wall and then come back and hit the mom in the face, almost hitting me and my son, like screeching the entire time, putting toys on his head, rolling all over the ground, jumping, jumping in my face, jumping in my son's face.

You like you could hear it out into the church and the mom just sat there. She was like focused on the service, which is great, you know, she's crying too, she's trying to do that, but her son was doing all of this insane stuff around other children and she would just go, "Oh, shh, honey, shh. Then maybe just quiet down a little bit." Like, "OH MY GOSH, THAT IS THE PROBLEM. That is how we have found ourselves in this situation, where a portion of the population does not want any of our children in public."

Now, I'm getting ahead of myself, we're going to talk about that, but the point being, the behavior, and again, the situation is the main point, but a baby crying in church or a young child kind of quietly wiggling around, reading the book that his mom brought him, like that is not a discipline failure, that is just a child being a child and that should be allowed. In fact, I think, this is my controversial opinion, but if we want to make the situation better for everyone, then we should actually encourage it.

We should be encouraging families to show up with their kids, because, here's my argument, if we push kids out of all of these adult spaces, we make adult-only spaces, we make families feel like they are not allowed in polite society, then their kids are never going to learn how to act in public. And then fast forward to the one time that they do go out in public and they're running around the steakhouse or Applebee's or wherever it is, an adult meets one of those children, a feral toddler, a feral 8-year-old, then they turn around and they go, "I hate these crotch goblins."

They decide that they want children banned entirely from their society. That is the loop. Now, simultaneously on top of that, and we've talked about this a lot on the show, a lot of parents stopped doing the work to prepare their kids. You know, gentle parenting, you know, turned into negotiating with your child, using gentle words and then just handing them an iPad at the end of the day, because that was the easiest thing to do, so nobody has to see a meltdown, which just so we are on the same page, that is not gentle parenting.

I would argue that that is not even parenting to begin with, That is just enabling, that is absent parent behavior. And so, I think it is important to say what I'm trying to say here. I think both sides of this argument forgot the same thing. That raising a kid in public is a skill. It requires taking your kid in public. It is learned. It takes a parent reading the room and everyone else extending a little grace. The same grace they hand to the golden doodle or God forbid the pitbull sitting at the restaurant, the tourist or the drunk guy at the bar.

We all have to figure out how to coexist. So, no, I do not want children banned from restaurants. I want parents to read the room. And I also want everybody else to remember that they live in a world that has other people's children in it. You cannot curate a life without other people's children any more than I can curate one without your freaking golden doodle pitbull mix that you got at the shelter last weekend. In a culture that has room for every parts of childhood like Disney with the Disney adults and the Pokémon cards and the Lego's and the little boo-boos that all of the kidults are obsessed with, the nostalgia, the aesthetics.

It has room for all of that except the actual children. Like that is not an adults-only society. That is just a generation quietly deciding that they are going to be the last generation. And considering our birth rates, that is a conversation worth having.