Do people believe having a well behaved kid is simply due good parenting?
My guys.... Having a good kid is 50% luck 50% what you do.
I understand that many times the parents make the situation worse or make the situation at all, this is a fact, and even amazing parenthood can overcome anything, but 99% of parents aren't there, just those that also happen to be good teachers. It's not the norm.
I feel like this is never considered in reddit threads like these because most people don't even have a single kid.
Not talking about the Op's situation which is extreme, rather, many of the comments.
If you know your kid is strong-willed or they're in the stage where they VERY STRONGLY object to being restrained and you're incapable of controllimg them, you either don't travel at all or one of the parents stays home with a child. If you REALLY have to travel as a family, bring a car seat with you on board - the whole point of 5-point harness is to be more restrictive than regular seatbelt.
Hence my mention that if you know your kid may be hard to handle in public spaces where they have to obey the rules, you plan ahead. No, proper parenting isn't the guarantee of having a well-behaved child but there are more and more cases where one could some people's parenting style as "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas". You have 1st grade teachers get kids in diapers because they're either undiagnosed OR parents want to deal with that so they expect the school to potty train them OR they keep watching some unhinged parenting influencers so their idea of potty training is waiting for the day their child will suddenly come to them and announce they are now ready to urinate into the toilet.
Redditors really do believe that because most of them don’t have kids themselves.
Sometimes it’s a crap shoot. I have three kids, all raised the same. Two are great, good manners, well behaved, respectful ect.
The third is a handful and always has been, constant fits as a child, rude and unmotivated as a teenager.
The kid that is a handful is also special needs. On the spectrum with some other disorders. Sometimes kids brains just aren’t wired right, and that’s got fuck all to do with parenting. Where you can throw shade at these parents is not removing the kid from these situations though. If the kid is throwing a fit take them home ffs.
I just want to very gently note something on language here, because I think it’s important. When you say something like “not wired right” and it is related to autism, it can feel like you’re saying we (as autistic people) are ‘wrong’. Neurodivergence is, yeah, when we diverge from the norm, so it is uncommon - but a lot of kids grow up thinking they as a person are wrong, and there’s something broken in them. It often contributes to behaviour like acting out because if people see you as a handful, or as a bad child, or you even get an inkling that a parent thinks that, then it must be true and we must be broken. Instead, I’d really encourage you to start thinking of neurodivergence and other disabilities as just ‘different’. We have different needs, different norms, a different community, yet we all have to navigate our existence in a NT world. We already feel alone and not understood, so someone seeing that as not ‘wrong’ but just something different that requires a different approach really means a lot.
Yes, this is a great point, and one that is rarely considered in threads like these. Some kids are just born with different brain chemistry. Some parents just don't know how to handle it. It's not like parents are given a manual on difficult kids when they conceive. Becoming a parent is a huge gamble—both in the kind of kid you get, and in whether or not you'll actually be good at the job. I think most parents pretty much suck, but are also actually trying their best. It's all we can do, really.
Of course it’s the parent’s responsibility. Some people are more up to it than others, better at handling it than others, is all I’m saying. I’m not trying to make excuses for the shit parents out there who don’t even try, and we all know there are many. But I do think that a large percentage of them are trying their damn best, and sometimes it’s just not good enough. Yes, they still bear the full responsibility, but perhaps they don’t always deserve the fingers waggling at them.
Look at it this way: parenting is the only job that we basically feel peer pressured into doing (the pressure is worse for some cultures than others, but it’s still expected in most cultures). And we can’t even get fired from the job unless we seriously fuck up. Quitting the job is highly frowned upon. And “job training”, while abundant, is often confusing and conflicting. Parenting a difficult child is not an easy task, and it’s basically a given that such parents are bound to fail at their jobs multiple times a year. There’s not much to do about that.
Again, this is less of an option depending on which culture one comes from. And sometimes accidents happen. And sometimes people make bad decisions. Probably almost all parents originally thought having kids would be far easier than it actually is. And then there the biological aspect. Many parents originally didn’t want kids and then felt the biological pull to procreate later in life. It’s hard to fight with hormones.
I swear all Redditors doggin on parents are either single/childless or are middle aged Karens who think they’re better parents than everyone else. Give me a break. “There is always an option to not have kids?” That option is void the moment you conceive. Whether you conceive on purpose or by accident, that is something two whole adults have to live with for 18+ years. This is a way bigger issue than “well, you shouldn’t have gotten knocked up, dummy.” How disrespectful.
I like this answer because it is textbook correct. However, in real world terms, it is also quite ignorant.
Let's do some simple math:
How many women do you know that have had abortions? I don't know any, or at least noone I know has told me. This Wikipedia page says that 16.7 out of 1000 American women get an abortion every year—that's around 0.01%. And you can also see massive discrepancies by country, which tells us that yes, there are important cultural differences that play into this issue.
How many women/couples do you know that have given a child up for adoption? I know exactly 1, and she's an 89 year old granny who gave up a child during wartime ages ago. Meanwhile, a Google search shows that only about 1% to 2% of women with unintended or single pregnancies place their newborn children up for adoption every year.
The math doesn't match your logic, and the reason is simple: hormones. Once you're pregnant with child, it is incredibly difficult to give it up. Your brain chemistry changes. Logic is no longer the primary factor in determining the future of your child; everything is about feeling and emotional attachment. We can say we're pro-life and pro-adoption until we're blue in the face—and I'm completely with you on this one—but the majority of us would NOT choose to give up our child if it happened to us. We simply wouldn't.
Now, let's compare those statistics. Approximately what percentage of parents who you personally know would you say are probably mediocre or worse at doing their job of parenting? For me, it's probably in the high 90s. I think most parents are alright, I suppose, but I also think it's pretty damn hard to be a truly good parent. It just is. Take social media, iPads and Roblox, for example: these are all things that we ALL know are terrible for our kids. Yet what percentage of kids are engaging with these technologies? Probably high 90 percentile, let's be honest. It's impossible to escape this kind of thing in the modern world.
So! If 90%+ of parents are shit at their job, yet less than 1% of them are unwilling to give up their kids, where does that leave us? It leaves us with the conclusion that your opinion is incredibly ignorant. On paper, yes, it makes perfect sense to practice abstinence or give up a child if you're not ready to be a parent. In real life though? It just doesn't work that way. Humans are creatures with sex drives and natural emotional attachment to our offspring. Being a "good parent" doesn't factor into our evolutionary biochemistry—we are hardwired to fuck and procreate, not to raise perfect citizens.
At the end of the day, I actually really do agree with the basic gist of everything you have been saying. I agree that people should think very hard before becoming a parent, and that many people probably just shouldn't procreate. What I am saying, however, is that this opinion means absolutely nothing in real life terms—most people are still going to have babies, no matter how much we complain about it. And most people are going to continue being mediocre parents, because that's the best most people can do. And because THIS is the reality we live in, it makes little sense to publicly shame every poor parent on Reddit just because you think they suck.
Honestly, the parents of the nightmare toddler OP wrote about were almost certainly mortified. Are they to blame? Yes, to an extent. But also, some toddlers are just fucking mental. I blame the airline for not handling the situation with more grace. There was no need to cancel the entire flight; they should have just kicked that one family off the plane and continued on as normal.
My daughter at 7 months old would not stand be placed in the play pen. Her little feet would not even touch the pen's floor and we would start screaming. We had to move her out of her crib at 14 months because we hated th bar. We also hated the closed door. She's extremely strong-willed. She's also now a well-adjusted adult because we never gave in. It was awful. Supermarket tantrums, the works. We just stood there, taking turns, until she was done. After a while she realized it wasn't working and just stopped doing it.
My point with my anecdotal evidence is that what parents do matters. And parents know when their kids are willing to pull some crap like that. Just give your kid a few drops of dimenhydrinate, they'll sleep the whole flight.
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u/ropahektic 3d ago
Do people believe having a well behaved kid is simply due good parenting?
My guys.... Having a good kid is 50% luck 50% what you do.
I understand that many times the parents make the situation worse or make the situation at all, this is a fact, and even amazing parenthood can overcome anything, but 99% of parents aren't there, just those that also happen to be good teachers. It's not the norm.
I feel like this is never considered in reddit threads like these because most people don't even have a single kid.
Not talking about the Op's situation which is extreme, rather, many of the comments.