You know, I guess I am a little edgy about this subject. I have worked in restaurants most of the time and have traveled a fair amount. I am constantly amazed by the way parents are able to tune out their kids in public. Being a parent must be the hardest job in the world but it doesn't justify making the rest of the world your babysitter when you feel you've had a tough day and deserve to spend some time on a bar stool. I have seen little sweeties narrowly avoid being doused with hot chicken soup when they pulled a tureen over. I have seen countless children playing with sharp things on the table or that they find in back of the booths they are precariously perched top of.
I'll bet most people don't even realize how nimble a tray-carrying waiter has to be to avoid all the adults on the way to a table--now factor in a running little one, and five or six steak knives on the tray. I have seen children humiliated, hissed at, or ignored. I have children playing on rocks by the ocean when high tide is obviously coming in, and their parents are just, "oooo, look at the waves!"

I cannot believe that people need a license to hunt or fish or drive, but to raise a little being that will also touch countless other lives, all you need is a 'accident.'

People like that should use duct tape--as contraception.