Last year, Norwegian airline Corendon made headlines by announcing a flight with a roped-off “Adults Only” section, where children are prohibited. As with so many stories about children in public places, it sparked intense debate.
But I think children – and especially babies – are unfair targets. As a travel writer and journalist, I’ve spent 14 years earning my living, in part, by taking planes to foreign places (so sorry, environment).
In hundreds of flights, I have never encountered a baby as disruptive as a drunken oaf. Or stag and hen party groups, who have the power to make an airplane cabin feel like 3am in a seedy nightclub, without the temptation of being drunk and possibly getting a kiss. And then there are many, many men I’ve sat with who have a casual relationship with personal hygiene and the belief that their flatulence deserves to be shared.
Babies don’t compare. They are balls of butter animated by instinct and curiosity. When they scream and wail on a plane, unlike at the aforementioned parties, it is not because of a lack of respect for their happy holibobs. Like many of us, they are simply trapped in a glorified steel tube, screaming into the air.
But there’s more: I love babies on airplanes.
Norwegian airline Carendon has cordoned off a section on certain flights to allow “adult-only” passengers through. Crazy, says Katrina Conaglen, whose time traveling through the skies has been greatly improved by the presence of babies.
Stay with me.
I can’t convince you to be seduced by a baby in your cabin, but I can encourage you to observe them with anthropological fascination. Instead of rolling your eyes at the sight of an amorphous sleep thief in your row, try enjoying the sweet face of him: silly one minute, dignified and inquisitive the next, balanced on a plump, cherubic body.
Or his disconcerting enthusiasm for things we encounter every day, like seat belts or tray tables. How their contorted faces, when in a bad mood, look like miniature Winston Churchills, rightly offended by the world before them. And if they smile at you, it can go through you, like drinking fresh water in the desert.
Watching these cute, sensitive potatoes get excited at the immeasurable surprise of their new surroundings can be a joyful spark of life on what could otherwise be a fairly tedious and uneventful trip.
I understand it too and I deeply understand that I don’t like babies.
I understand. I know what they’re doing wrong. They are smelly, sticky. Terrible conversationalists. Contribute little to society beyond bodily waste. Absolutely never pay the bill.
Katrina maintains that seeing babies on airplanes is a welcome sight “because it signifies humanity’s ability to embrace the uncomfortable for the greater good.”
And I don’t think babies should be allowed everywhere. Don’t take them to see a Quentin Tarantino movie. Fox hunting. A strip club is about to come out.
In short, I am not a paid member of the Cult of Unconditional Baby Worship. Some are little bleeped words. But I love seeing them on airplanes because it signifies humanity’s ability to embrace the uncomfortable for the greater good.
Our value as people lies in how we treat the smallest and most vulnerable members of society, and babies are the smallest of the small, the most defenseless of us. Wittgenstein said that “the limits of our language are the limits of our world.” When babies cry (preverbal, half animal, all instinct) they are trying to make their world bigger, trying to integrate into ours.
I deeply understand and understand that I don’t like babies. I get it, I know what they’re doing wrong. They smell bad. Terrible conversationalists. Absolutely never pay the bill.
No, it is not pleasant to sit next to a distressed and noisy baby. I have great empathy for non-parents who want a peaceful transition, deprived of their calm. And equal disdain for negligent parents who allow their ‘precious bundles’ to watch loud episodes of Peppa Pig on an iPad or kick the seat in front of them without asking them to do so. But I think we have to face the hard with the soft.
‘Childless Planes’ Reddit is a very fun Internet rabbit hole where people vent their anger, anonymously, about how to deal with children on planes. Suggestions range from soundproofing the back rows and turning them into the kids’ zone, to “just throwing them in the overhead bins” to “banishing them completely.” I love jokes. But that last suggestion makes my hair stand on end.
People who say ‘don’t take babies on airplanes’ period are suggesting that procreating is insisting that parents live in a hermetically sealed environment for a finite period of time while they improve their children’s abilities. Punish them for seeing that the world should be populated.
To which I say: raising a child is not easy. It is, to paraphrase Jerry Maguire, a dawn siege that devours pride. If anyone deserves a week in Tenerife, it’s the new parents.
“No, it’s not pleasant to sit next to a distressed, noisy baby,” Katrina argues, “but we have to face the hard with the soft.”
I also wonder if the people who complain about having babies on a plane (yes, I’m well aware that it sounds like a familiar sequel to Sam L. Jackson’s ‘Snakes on a Plane’) are aware that they also – almost most certainly – they were also a baby.
A childish Damien who inevitably led his parents, and probably other adults, into swampy and heretofore unknown pits of frustration. We all were. I don’t want to get into Elton John lyrics, but being patient when new babies have fun being, well, idiots, that’s the circle of life, right?
So to Carendon I say: The idea that children and their parents belong in what is, essentially, an air ghetto for daring to travel suggests that anything that causes noise, annoyance and temporary distractions should be banned to calm the anger of certain individuals. .
It means that the plane tickets of those without children are more valid than those of parents with babies in their arms, that collective public spaces are actually their spaces.
If you believe that, how can we integrate children into society and equip them with the skills, morals, and grace to become thoughtful adults? I guess I’m wondering what makes you so special that they, barely baked, are worth ostracizing.