General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Adults that spoil kids aggravate me [View all]distantearlywarning
(4,475 posts)If someone
of any age
is being noisy in a restaurant, they need to go home until they can figure out how to be better behaved. If the person in question is a child, then the parent who is responsible for them needs to take them home and work with them on that behavior (because that is what parents do).
If we are talking about an adult who is behaving badly, it no longer matters whether they are child-free or not. They are simply badly behaved.
The original post asked whether idiot parents or child-free people were worse, not because the child-free have a tendency to talk noisily on cell phones, but because they are insufferable. Whereas idiot parents, by the definition of this thread, are accompanied by noisy children.
Child-free = may or may not be noisy, but only insufferable arrogance is part of the definition, not noise
Idiot parents = by definition noisy
Since I hate noise, and I don't give a damn whether someone is arrogant as long as it is done at someone else's table, I voted for idiot parents. But if we want to expand the taxonomy to include the "noisy childfree" and "non-idiot parents", then my ranking would be as follows, from best to worst:
1. Non-idiot parents and their well-behaved children (I like to see happy well-behaved children at restaurants)
2. The insufferably arrogant but quiet child-free (who cares if they're assholes as long as they're quiet over there where I don't have to hear about it)
3. Noisy child-free (at least you can sometimes tell them to simmer down without being accused of being Hitler The Child-Hater)
4. Idiot parents and their screaming, running-around children (it's already all been said by the OP)