You see this all the time on YouTube. One mom in Walmart was neglecting her son. They were in a freezer aisle, and the kid literally just had a diaper on, and that was it. When people called her out, the mom said, “Do you have a kid?” Then, recently, a mom was seen roughly slamming her baby into a stroller, hurting the kid. When someone called her out, the husband asked, “Do you have a kid?”
This is the most braindead argument I have ever heard in my life because what “Do you have a kid?” means is, “If you don’t have a kid, then you don’t have the right to speak on this situation,” and that is beyond stupid. Just because you don’t have experience in a certain subject doesn’t mean you can’t have opinions, and experience doesn’t negate common damn sense and common baseline, bare-minimum morals.
Just because you don’t have a kid doesn’t mean people without kids can’t say, “Hey, abusing your kid and neglecting them is wrong.” That’s common sense. It would be like someone severely abusing their girlfriend—like, horrible abuse—and then someone says, “Hey, that’s wrong,” and that person responds, “Are you in a relationship?” How dumb is that?
You could ask a 25-year-old virgin who’s never been in a relationship before, and even they know—and they can say—“Hey, abusing your partner is wrong.” A 5-year-old toddler knows abuse and treating people like shit is wrong, so that argument is so dumb.
And what makes it worse is that people who say this are trying to defend bad parenting or abusive parenting instead of calling out bad behavior. Again, if we are using this argument, then no one can have an opinion on anything. A man beats his wife? If you’ve never been married, you can’t speak on it, then I guess you just have to stay quiet about it. You’ve never been to war? No? Then don’t have an opinion on the Iran war. “Have you ever been a police officer?” No? Then don’t speak on police brutality.
Like, really? People who use this argument should take their own advice and not give their opinion on any issue or world issue, then.
I don’t have a dog, but I can still recognize animal abuse when I see it.
That said, I think the reason you see this behavior highlighted in media is precisely because it’s so abnormal. Calling it out is the mainstream part, so not really that unpopular as far as opinions go, at least in my circles.