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.
“No, but I’ve been a child before, and I can fucking remember what it felt like when my parents did things like that to me.”
Not defending bad parenting and child abuse but
“If you don’t have a kid, then you don’t have the right to speak on this situation,”
I think you are misunderstanding the argument. It’s not that non-parents don’t have the right to speak, but that they lack the experience to judge the situation.
Not saying this is a valid argument in the situations you described, those are clearly wrong and you don’t need kids to know this, but that’s where they’re coming from.
A milder example would be non-parents judging parents for letting their kids watch TV for extended periods of time, when they’ve don’t know the struggle of having to baby-sit a toddler 24/7.
Bang on. 👌 The do you have a kid argument is stupid in the context of those things described in this post obviously, because they are objectively wrong, but it can be a very valid question in other situations.
* watching a car drive 30mph the wrong way down a one-way 20mph street*
I shout
“This is a one way street, mate!”
They shout:
“Do you have a car?”
Not unpopular
It is apparently unpopular among those who think of children as property rather than people.
Yeah but every opinion is unpopular if you limit the survey to a subset of people who don’t subscribe to that opinion. Like, what is this community even about at that point?
Unpopular opinion: Cheating on your partner is wrong
“Not unpopular”
“It is apparently unpopular among those who don’t value commitment and loyalty in romantic relationships”
I am a parent. I hope I am a good parent, and my kids seem smart and healthy, but one of the only ways I know I’m not a bad parent is that strangers don’t feel compelled to rebuke my parenting.
Parents who respond with defensive bullshit when strangers question the health or safety of their child are abusive fucks who absolutely should be called out harder.
Picking up the phone and dialing CPS or emergency services is not an out of proportion response. (Well, maybe if it’s a hot day when the kid is just in a diaper. Maybe.)
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.
something adjacent happened while in HS,(dint treat the male student like shit) but she said along the lines “if you(the other people in the class) had parents that care you would be doing this” we were all thinking btch you shouldve cared before he enter HS, not right before he graduates HS,with little to no direction. she probably overcompensating at the time that she was probably neglectful in his HS and MS education. she was acting like helicopter mom while the guy was in class, very embarrassing for him, he already made up his mind he dint want to go to college.(dont know what happened to them decades later). when he was struggling where was the mom while in his freshman or middle school years.
