To which I can only say: Never mind the con–if our world isn’t a kid-friendly world (and one can argue it isn’t), we are all doing something very, very wrong.
No one has an obligation to raise children. No one has an obligation to share a home with children. But each and every last one of us lives in the same world children live in, and they have as much right to be here as we do. They have as much a right as the rest of us to be treated with respect, too.
The information I received did not indicate up front that Wiscon was a kid or family-friendly event.
Replace the word “kid” with any other group, and this statement becomes clearly horrible. “The information I received did not indicate up front that Wiscon was a man friendly event.” “The information I received did not indicate up front that Wiscon was an old-person friendly event.” “The information I received did not indicate up front that Wiscon was a minority-friendly event.” Decent people don’t say these things.
Kids are not aliens. They are part of the very same species adults are. And while everyone has the right to expect that kids be taught how to behave in various situations (and that kids also be taught to understand that they are not always the center of all attention, nor should they expect to be), no one has the right to expect to be protected from ever seeing kids or sharing space with them. They live in the same world we do. And it’s not like all kids are even alike, any more than any group of individuals are all alike. It doesn’t even make sense to say, “I don’t like children.” (“I don’t like women.” “I don’t like old people. “I don’t minorities.”) There’s only this or that individual child, who you like or don’t like based on how your personalities do or don’t mesh. Sometimes I think it’s time for all of us, whatever group we belong to, to get over this notion that our world should be custom-tailored so that we only have to see people who belong to the groups we want to associate with. While there are a very few places I can think of that are not at all appropriate for kids; and while there are a few more places that perhaps demand different standards of behavior than kids who’ve grown up in our segregated world are currently accustomed to (but that can be taught, too); for the most part, kids, like adults, have the right to live in a world that isn’t full of signs that say “keep out” and “we don’t want your kind here.”
No one has an obligation to raise children. But each and every last one of us has an obligation to share the planet with them. And to treat them with the same respect we treat everyone else with whom we share that planet.