Between 45 and 100 euros extra, this is the price it will cost you to travel away from any children on board certain Corendon Dutch Airlines flights. The Dutch company will thus set up an adults-only area on its flights between Amsterdam and the island of Curaçao. This type of initiative already exists in Asia, but this is the first time that a European carrier has taken the plunge. Hello, curtains and partitions. Taking public transport these days means sitting at the forefront of the individualistic fever that has taken over our lifestyles. Take the train, and its hordes of travelers anxious at the idea of not getting out of the carriage first. It is now impossible to move freely ten minutes from the finish, everyone having decided to pack up and stand up in the corridors. In the aisles of the Paris metro, we learn to trample and zigzag between users so immersed in their phone screen that they forget everything around them. In the air, everyone gets into trouble with their neighbor’s vanity which is too bulky in the cabin.
Small selfishness, which was already doing quite well until now, has taken a further step with the fashion of “adults only” (“reserved for adults”), which has enjoyed some success for several years in restaurants (in countries where the law allows it) or hotels. Child-free wedding parties are also starting to emerge. The market favors selfish pleasures. And, at the start of the 21st century, it finds a wide audience. But let’s not be mistaken about the culprit. Let us simply ask ourselves for a moment, collectively and individually, about the meaning and future of a society that no longer tolerates excess decibels from its children.
In reality, there is nothing very surprising in this commercial and cynical initiative of an airline which claims to be of service even to parents, who will thus be able to “enjoy the flight without worrying when their children do a little more noise”. What is striking are the reactions on social networks from Internet users galvanized by the idea of relegating “kids”, and in passing their parents, to the rank of plague victims. “People who pay 1,200 euros for a ticket don’t have to endure tears throughout the flight”, “Happiness! Finally, we’re going to leave those who chose not to have one alone!!”, can -we read on X, formerly Twitter. Forgetting that a baby crying on a plane (particularly because of the painful pressure on his ears) doesn’t really have any other mode of expression. Still forgetting that parents are the first to be embarrassed, not to say on the verge of breaking down, in the face of this type of situation. Finally forgetting the deleterious effect that the Corendon Dutch Airlines initiative will have on single-parent families – there are 2 million of them in France – many of whom already have the feeling of being in a form of isolation. Let us be careful not to justify these unjustifiable demands by the guilty negligence of a few adults who, it is true, let their offspring kick the seat of the man in front without flinching. What is important to understand here is that the screaming of a child is certainly a nuisance, but one that those mainly concerned can hardly get rid of. Our level of tolerance with regard to these is not the same depending on whether we are more sensitive to noise, to smell, to promiscuity. Will we tomorrow create zones for travelers with excessive sweating? Or reserve sections for fat people on the pretext that you or I are bothered by the slightly too bulky elbows of the lady in seat 36B. Are we going to establish metro corridors dedicated to older people on the pretext that they don’t walk fast enough and prevent us from arriving at our workplace on time?
A social choice
It is obviously not a question of defending the famous child king. We are simply here faced with a societal choice. On the one hand, unbridled individualism, which rails at the slightest cry from a kid, but which will not hesitate at the same time to trample public space to satisfy its own desires, like those vacationers who listen to music at loudly on the beach, these scooters which parade dangerously on our sidewalks or these unbridled two-wheelers which take great pleasure in making pedestrians jump. On the other, living together, the basis of what allows a society to move forward, with all the nuisances and little hells of daily life that this implies. No offense to a famous polemicist who writes without her hand trembling: “Babies cry and we sometimes can’t stop them. On the other hand, the minimum is to go on the platform to avoid his neighbors in the wagon sound hell.”
The sociologist Clément Rivière has highlighted a striking phenomenon in our society linked to the development of the automobile and parents’ fear of danger: “Childhood, which took place in public spaces, has withdrawn into the rooms”, he explains. Faced with the excessive reactions of adults who have forever lost their childish soul, parents anxious not to make waves or to buy themselves a little peace of mind on transport have found the solution: Disney+. Do we really want whole carloads of zombified kids in front of their screens, headphones screwed on their heads, disconnected from the reality around them to leave the older ones alone watching their Netflix series? Since when did the train become a private screening room?
This new hatred of children is not unique to France. French journalist living in Japan Karyn Nishimura-Poupée sees this as a reason for the decline in the birth rate in the land of the Rising Sun: “Japanese women are immersed in an environment where children are poorly perceived, society has become intolerant towards them.” On September 8, INSEE published the birth rate report in France for July 2023, a particularly low number of daily births, unheard of for thirty years. Some will see this as excellent news for the planet. Is this really the social project we want for tomorrow? To be able to all go first class to Bali and drink without moderation. And without kids.