The kids in bars issue seems to be back for a flash. CNN weighed in on that subject recently and even quoted FIPS. Here’s an excerpt from the CNN piece:
…the divide remains wide in the blogosphere. Around 150 readers weighed in recently when someone posted on the Brooklynian, a neighborhood blog, the simple query: “Which bars are child free?” One writer shared the tale of a drunk father standing at a bar while his beer sloshed on his stroller-strapped kid’s face. Another poster announced a bar crawl in which “no crawlers” would be allowed.
The public debate about babies in bars ignited about two years ago when the bar Union Hall, a popular stomping ground, banned strollers from the premises, Gross said.
“At a certain point, owners said, ‘Hey, enough,’ ” he explained. “Strollers take up a lot of room, especially the nice strollers. Your average Bugaboo is a beast.”
This ban on buggies in a neighborhood where “kids rule” caused an “uproar,” said Erica Reitman, the 36-year-old married — but not a “breeder,” she insists — marketing director who is behind the blog F****ed in Park Slope. “There wasn’t a march on the street, but there could have been. [Union Hall] relented under pressure and got rid of the policy.”
I frequently rail on about the epidemic of parental over-involvement that runs rampant among so many enclaves of educated Baby Boomers these days. My over-involvement in this issue stems from my awareness as a therapist of the damage being done to so many children by these otherwise well-intentioned parents. I have said more than once to said parents that they are creating a generation of “cranky narcissists,” and I have, of course, gotten a lot of angry responses back. (I have also dared to suggest that parents should focus a little more on their sex-romance lives, and boy did that really go down like a lead balloon!) Yet, this is no small matter from which I do not intend to back away, and here’s why: narcissism, which can be initiated in almost any stage of early childhood, and can be part of any character structure, is an insidious, crippling disorder.
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