{"id":1044646,"date":"2025-12-08T22:53:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T19:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1044646"},"modified":"2025-12-08T22:53:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T19:53:00","slug":"am-i-supposed-to-feel-bad-about-traveling-with-a-crying-baby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1044646","title":{"rendered":"Am I Supposed to Feel Bad About Traveling With a Crying Baby?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Father Figuring<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Am I Supposed to Feel Bad About Traveling With a Crying Baby?<\/h1>\n
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By <\/span>Raven Smith<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Collage by Vogue<\/em>; Photo: Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A man on a plane TikTok\u2019ed about getting a refund after a baby in a nearby aisle cried for 45 minutes. That man was a dick. A few years back, a lady on a South Korea\u2013to\u2013US flight gave out handwritten notes and care packages\u2014earplugs, gum, candies\u2014to atone for flying with a baby who might cry. That woman was a benevolent fool.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t get my head around either of those standards\u2014neither the \u201cI\u2019m sorry I cannot control the behavior of this defenseless human in my arms\u201d position, nor this new \u201cWhy has this baby ruined my day?\u201d schtick.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the season of mass travel, December being the month we have to touch base with uncles, aunts, grandparents, and even MAGA-hatted distant cousins, lest we summon bad tidings and bah-humbugs\u2014especially when a newborn\u2019s involved. This time of year, it\u2019s your duty as a parent to serve up your baby, oft dressed in velvet and doily, to cooing relations.<\/p>\n

I am a loud person by nature\u2014God blessed me with a voice that carries\u2014but the thought of negatively impacting someone else\u2019s experience with my presence is, by no stretch of the imagination, mortifying. I don\u2019t talk during the movie or use speakerphone for public calls. But I have no qualms about my daughter\u2019s lack of absolute silence in any situation. I\u2019m sure you can Labrador-train a child to be seen and not heard, but a new-ish-born baby is a lasso of foghorns you can\u2019t predict the trigger for, and parenting toddlers, on the whole, is fighting for your fucking life\u2014every minute trying to swerve the carnage mainly seen in disaster movies. Many a traveling parent knows the piercing pain of their kid melting down when they should be buckling up, and shoving Cheeto after Cheeto into their mouth, or a sticky iPad into their stickier hands, to ease the onset of Armageddon. You\u2019ve heard the verging-on-shrill pitch to their voice, the rising panic as their mile-high cub breaks the sound barrier.<\/p>\n

To state the blindingly obvious: Babies cry. Without vocab or motor skills, a baby can\u2019t indicate even the smallest discomfort without Niagara-ing into their bibs. If a baby is wet, they cry. If a baby is tired, they cry. If a baby is hungry, they cry. A baby can cry at the scratchy label in a onesie, a slight gust of cold air, the 12-second gap between Ms. Rachel videos. A baby\u2019s Spotify Wrapped is just the sound of them wailing at different pitches.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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And it should go without saying that a baby crying isn\u2019t a reflection on the parent or their parenting style. Happy, non-future-serial-killer babies cry. Well-watered, well-tended babies cry. A baby that doesn\u2019t cry may seem aspirational for Christmas travel, but it\u2019s more likely an issue for a medic.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m wondering what brings people online to bemoan babies crying on flights. Were they expecting to be shielded from the general public when they purchased their ticket for public travel? Were they hoping to pay for extra soundproofing along with their legroom? There\u2019s something about the echo chamber of social media that has siloed us into hyper-individuals, fixated not only on our personal experience but on the things that threaten it. Rather than co-exist, we have refused to become comfortable with the uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

The public-shaming aspect, especially of mothers, carries a certain subtext; it\u2019s about a woman failing to disappear into the passing montage of a man\u2019s day\u2014about making herself known to him without courting his attention. There\u2019s a sense that a woman is meant to carry out her job as a mother in perfect silence, like a fresco of the Madonna and child.<\/p>\n

But the people judging babies that cry seem to forget that they were once babies that cried. And in a way, the complainers are still the babies\u2014unable to modify their own emotions, to empathize, to rationalize. Where a baby lacks the development to properly express themselves, the complainers lack the maturity to shut up and noise-cancel. Instead of acting out, what they really need to do is grow up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: http:\/\/vogue.com\/article\/am-i-supposed-to-feel-bad-about-traveling-with-a-crying-baby<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Father Figuring Am I Supposed to Feel Bad About Traveling With a Crying Baby? By Raven Smith December 8, 2025 Collage by Vogue; Photo: Getty Images A man on a plane TikTok\u2019ed about getting a refund after a baby in a nearby aisle cried for 45 minutes. That man was a dick. A few years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-1044646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-vogue-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1044646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1044646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1044646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1044646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}