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I ride the bus to and from school. It's about 10, 15 minutes maybe. There are often children on the bus, and parents with them. Yesterday, there were two pairs sitting across from each other.
As I watched them, I realized a fundamental fact of bad parenting: The parents treat their children like a pet.
The kid on the right was looking at a bird out the window, as we stopped for a quick driver-exchange. Her parent happened to notice, and did that "point over the shoulder at it, doing little more than obscuring the kid's view" thing that I so hate from my own parents. After asking the child if she can say 'bird' a few times in that sickeningly patronizing tone of voice, the parent proceeded to ruffle her hair. The hair ruffling caused the parent to end up in a brief debate with some other passenger about how hard it is to get children to let their hair be combed.
As I was nearing my stop, the child and parent across the isle from the other child/parent combination began to get ready to get off, too. The child sort of tried to stand up (we're talking 1-3 year olds, by my rough estimate), then the parent pulled them back onto her knee in a series of remarkably awkward-looking grabs. Eventually sick of the manhandling, the child started to cry.
Now, I'm sort of skipping on the in-depth descriptions of this because I want to get going to school. But, through it all, it struck me as very pet like. People go off, get pregnant, give birth, and then spend the next few years of their life playing 'dress up' and 'do tricks' with their kids. They make them look nice when they're in public, they try to get them to do things for the amusement of others (walk around, say things, etc), and they use the most fucked up methods of discipline imaginable.
Really, I think people would be better off with a barbie doll and voice recorder.
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