Go to London, and you’ll see Italian and Polish tourists losing their minds over the gray squirrels in Hyde Park. Some will express bafflement over these frantic furry creatures. Others will “ooh” and “ahh” and snap pictures. You’re bound to see a woman scream and jump behind her husband as a squirrel dashes across the footpath.
For continental Europeans, gray squirrels, the most quotidian of mammals, are exotic, confusing, and even scary.
Babies and families are just as scary and odd in many corners of our world. The unfortunately famous internet-poster Laura Loomer usually deals in anti-Islam content, but babies were the target of one of her recent two-minute hates.
“Is there anything worse than a crying baby on a plane?” (You would think someone so obsessed with the misdeeds of Islamic extremists would be able to think of at least 19 things worse than a baby to find on your flight.)
“I wish parents would control their children,” she continued. “It’s so disruptive. I refuse to believe a baby cries for 10 hours. At some point this is just bad parenting, right?”
Do some parents neglect their kids in ways that inconvenience others? Sure. But Loomer’s premise is that babies are “controllable.” This is not something believed by anyone who has ever met a baby. And every day, there are more and more people who have never met a baby.
The birth rate is at record lows in basically every country in the world. The number of children in the U.S. ticks down every day. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco metro areas have all seen their under-5 child population drop by double-digit percentages just since 2020. Many neighborhoods are basically childless.
In these swaths of America where a baby’s cry, or kids’ playing-screetches are rarely heard, the adult population becomes unaccustomed to these sounds and increasingly annoyed by them.
Likewise, the very idea of a regular family doing regular-family stuff is inscrutable to many.
“How do people in the suburbs genuinely look forward to Friday night on the couch, Saturday morning at Costco, and call that a weekend?” asked a podcaster who goes by Murray Hill Guy, named after the Manhattan neighborhood where the median 1-bedroom rents for $4,783. “Like you really moved out of the city just to LARP as your parents at 34?”
CAN WASHINGTON DELIVER HOUSING FOR FAMILIES?
The idea of coaching Little League, cooking pancakes with your kids, just playing in the yard with a toddler, going to church, and getting together at a neighbor’s for a barbecue was foreign — he calls it a “LARP,” or live-action role-playing. What’s foreign, or some imaginary game, is a life built around family and community.
Italy and Poland do not suffer great consequences from their dearth of squirrels. But if babies and families become exotic in the United States, that’s a bad thing.
