Empathy for Children, not Penalties, on Planes

From news.com.au this week came the headline ‘Noisy kids? You should pay extra on planes’ – an opinion piece by Claudia Connell. She rejects one airline’s new offer that she can pay extra to travel in a quiet zone free from under-12s. Instead, she suggests that families with noisy children should pay the higher penalty, not the people like her "just wanting a quiet journey". Claudia writes that she is “not a person who hates kids,” has “nieces, nephews and godchildren that I adore”, and has “made peace” with the fact that she won’t have her own children. She’s just not fond of crying kids on planes. She’s “sympathetic” of a mother struggling with a bawling baby, but refuses to “accept that it’s now my lot to have my quality of life diminished by having other people’s families forced on me.” Her ticket price should not include “13 hours of hell”, she asserts.