A Child Free Zone

[area51newmexico]

A new housing estate in Scotland has been branded by some place for "child-hating ogres" as it does not allow its residents to have children living on site and you must be over 45 years to live there. Families with children can visit.

This is nothing new - a woman at work lives on a similar sort of housing village and she loves it!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/10476754.stm

Just wondering what you think of this? When you're over the age of 45 (or for those who already are) would you like to live in a place like this - child free?

Sounds bliss to me:D
_________________
Helen, the Administratrix of www.area51newmexico.com

[Vagilik]

We have places like that here too. its for people over 65, though and its so the older people can have some peace and quiet. I dont mind it, but im sure there are people out there that do.
_________________
Keyboard not connected, press F1 to continue.

[aalpha]

this should only apply to restaurants, not housing developments. IMHO.
_________________

[Lamiaceae]

.

TL;DR - Yes it's awesome, as is the why have children link, Child Catcher and Catherine Tate videos near the end.

.

I do love the stereotype of 'if you don't have children you're an ogre' label.
Shows the self assigned elitism that little vomiting shit owners give themselves ( 2 can play at that game ), as if through having children, they are therefore better. Based purely of course, on their own standards.

Straight off the bat, they go in with the ad hominem attack, already undermining their argument. In effect saying I can't think of any reason why having children is better than not having children, so i'm just going to make you feel inferior in the hope you see my argument better than yours because I called you names. You'll be right at home in your child's playground.

They seem to believe that having children is what you do. You find someone, you have children Like they've been culturally conditioned to believe this is what happens.
Well actually no, there are many couples who do not have or want children. I know people who have felt so strongly over this they have had abortions when the 1 in 100 accident happened ( if they don't want children, then the life of that child wouldn't be good, having not been wanted, *both* parents should want children, and actually *feel* and *know* they want them ).

If you want them then more power to you, but those who don't want children have as many reasons as you for not wanting them.

The argument 'but it's what people do' is false, as it's not what people do at all. Trying to base your entire argument on 'it's what people do' is false, you would do better in saying something like :-

'It's what *I want* to do, and I don't like you if you won't agree with me'.

Most likely, people who started this whole 'don't you think you should be having children?' are precisely the ones who regret it the most.

When your 'me time' is now forever consigned to a forgotten memory, and no sleep whatsoever for 3 days ( on top of your day job coming home to cooking and a bawling baby ) and not being able to make impromptu arrangements for days out, weekends away and holidays everything now becomes a military operation in planning and execution, it's time to start projecting your remorse at all those things you wanted to do and now never will onto someone else to make yourself feel better.

That life time experience holiday you told yourself you'd always have? that'll be replaced with the 7 year old birthday party with 15 of the bloody varmits spilling sticky fizzypop everywhere while treading pizza into your carpet and feeding your DVD / blu ray player toast.

I personally like my things for me, I like the idea that my life starts and ends with me, the continuation of the human race is your problem.

But as much as you may not want children, your beliefs are constantly challenged by other people who cannot have the common courtesy to respect yours and inflict their own brats on you relentlessly.
Such cries like i've had a child, can you look after the biggest dissapointment in my life while we go away and have that thing we used to have before it... I think it was called 'fun'.

Anyway, I'll close off with a link

http://www.vhemt.org/wbchart.htm



That place mentioned in the article ( even though i've not read it, Helen's description was good enough for me ) is brilliant in that it gives people who don't want children and who want to live their life to the full *for themselves* can finally do so.

The people with children who have to resign themselves to their lives becoming monumentually dull and having to get ripped off by always going on holidays during term time and looking to see if it's 'child friendly' can go and tell other parents of their misery while people who actually decided for themselves what they wanted can do so without some kid riding his bike down the side of your car and scratching it because they fell off.

Do they have a child catcher like in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUnhfvGdmmw



Also that age is far too high it should be brought down to 25, although perhaps you always know if you want or don't want kids by that age things have perhaps cemented themselves a bit more.
At about that age you're pretty sure if you don't want kids, anyone caught moving in and then having kids can be evicted ala large group with torches and pitchforks with the odd cry of 'burn the heretic'

Maybe the odd beating and some stocks just outside for the full medieval effect

Where do I sign up? - no children in a housing estate sounds like paradise

Though this does also remind me of the Catherine Tate 'Safehouse for Gingers' sketch, where people with ginger hair could be kept safe from everyone else who picked on them for being ginger.
Here you can be safe from child mad harpies who think your only purpose in life is to have children

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUhLIjlTNSk


_________________
I should update my sig. What to put here for $CurrentYear ?

[Rach]

To me that seems terrible, I wouldn't want to live in a palce like that, but not just because of the no children rule. There are so many prohibitive rules, it sounds like a prison, 'no this, no that':

[Lamiaceae]

Market forces at the end of the day, supply and demand.

If there wasn't a demand for this sort of thing, then these sort of settlements wouldn't exist. But someone somewhere wanted this, and enough people got behind them to get a critical mass going, so a market for 'quiet residences' grew up enough to be considered economically viable.

This wouldn't of been a selling point if it wasn't wanted. If this had gone up when there wasn't demand for it, everyone would of laughed at it and the houses wouldn't of sold. But they are doing so the demand is good enough.

Decided I should really read the article and it does say

[Rach]

Its fair enough that places like this exist, I am just saying that I would have no desire to live somewhere I could not have children or pets, or have my friends with children visit whenever they want (afterall if there are limits as to when children can stay then the available dates are likely to be dictated by those who made the rules). There are obviously enough people who would want to live in places like this, or it wouldn't have been built. I can see why people would want to live there, as children can be noisy and cause disturbance, but imho you could have bad neighbours no matter where you life - be it noisy children, teenagers who play music too loud or thay noisy sex couple whose story was posted here a few days ago. It isn't just children who can make bad neighbours, and I think it depends very much on where you live rather than what age your neighbours are.

Where I lived in Nottingham there was a son over the age of 18 (so not technically a child), who played his music so loud that it really disturbed me, whilst I was working on my cw in the day, trying to relax in the evening and trying to sleep at night. Under the rules of this place, presumably young adults are ok to live there, but they can be as noisy as children. By comparison, where I am moving to next the neighbours have 6 children but (my opinion as yet) they seem polite - the children range from 2-16, and 2 of the younger children came to give me flowers the day I moved in. Considering how many of them there are, they make much less noise than that one young adult. In my personal experiences children can make good neighbours (plus I still need all the babysitting money I can get!), and young families can be very courteous neighbours (as parents of young children are perhaps less likely to have loud parties at their houses than young professionals without children). That is just my personal experience, and others may have lived next to families with antisocial children and have bad experiences of living next to children, but I personally have not.
_________________
~~~I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minuite of it!~~~

[aalpha]

Having read Rach's post above I must amend my previous post. I think it would be much more accurate to say crappy-child free zones should be renamed crappy-parent free zones. I think I'll leave that one right there.
_________________

[Lamiaceae]

Rach does make a very good point, this is why councils have various anti social behavioural departments to work against this.

http://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/home/youandyourcommunity/staysafe/antisocialbehaviour.htm

And while I would hate to tar all children and adults with the same brush, it's perhaps more of the thought that being a nuisance is more prevalent in children than in adults?

Knocking on someone's door then running away seems like endless fun to a child to a adult they have better things to be doing. While yes, adults can be more of a nuisance it's perhaps less likely to happen than with children? - maybe i'm missing other such knock on effects of lack of children. There'll be no school run for a start, that in itself would make my journey to work far easier.



Anyway, I want to post a mash article

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/middle-class-parents-exhausting%2c-say-babies-201007052877/
_________________
I should update my sig. What to put here for $CurrentYear ?

[Rach]

That's very true aalpha - its often the fault of crappy parenting when the children are rude/noisy/whatever.

@ minty - that's also true, you shouldn't tar all people of one group with the same brush - so why does the housing development assume all children are a problem? Some places assess potential applicants by interview and also by demanding references - surely this should be enough to stop anti-social families from gaining a place?
_________________
~~~I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minuite of it!~~~