What’s the worst part of taking a commercial flight with young children?
According to 1,000 British parents, it’s the looks you get when you walk down the plane’s aisle during the boarding process.
A recent survey by Gatwick Airport in London reveals that parents traveling with youngsters experience more stress about how fellow passengers will react to their kids than whether their children make it through the flight without getting sick.
One in five of the parents polled say they prefer not to venture out their front door if it means getting dirty looks from others in reaction to their child’s bad behavior on a commercial airliner.
I wonder if that’s a British thing?
After all, Brits are notoriously prim and proper, whereas I find that the majority of American parents could care less if their children are screaming, yelling and tearing through an airplane cabin mid-flight. Meanwhile, according to the Gatwick survey, more than half of parents say they feel “horrible” when their child cries or misbehaves on a flight, and four in ten say they would do anything to avoid being on the receiving end of “evil stares” from other passengers.
The poll also revealed that one in four parents have actually been asked by fellow passengers to move their noisy kids away from them, with one in ten being asked outright to keep their child quiet.
Basically, the survey shows that parents’ stress levels rise when they travel with their children because they feel tremendous guilt if their kids disturb fellow passengers. Nearly 70 of the parent respondents admit that experiencing an incident where their children misbehave or cry when on a flight is the part of traveling they fear above anything else.
Do you feel guilty when your child screams during a flight? How guilty? It seems as though the British parents really stress out about their kids making a scene in public, much more than American moms and dads. What do you think?
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