@Plasmator - "Crabby kids are often part of flying, deal with it. One day, if these people manage to find a mate and reproduce despite their sour dispositions, they’ll feel the same way."

Thanks for proving my point.

Most people, including non-attractive intellectually challenged people mate eventually. Reproducing is even easier, that's why there is so much teenager pregnancy. Why did you try to make this sound any special?

Special and rare is a person/couple that takes full responsibility for their decisions instead of taking for granted that other people have to participate in case something ill planned went wrong.

And by the way I don't think anybody demonstrated sour dispositions to mates, just to other people bratty kids.

Once I saw a couple in a transatlantic flight, with one kid only. They clearly checked as much luggage as they could so they could easily manage their little stuff and the kid's stuff. They were telling the kid that that was the kids seat as they rehearsed, he had to stay there and be polite to other people as they discussed. The kid was 2-3 y old, had one toy only and the mom had a little DVD player to play his shows. Everything went smooth in a 9h flight. The kid complained a little at some point, parents were attentive but assertive, it went away, and everything went smoothly.
But this was the exception.

Many times kids outnumber parents and help, they are all packed with a lot of stuff what causes stress to everyone and the kid, sometimes they don't have seats for all kids thinking that they will manage a long flight with kids switching laps.

Once a lady came into the plane late with 2 kids, didn't have contiguous seats. She made 2 people who had isles or windows move to middle seats b/c the kids wanted to stay with their mommy. You buy your tickets in advance, you arrive at the airport early and you have to stay 5 hours squished in a middle seat b/c some Mom you don't know couldn't plan her trip.

Then there was this 5-6 year old kid who was screaming the whole flight, obviously old enough to understand planes, but brat enough not to care. And the parents phased out and let the kid scream until he got tired, 3hs later.

It takes a lot of planning and consistency to make kids good kids. But most people just don't have the personal discipline to be consistent or plan accordingly, making everyone share their bad decisions. After all is a collective society effort!

Deal with it!

"Having never encountered an out-of-control family at a restaurant, I have wonder where Mr. C eats. It sounds made up. Maybe one incident… but enough incidents to merit whining about it in a book? Nah, I don’t buy it. I won’t buy it."

Never saw a brat in a restaurant? What about planes? In every single flight there's always a kid that screams for an hour straight. What about malls, subways, movies,... ?

The problem is that people pretend that there's nothing one can do about brat kids, and everybody is supposed to put up with it because either they have kids and abused other peoples patience before, or will have kids and will need their tolerance in the future.

There isn't anything you can do after the kid becomes a brat and completely loses respect for their parents, who are insecure and afraid if they don't give in to the kid's demands they won't love them. Kids have to be taught and disciplined from the beginning for their own good and to become responsible children and then better citizens. And until the kid can be trusted or if they fail to behave afterwards, by all means leave them home.

"He’s just jealous that he can’t make any baby Cafferty’s because his balls don’t work anymore."

The problem is not that Mr Cafferty or somebody else can't have kids, but that everybody, even somebody that posts an answer like quoted above can.