Kaley Cuoco, the actress well-known for her role as Penny on Big Bang Theory, told “Jimmy Kimmel Live” host Jimmy Kimmel this week about comments a fellow passenger on a recent flight made regarding her infant daughter, Matilda.
“It was our first flight ever with this baby, which is terrifying,” said Cuoco. “We were very terrified.”
She continued, “I thought, ‘What do we do? We have to bring her sound machine on the plane. It’s the only thing she can go to sleep to. So she’s crying. It was hard. She finally falls asleep and the sound machine is on and we were finally like [sighs].”
It was soon after Matilda had fallen asleep that a flight attendant approached Cuoco and her boyfriend Tom Pelphrey to tell them that another passenger had requested that they turn off the sound machine that was helping Matilda to sleep.
“I’m sitting there like, ‘Oh, my God,'” she said. “I can feel Tom be like, ‘Hey ask the passenger if she wants to hold our screaming child when we turn it [off].’ … The ice went into his veins.”
They soon learned it was the woman seated in front of them who had complained. But when Matilda woke up rested and happy, the woman took the opportunity to make a rude and snarky remark… about the baby.
“The lady turns around and goes, ‘Oh, so your daughter does know how to smile.'”
The “Jimmy Kimmel Live” audience gasped in response.
“It was in that moment where I understood why women end up on ‘Dateline,'” Cuoco joked. “I could have strangled… I could’ve thrown that woman off the plane.”
Cuoco has described motherhood as “incredible” and said she believes babies need to be more accepted by society — and she’s right. There has been a hatred of children brewing in the United States and it’s been fueled by the pro-abortion mentality that pits mother against child, man against woman, and father against child. Legalized abortion and birth control have, over decades, helped to create an environment that is openly hostile toward children.
The anti-natalist group Stop Having Kids, for example, has been calling on adults to not have children. According to the group’s website, not having children is a way to show that you care for others and the world, and they believe “having children is unethical and irrational.” The group wants sterilization and abortion to be normalized and claims it is cruel to bring children into the world. Likewise, the group The Birthstrike Movement believes having children is a “crime against humanity.”
According to one survey, 44% of non-parents ages 18 to 49 said it was ‘not too likely’ or ‘not at all likely’ that they will ever have children — an increase of seven percent from 2018. The majority (56%) of those non-parents said they won’t have children simply because they don’t want to have children. Their reasons range from the belief that children cost too much money to fear of changes to the woman’s body. They also fear the pain associated with childbirth and want to focus on their careers. Some millennials said, “With the way I want to live my life, kids would get in the way,” and “I don’t want kids because they’re a f-ckton of work.”
The U.S. fertility rate has been in a steady decline since the 1960s and has entered a sustained period of below-replacement fertility.
Some parents, meanwhile, are treating their children poorly and using social media as a way to vent about parenthood, which makes it appear as though children are nothing but burdens. One mom used social media to tell her daughter, “U piss me off” spelled out in her lunch. The little girl, too young to read, thought her mother was feeding her a meal with love, but the mother was trying to get social media attention at her daughter’s expense. Some viewers called out the behavior as emotional abuse.
Due to this increase in low opinions about children, events such as traveling by plane instill fear in parents like Cuoco — not fears over safety, but over other people’s attitudes. One couple even resorted to bribing their fellow passengers into accepting their baby.
But infants cannot regulate their own emotions, and their natural reaction to being tired, hungry, or scared is to cry. Flying can hurt their ears and the long amount of travel time can leave them exhausted, just as it does adults. Except, unlike adults, babies don’t understand what’s happening and don’t know how to cope. They deserve compassion and kindness, as do their parents.
“You see all these things on social media where people are really, truly getting mad at these babies,” said Cuoco. “Like, justice for babies! … This is ridiculous … leave them alone!”
