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Family friendly?

Family friendly?

Old Mar 4th 2004, 8:18 pm
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Default Family friendly?

With long working hours, refusal to heat up baby foods, lack of non smoking areas, expensive child care...the list is endless...I despair of the UK.

Is Australia any better? Is the lifestyle more family orientated or do people still frown at the mere mention of kids? We've even heard tales of special booths for families in cinemas... maybe it's just mine and they want to lock them in a cage!!!

Thanks for your thoughts
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Old Mar 5th 2004, 1:19 am
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Sorry, we can't help here, got no bin lids so don't take a lot of notice. Just thought we'd bump it back to the top for you.

One observation though, you don't see any "Wacky Warehouses" on the side of pubs here.
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Old Mar 5th 2004, 1:33 am
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They have special showings at cinemas for mums and babys so they can take the pushchairs in... My neice used to go quite a lot - can't imagine it would do the babys hearing any good but a pair of ear muffs would sort that out.

I think it is more family orientated here as a general rule of thumb.
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Old Mar 5th 2004, 1:43 am
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There is one thing I prefer about OZ. They have banned smoking just about everywhere, its last target is Pubs, soon to have smoking bans so staff cant sue employers for health reasons.

Cant say I ever found UK child unfriendly tho There is so much more for kids to do there, mine loved it.

I suppose you get people who hate kids anywhere, main thing to look out for in OZ, is upmarket housing estates that attract loads of retirees, not easy to live amongst those whingers if you have kids.
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Old Mar 5th 2004, 10:16 am
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I would agree that its a lot more family friendly here. Even places like Maccas have loads of play equipment.
They're are quite a few pubs with waccy ware house yypr play areas, omly thing is theres usually a TAB there, which is, at present, really somkey and nasty!
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Old Mar 5th 2004, 10:21 am
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Default Re: Family friendly?

Originally posted by Jenny Newbury
With long working hours, refusal to heat up baby foods, lack of non smoking areas, expensive child care...the list is endless...I despair of the UK.

Is Australia any better? Is the lifestyle more family orientated or do people still frown at the mere mention of kids? We've even heard tales of special booths for families in cinemas... maybe it's just mine and they want to lock them in a cage!!!

Thanks for your thoughts
We went to a pub once in Cairns and my fella's sister came down later to join us with her young son. The bar attendant came over and asked her to leave!!! She messed with the wrong mother there, got a right mouthful and lost the whole families custom

Makes you mad as this was one of the first times we had gone out as a whole family and couldn't enjoy it!
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Old Mar 5th 2004, 6:11 pm
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One of the reasons we want to emigrate is for our daughters. They seem to enjoy outdoors, swimming etc.

We went to the coast in UK a month ago as 5yr old doing school topic on lighthouses - the beach was filthy, I mean stinking, complete with condoms, false teeth and beer cans amongst other things. The weather was cold (obviously January! ), everyone seemed miserable. We went for lunch at a moderately sized shopping precinct - noone would heat the baby food beyond room temperature, I eventually got a cup of tea without the tea bag to do it as they weren't able to give us hot water! The smoking and non smoking areas merged into one, the food was expensive rubbish and there was nowhere to breastfeed or change her. This was a particularly bad day but most of the above are not unusual unfortunately.

Hevs - we may end up in the south/eastern suburbs of Melbourne complete with dog so read your msgs to see what we are letting ourselves in for Thanks for the rest of the msgs all helpful
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Old Mar 5th 2004, 8:09 pm
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Couldn't agree more.

We lived in the US for a year back in '94 and the culture shift in something as simple as taking you kiddie for a meal out is amazing. US food chains really cater for kids and nothing is too much trouble, even for my 9 month old boy who quite often didn't want to be there . The general feedback that you get from other diners is great, even some people who would come up and chat to us as strangers and ask us where we were from, etc.

In the UK we always felt like we were were in the way, always disturbing other people. Sadly this was 10 years ago and I can't see that anything has changed. We go to eating places now and I see parents trying to keep kids entertained and I really do feel for them and know what they're going through but I look around and see the other people frowning and wishing secretly that there a "no kids" policy was in force. My son is 10 years old now and it's a real treat to take him out for a meal (he's so well behaved ) but I do always feel the heart strings being tugged every time I see a young family with a little kiddie in a restaraunt being treated poorly.

Although I was born in the UK and have live here most of my life, I lived abroad as a kid and grew up in an environment which was much more "family tolerant" so I know that it odesn't have to be this way.

If only people could stop and think sometimes that one day they themselves could be sitting in a restaraunt, with one or more of their own children at the table, perhaps we would alll have a little bit more patience and understanding.

As Kent Brockman would say on the Simpsons, "that's my two cents worth"...
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Old Mar 5th 2004, 8:33 pm
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Default Re: Family friendly?

Originally posted by Natbat
We went to a pub once in Cairns and my fella's sister came down later to join us with her young son. The bar attendant came over and asked her to leave!!! She messed with the wrong mother there, got a right mouthful and lost the whole families custom

Makes you mad as this was one of the first times we had gone out as a whole family and couldn't enjoy it!
Nat, the only reason that they could ask you to "leave" is if you were in the section with pokies. Most pubs have a section specifically for families, as well as the public bar, then the pokies/gaming part. The law says that children arent allowed to be in the gaming section, my guess is thats where you were. Years ago kids werent allowed in the public bar either, but I think thats changed.
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Old Mar 5th 2004, 8:46 pm
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We went to Adelaide last September for a holiday and found it very child friendly.
All the fast food chains, and some pubs had play areas.
We also noticed that it was much cleaner than here.
Everyone there seemed more friendly and easy going than here.
When our two daughters (now 2 & 4) were babies we also found it a nightmare to find a place to warm bottles or jars of food without it being too much trouble.
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