I second this. If most parents are anything like me, they avoid flying with their small children as much as possible. What a nightmare. However.... Sometimes

I second this. If most parents are anything like me, they avoid flying with their small children as much as possible. What a nightmare. However.... Sometimes you just _have_ to fly somewhere. Anybody demanding that babies be banned from airplanes probably doesn't realize that this would be a severe discriminatory measure against women with small children that try to keep their career from dying. My wife had an important once-every-few-years scientific conference when our daughter was one year old (and still breastfeeding). Being from Germany, it was bad luck for us that the conference happened to be in Korea. It was either don't go and miss out on countless opportunities or make two 12 hour flights with the baby. In the end I went along as a babysitter and we flew to Korea, enduring some hours (fortunately not the entire flight time) of crying and stares. Small children are a part of human life, and a noisy one to say the least. If you have them and still want to build a career, you cannot always go for the "I don't want to bother anyone" route.