Parenting & Family Quote by W. C. Fields

A deadpan grenade disguised as a confession, "I never met a kid I liked" works because it commits a small social crime with perfect comic timing. Fields isn’t merely grumbling; he’s staging a revolt against the compulsory sentimentality that turns children into moral props. In a culture that treats liking kids as a basic test of decency, he answers with a flat refusal. The shock lands fast, then curdles into laughter because the line is too blunt to be taken at face value and too specific to be dismissed as abstract misanthropy.

The intent is performance: Fields built a persona around the lovable curmudgeon, a man allergic to uplift. Kids, in that world, represent noise, chaos, sticky hands, and the tyranny of innocence. By claiming he’s never met an exception, he exaggerates to the point of caricature, broadcasting not hatred so much as impatience with the expectation that adults must be instantly softened by youth. The subtext is: stop asking me to be tender on command.

Context matters: early-20th-century American entertainment often trafficked in wholesome family narratives, especially as film and radio mass-marketed “heart.” Fields counters with anti-heart, a kind of vaudeville contrarianism that punctures sanctimony. The line also slyly protects his persona. If he admits one kid he likes, the mask cracks; if he likes none, the character stays intact. Cruelty becomes craft, and cynicism becomes a punchline with a purpose: exposing how performative our approved affections can be.