Parenting & Family Quote by Anne Cassidy

Cassidy’s line slices cleanly through a familiar parental melodrama: the impulse to treat a screaming, biting, sleep-thwarting toddler like a miniature villain. By grounding “bad” in moral agency, she reframes the whole conflict as an adult projection, not a child’s character flaw. The sentence is doing quiet cultural work. It’s not just defending babies; it’s indicting the language we reach for when we’re overwhelmed.

The phrasing “no matter how trying they become” concedes the lived reality - exhaustion, resentment, the claustrophobia of caregiving - so the argument doesn’t read like sanctimony. Then comes the pivot: “don’t have the ability to make moral choices.” Cassidy borrows the structure of ethical philosophy but deploys it as a pressure valve for shame. If the child cannot choose, the caregiver doesn’t need to interpret chaos as malice. The real target is the moralization of inconvenience.

“That category only exists in the adult mind” is the sharper twist. She’s pointing at how adults use moral labels to manage their own helplessness: if the baby is “bad,” the situation feels legible, punishable, controllable. It’s also a critique of a culture that treats parenting as a performance graded by other adults. Calling a baby “bad” doesn’t describe the child; it broadcasts the parent’s stress and the social demand to explain it.

In context, this reads like an antidote to punitive parenting narratives and internet “discipline” discourse. Cassidy’s intent is clarity with compassion: separate behavior from morality, and you get a child you can guide instead of a tiny enemy you need to defeat.