"We have to tell our babies to stop crying"
About this Quote
The line works because it smuggles in two assumptions. First, that the complaints being made in public life - about rights, fairness, harm, or exclusion - are inherently immature. Second, that the adult response isn’t empathy or policy, but correction. The “we” is crucial: it recruits the audience into a shared role as responsible parents of a nation that’s supposedly gotten soft. That’s a familiar conservative move, but Kirk’s phrasing is extra aggressive because it implies not just disagreement, but contempt for the emotional legitimacy of the other side.
In context, this kind of rhetoric thrives in a media ecosystem where politics is performed like a dominance contest. Reducing opponents to “babies” is efficient: it short-circuits their claims and flatters your listeners as stoic grown-ups. The subtext is a warning, too: feelings are permissible only when they serve the tribe. Everyone else’s pain is just noise that needs to be trained out of the room.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Kirk, Charlie. (2026, January 18). We have to tell our babies to stop crying. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-have-to-tell-our-babies-to-stop-crying-173179/
Chicago Style
Kirk, Charlie. "We have to tell our babies to stop crying." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-have-to-tell-our-babies-to-stop-crying-173179/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"We have to tell our babies to stop crying." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-have-to-tell-our-babies-to-stop-crying-173179/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.










