I looked to see if this topic has been brought up in the Living Room and I couldn't find it, so I thought I would introduce it. I think it should be familiar to anyone who has interacted with breeders (and even some parents) of small children.
First a little background: I'm doing contract work in an office that has a supervisor who has 1 year old girl child (I'm guessing the age here. It's not a loaf, but it isn't walking on its own.)
The supervisor one day had to take part of the morning away from work to take the daughter to the doctor for (I think) an ear infection or pinkeye or something. Upshot is, the kid was not feeling good at all and I imagine it wasn't a super great experience at the doctor's office. Now this is just me, but if I had just taken someone who was not feeling well to the doctor, I would figure that person would want to go straight home after and take a nap, adult or child.
But this was not my supervisor's thinking at all. No, this is the time right after visiting the clinic to come into the office with aforementioned kid in tow to show it off to the office, listen to voicemails and check emails.
Supervisor gets the kid's winter outer wrappings off and amidst loud cooings and cluckings, plops her kid in the lap of one of the older workers who is a grandmother. (I was sitting in my cubicle trying to do the work I was paid to do.) Immediately the child starts wailing, which leads to even louder cooings & cluckings by the admiring audience. Super(visor) Moo finally has to pull the kid into her lap while she does the very important work of voicemail & email. Finally she packed up the kid and got it out of there.
What gets me is how did she think this was going to go? Did she think her special sprog was going a delightful ray of unicorn farts and sunshine for the whole office to be charmed by while sick and probably tired? And I've seen this again and again in public with breeders, dragging the overly tired, cranky, sick kids in public or visiting friends/family, and not understanding that they kid needs to be at home, not filling the air with their shrieks, screams and cries.
Sometimes I think they do this to torture the kid for being an enormous upheaval in their previous existence. If anyone can provided some earthly reasoning for this type of behavior, I would love to hear it, because honestly I am at a loss.