To dine out with toddlers or to not dine out with toddlers: that is the question. And the answer is just as complex.
The furious debate about rug rats in restaurants escalated last week after a businesswoman abused a mother-of-two in a café in Fremantle because her daughter was squealing.
And given the number of comments on WAtoday.com.au, it seems the passion runs deep in both camps.
So let's just lay it out on the table: A baby screeching and shrieking, just as you are about to tuck into some beef cheek in red wine sauce is bloody annoying.
But are the high-pitched shrills of a toddler so insufferable that this businesswoman had the right to launch a fully-fledged verbal assault on a parent?
Or is a café and restaurant one of the last places people can get some microscopic vestige of relief from a wailing wee one, to forget about the everydayness that clogs and clutters our lives?
But while the dining debate rages on, some common sense needs to be injected into this culinary conundrum.
If a small child is running around a café with breadsticks up his nose, flinging butter knifes at unsuspecting customers, a café owner has the right to stop him, because the little blighter is being a nitwit.
And if the parents' are being bigger twats by not grabbing their little brat and telling him to behave, then maybe, just maybe, a diner has the right to complain.
I recall eating at a swanky noshery recently when an "escaped" toddler stood inches from me with one finger up his nose and the other firmly entrenched up what Czech writer Milan Kundera whimsically referred to as the ninth portal.
Fearing any moment a booger would land on my creamy mash potato, I tried to warmly smile at the parent, only for the pint-size picker to bugger off.
The moment was annoying but tolerable.
On other occasions we have fled a restaurant or café, shortly after being handed a menu, because our three-year-old was thrashing about like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. I don't want to dine with him when his head is spinning around, so I don't expect diners would appreciate getting spit and vomit sprayed on them.
And I can hear the anti-kid brigade hollering over their lobster bisque, 'get a babysitter or stay at home'. But sometimes the only babysitter you can get is some 15-year-old girl who has to be home by 9.30pm.
And when us boring parents aren't surviving on a diet of Game of Thrones, we like to eat at places that don't have colouring-in place mats.
Some diners find the invasion of parents with prams in cafes and restaurants unbearable.
But isn't a table full of pseudo-intellectuals, loudly sprouting their over-bloated pretense from their gobs just as offensive?
A number of cafes and restaurants on the east coast of Australia and around the world have taken the extraordinary step of banning kids.
Perth will soon follow suit. And I don't have an issue with that.
But in the meantime maybe we should all take a deep breath and remember what that great philosopher Dr Seuss said. "An adult is just an outdated child".
