Two women on a domestic flight in China who were fed up listening to a crying toddler decided to take matters into their own hands and have set off a furor on Chinese social media, reports the BBC. The child was with her grandparents, and the grandmother gave the women permission to take the child into the plane's bathroom as punishment. "We won't let you out unless you stop crying," one woman tells the wailing girl as she reaches for the door. One of the women posted a video of the incident to social media in which she boasted of the tactic, but the video came down amid a furious backlash, per the Guardian.
The incident took place on a Juneyao Airlines flight from the city of Guiyang to Shanghai. The airline initially seemed to side with the women, saying they were trying to "educate" the child, but it apologized a day later, per CNN. Thousands of commenters said the women overstepped, even with the grandmother's permission. "Adults in their 30s can have emotional breakdowns, but people don't allow toddlers to have theirs," said one comment that drew a large number of likes.
As the site Sixth Note reports, the incident taps into an issue in China known as "bear children"—referring to young children thought to be spoiled and ill-behaved. In recent years, video clips of "kids shouting, running around, and kicking seats" have been going viral on social media, along with a rising sentiment that strangers should be allowed to intervene. The woman who posted the video initially defended herself along those lines: "I prefer to take action rather than be a bystander," she wrote. "I just wanted to calm the child down and let everyone rest." (More China stories.)