I would like to thank all the people who have been hospitable to me and my child over the years, and who have made us feel so welcome. I recognize, when I slow down to think, that our participation comes, in part, at a cost to those who are not comfortable with children, and who none the less treat them courteously, being themselves courteous folk. Rather than jumping on them for being forthright, perhaps we can take it as a reminder that the welcome extended to us and our children is an ongoing gift that we all give each other, and that it costs some of us more than others.
It is true, though, that people would react with anger when told that children were to be excluded from an event simply because the autocrat didn't want them there. They would likewise be angry at the exclusion of any other category of people (women? persons with disabilities? non-fighters? racial groups? bards? heralds?) who made the autocrat uncomfortable. However, people do successfully run "adult" events; we have one event locally that is an R-rated event only for adults.
My daughter has the SCA as her birthright, and she takes her place in our society for granted. As a result, I have a very different child than I would had she been raised outside our society. She will accept discipline from any adult, she will sleep anywhere, and she will eat virtually anything. She never goes away from feast hungry and has ventured dishes that gave pause to adults (a certain fish aspic comes to mind). Still, in the days when she was too young to be reasonable (before she learned to talk), she was occasionally bothersome and had to be taken out of a room, and for years she had a certain piercing sound she made when happy. But our household and the local barony survived. If what we are making here is to have any great longevity, someone's children must learn to love it and take over when we are done.
And they sure do love it. One winter day several years back, we were snowed in, it was icky outside, everyone was suffering from irritability and cabin fever... my then-4-year-old daughter looked at me and wailed "I wish it were the big War!" She wanted back out of the house and into the SCA.