A child isn't obligated to Mass attendance until, I think, about 7, but Catholic sensibility encourages Mass attendance even of babies. Some of my very earliest memories are of being at Mass at a tender age (3? 4? Not more than that). We WERE expected to behave, and were disciplined sharply for failure to do so. As your experiences suggest, there are folks who don't do as good a job of maintaining decorum as others. However, my own experience is that really bad examples of this are more the exception than the rule. When I go to Mass, there are always a number of babies, toddlers, and small children in attendance.
My wife and I took our children to Mass from the first Sunday after they were born. We usually sat in the back of the church, so that we could dart out the door in case they became unruly. But they seldom did. Our older son almost always slept through Mass. Our younger son didn't, but he was easily amused.
As I said, folks should take some care that their children don't become major disturbances, but frankly, I'm always heartened by a little bit of a baby's crying or laughing or fussing or carrying on.
The idea of sending the children out to a nursery isn't part of the Catholic sensibility. Mass is a family thing. Mass is a "we" thing, as in "What Mass shall WE go to today? The 9 am or the 10:30?" Or, "If we want to take that day-trip on Sunday, when will WE get to Mass?" Or, "Dad, are WE going to go to Mass while we're on vacation?" (Which, in my house, was answered the one time it was asked with, "Of course WE are. Would you like it if God took a vacation from His care and love for you?")
In Catholic families, if everyone isn't usually going to Mass, something is going on, and it's not generally positive from the perspective of a devout Catholic.
Perhaps, in the case of mixed marriages, the children are not being raised Catholic. Perhaps the children were formally baptized Catholic, but the obstruction of an anti-Catholic spouse makes it burdensome for the Catholic spouse to fulfill the requirements of a Catholic upbringing. Perhaps the children in adolescence rebel strongly against Mass attendance. This is more pronounced in mixed marriages where the non-Catholic spouse is not only not Catholic but fairly strongly opposed to Catholicism.
Our parish has a crying room, which will muffle the sounds of unruly children, but not entirely eliminate them. Most folks don't use the crying room, though. We don't have a nursery.
sitetest
I understand, it just appears to me that often times all the effort that they are putting into keeping the young child, (under 7) amused takes away from the parents ability to participate in Mass. So much so, that I suspect that if the Priest celebrating Mass were to announce that President Bush had in fact converted the Pope to Methodism, they would not notice. LOL!