i don't have a horse in this race
is there any field of endeavor where people are so ready and apt to give one advice as having a kid?
i don't base this observation on my own experience (obviously) but on watching so many of my friends and relatives through the years. and i've probably done it myself--i certainly have opinions, even though i don't have any children.
one of my partners has a child and we got into a discussion about how ready people are to tell him that he is doing something "wrong" when what they mean, of course, is that he is not doing it the way that they would do it. especially because he is a father, he is perceived as being in desperate need of advice and admonitions about the proper way to do something--poor man, how could he know, otherwise?
this isn't to say that no one ever needed advice about raising kids, but at the age that most of my friends are, i'd trust them to ask rather than volunteering it--i don't think that's just because i don't have kids. my brother and my sister have raised their kids so differently but they both have fantastic kids--surely there is more than one path to a good outcome.
i don't base this observation on my own experience (obviously) but on watching so many of my friends and relatives through the years. and i've probably done it myself--i certainly have opinions, even though i don't have any children.
one of my partners has a child and we got into a discussion about how ready people are to tell him that he is doing something "wrong" when what they mean, of course, is that he is not doing it the way that they would do it. especially because he is a father, he is perceived as being in desperate need of advice and admonitions about the proper way to do something--poor man, how could he know, otherwise?
this isn't to say that no one ever needed advice about raising kids, but at the age that most of my friends are, i'd trust them to ask rather than volunteering it--i don't think that's just because i don't have kids. my brother and my sister have raised their kids so differently but they both have fantastic kids--surely there is more than one path to a good outcome.