Well, I don’t have kids. I’m against breeding myself. I wish more people would either not have kids, or if they MUST raise them, ADOPT.

Also, I think kids need a full time parent in the house. Which is one of the trillion reasons I’m not having kids. Having a kid and then pawning it off on the nanny or day care isn’t taking responsibility for the choice you made.

I know my opinion doesn’t matter since I don’t have kids. But I still put it out there anyway. Hah.

*going to my happy place . . . going to my happy place . . . om . . . *

I’m not sure it’s you who needs the tall glass of STFU, Linda. Although I have to say I’d be happy to serve some to the first commenter here. Sigh. I love the whole “pawning it off” part. I’m not sure how sending your kid to day care or a nanny is failing to take responsibility for your child. Strangely enough, there is no question in my four year old’s mind about who her mommy and daddy are, even though she’s been in day care the last two years.

Wait, maybe it’s me who needs to just STFU. (I just kind of couldn’t believe your first comment. Ay yi yi.)

Just as every family is different so is the way we parent our kids. I feel we all should do as we see fit, work in the house, work outside of the house, not work at all whatever needs and can be done.
I do not see a big deal here.

*loud whistle of support for this post* (I can’t do a whistle like this, in actual fact. Which is yet another reason to love the internet.)

AMEN Linda! You are preaching to the choir with this one.

Oh, also! My two older kids go to school all day, as do most kids at age 5 or 6. I’m going to send all the other kids, too, when they hit that age. So I guess I shouldn’t have had kids at all, since I’m going to pawn them off on the school system and let the school system raise them.

Ugh, sometimes I wonder how people function?! I agree, I am not sure why personal choices within a family spark such heated debate sometimes. I mean, if the kids are healthy and well cared for, who cares how the parents accomplished it? Everybody should do what works best for their family and leave it at that! Grrr!

I tend to get all delete happy when people tell me that I am making the wrong choices with the kids. Because Guess what? My kids are great and wonderful and they think that we do a pretty good job. So, anyone that has a negative thing to say about it can take a nice long drink off of that glass of STFU!

Thanks for sharing your opinion about this topic. I am glad I am not the only one that feels this way.

Oh Lord. Does anyone ever say that the dads are pawning off their children? Or those who send their kids to school are pawning off their children? It is all very tiresome and ridiculous and I guess all I can say is WORDY WORDY WORD WORD

Swistle- BRILLIANT with the analogy that shoots the whole argument to hell.

Having children is at least five years in the future for me, but honestly, the scariest thing to me when that time comes will be having to deal with all the holier-than-thou bullshit that some women spew to one another regarding one another’s parenting choices…bottle vs. breast, working mom vs sahm, etc.

I as someone who does not have kids, but can’t wait for the day to, feel this is quite the topic. I was in a relationship for a year and a half with a man I want to be my husband, except for the fact he doesn’t know if he wants children. That was a deal breaker. He didn’t have thoughts like the first commenter, but definately had some feelings of doubt, which I blame primarily on his past, the way he was raised and life experiences growing up. Which is really unfortunate. Kids are a blessing, and I can not wait to create children with the man of my dreams.

I don’t have kids so maybe my thoughts don’t count for much but I am young and can very much remember growing up in a two parent, both working household.

Starting at 1 year of age I went to a babysitter who was phenomenal. She was Italian and I had a slight accent for a little bit, but who cares? I then went to day care when I was school age. My dad worked nights which meant he was home during the day but needed to sleep. I LOVED day care. My mom had 5 weeks of holiday time which she’d take in the summer to be with us and seriously, my sister and I begged to go to daycare to play with our friends so during those 5 weeks off, she took us to day care a few times just to make us happy.

I remember reading a journal article in university that showed that children who attend day care have an easier time adjusting to kindergarten/grade 1. They have an easier time making friends/being social. I think the journal article also said that those benefits level off after a couple years but who cares?! Seriously, either parenting situation is good and has it’s pros and cons. But honestly, I’m so happy my mom worked and sent us to daycare. And I think when your kids are older they will say the same thing.

Not that you need to hear that from me, I’m sure you already know that. But in case you need a reminder, there it is.

I think people should mind their own business personally. I would be a horrible mom if I was a SAHM, I know this. I know myself, my family and know that my choices are right for us. That’s all that matters and I dont understand why people have to be so insecure as to think that “their way” is the “ONLY RIGHT WAY”.

wow. ok yeah, HI!!

I agree with you!

I used to be one of those people who tended to believe that if you chose to have children, it was ideal that you stay home and raise them. Then I had my own kids. And while I DO stay home and raise them, I can see how some moms simply can’t do it or who really aren’t doing their kids any favors by being with them 24/7.

If working full- or part-time makes you a better parent, or you HAVE to work for financial reasons, do it. I don’t think working parents love their kids any less than SAHParents. It’s a damn tough job and some people can cope with it better by maintaining a bit of an outside life.

I just don’t understand why people can’t just “live and let live”. Especially those that aren’t even in The Parent Club.

WHO CARES what other families are doing, as long as the children are loved and well cared for, as long as all of our collective goals is to raise productive, happy members of society? Beyond that, WHO CARES? I still don’t understand WHO is actually out there that gets so worked up over someone they don’t even know making a different decision for his/her family.

I’m so glad (MOST) of those commenters don’t make their way over here.

Why are the people that comment over at PD so crazy? ALso, why did Rachel decide to blog about that issue, knowing the kind of crazytown it would bring about? I read the first sentence of that and moved on; I knew it would piss me off. For what it’s worth, Sundry I totally respect your choices and feel pretty good about my own too. Full stop.

So if somebody is against breeding, does that mean that they want to see the end of the human race?

Are people pawning their children off to somebody else to raise when they send them to school when they reach age 5? Must we all home school in order to really be parents???

I can’t believe the close mindedness out there.

I can’t imagine that any working person would be jealous of THIS. I really can’t.

Wow, there’s a lot of hate around that place huh?

I also think the author in question has a rather uneducated view of us feminists… ;)

Reading those lame comments makes me search for my outer STFU, too.

Haha, great post. There will always be something for other people to bitch about, eh?
I was going to ask the same thing as Amy; I don’t read PD alot, but when I do, there are so many freakin’ crazies over there?! Where do they come from?

Oh, by the way, love the haircut.

I think more than any of this is why do women need validation from other women? I personally don’t care what anyone thinks, in the end it is only what I think is best for my child that matters. No other woman knows my son like I do.

You said it Linda. WTF????

This debate will rage on until some bizarre climate-based ice age extinguishes us all. Humans are protective, egocentric, and there will always be people disagreeing about what defines “maternal,” or “paternal.” It’s a slippery, slippery topic.

Oooh – the brilliant Swistle beat me to it. No one berates parents for sending their kids to school or says they’re “being raised by the school system.”

My older son will be in first grade in the fall. Someone actually said to me, “oh good, at least he won’t have to go to daycare any more.”

Because all-day first grade is SO different from the all-day kindergarten through the daycare. Riiiiiight.

Everytime this topic comes up I go to my very friendly charlie brown teacher place where all I hear/read sounds like “wah-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wah” and not to be rude but when Rachel who made out with Puck on the Real World was added to the ParentDish I decided that was the last day for ParentDish in my reader. Seriously…she’s going to tell ME anything. She made out with smelly, gross, spitting on people, picking on the guy with aids PUCK…you just can’t rebound from there with me.

So, listen. I don’t have kids so I can’t relate on a certain level, but I’ve done enough infant-sitting to know that if I ever did have kids, I’d have to work just to save my sanity, just to save my adulthood. I think working parents CAN AND DO raise their children every bit as well as stay-at-home parents. You know how I know? Because my mother worked full time (and got a master’s degree!) and still somehow managed to raise my sister and I just fine. She worked because she had no choice. I mean, what, she’s going to let us starve? Please. Oh, and the idea that you shouldn’t have kids if you can’t stay home with them full time is so incredibly elitist that it leaves me breathless.

PS. that rant was in my head and directed at the horrible commenters on PD, not at anyone here. So in essence, I agree with you, Linda.

I agree with Cass. This is Republican Rachel talking. Consider the source.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out there, I will say I hate hate hate when this topic comes up. It’s the most tedious, boring, self-loathing subject out there. I may be one of the mythical creatures to whom you allude – I rarely think about this subject. Maybe it’s because I work from home. Maybe it’s because I know I have to work in order to live where I live. Maybe it’s because I just had my 6th (!) miscarriage and am just grateful I have a kid at all. I don’t know. But women are the worst at putting their sisters down. Do what makes you happy. Some days I wish I didn’t work. Some days I wish my kid was at day care. Some days I wish I was at the spa. But most days, I get up and do what I have to do, and just love my kid and love my life and try not to worry what everyone else is doing. Now THAT’s the Real World.

What I see is this:

Both sides (the irrational peeps on both sides, that is) are desperately trying to rationalize their own decision by making the other side feel crappy, therefore THEY WIN. HOORAY. It’s a petty, stupid argument, and I’m so tired of hearing about it. Personally, I think BOTH sides are equally shitty to each other, and I say this with relative objectivity, as I’m not a parent.

I actually didn’t mind Rachel Campos-Duffy’s post (and I usually think she’s a neo-conservative nitwit, honestly), as she admits that the choice SHE made was the right one for her, and she’s sick of SAHMs complaining about it. Eh, good for her. Although speaking to the PD crowd, it’s almost laughable to think she wouldn’t get a “HOLLA! LOL!” from every single poster in response.

It’s just fucking dumb. The whole thing is dumb. And probably what I hate the most is that when these things are brought up in a forum where a working mom complains about it, all of the commenters start screeching about how STUPID SAHMs are, how ABSURD it is for them to stay at home and how WORKING IS THE ONLY WAY. It’s like no one listens to what they’ve just been complaining about, and they resort to the same name-calling and pettiness they just ranted about.

I’m tired of it, man. And I’m not even a parent. Like, everyone go off and do your thing and stop writing books about why YOUR choice is better, why women MUST do this or that.

It makes me laugh that anyone even still talks about it, because YOU CANNOT WIN AT INTERNET. FOR THE BAZILLIONTH TIME.

Actually, some people do berate parents for sending their children to school. They should be home schooled, don’cha know.

I don’t know who decided that parents should be with their kids every fucking second of every fucking day. I think kids need a break from us, just as much as we need a break from them.

Oh, and also, why when the dad takes care of the kids is it called “babysitting”. What the fuck?

You know, I feel conflicted on this topic (not on The Crazy, that clearly sucks balls), because I DO enjoy reading about individual parents and how they struggle or don’t struggle with life balance. I find it interesting, as long as they don’t crap all over everyone else in the process.

So, I guess I’m NOT one of those people who plugs my ears, all “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU” everytime it comes up? And I DO wish we could talk more about it? Without the crazy?

I don’t know. I think it could be because I’m pretty sure I fall under the category of Mom Who is 100% Happy With My Choices.

Um, at least about working outside the home. In other areas of my life, uh, OOPS on the whole Good Choices thing.

(Also, you can add Vermont — usually chilly, super northern VERMONT — to the list of places currently warmer than Seattle. It’s BLAZING here right now.)

My main issue with this debate is that it really isn’t your business. Why I do the things I do doesn’t concern you. I KNOW it’s a pretty radical concept but if it doesn’t concern you… I find it rude when people ask me. It makes me feel like I need to justify my life choices. I don’t answer them. I WANT to tell them to mind their fucking businesses but I don’t.

PS When I say you it’s people in general.

My mom was a stay at home mom. She didn’t give a flying fuck about me. She wasn’t there for me, she was there to keep a clean house!

It’s funny because when you hear the term “stay at home mother” you think of someone welcoming their child home, warm cookies and milk, asking how your day was …
maybe even … SPENDING TIME WITH THE CHILD.

I would get told to clean or to be quiet while she was watching her show.

I think the whole debate on working vs. non-working parent is completely stupid. What matters is the use of the time you have and what KIND of parent you are. Just because someone is in the house, doesn’t make them a better parent!

I’d like to know what people used to do before day care.
Looks into the wayback machine……..
Here’s little Jawa playing in the fire in the cave while mom and dad are out hunting up some mammoth.
Here’s little Mara wandering by the stream, looking for snails, or fish, or some other grub.
1000 years later:
Here’s little Johnny working in the fields, what’d you say? Where is dad? About three acres over plowing the field.
Here’s little Mary tending the baby while mom does laundry by hand. Put honey on the babies fingers and give him a feather Mary, he’ll be amused for hours.

Flash forward to today.
Here’s little Johnny, in daycare, with an average of 4 kids per adult, coloring, eating three meals and snacks, taking a nap and playing with his sister Mary who is starting school next year, and spending 7 hours a day reading, writing, and learning the things that they will need to know to be able to support their kids. AND going home with mommy and daddy who play with them every night, tuck them in and give them an allowance.
My point being, in case you can’t read through the sarcasm, kids get along just fine without an adult hovering over them. And they get along even better when their parents make the effort to know what their kids are doing, not to necessarily interfere, but to let them figure out how to be their own company.
In 100 years, the fight will be that mommies are staying home with their kids instead of working. Are our kids better adults because their every waking moment is planned for them? Or we have guided their every thought? Or that they don’t know how to amuse themselves because they’ve been coddled all their lives and now their imaginations are broken?
Get away from your kids once in awhile, let them develop their own independence, and remember in the end, if mom and dad are happy, the kids will be too.

The thing that always gets me… do these people think that, say, pioneer women sat home all day, making educational crafts with their kids and attending playgroups? Or what about, you know, non-middle-class women in the late 1800s, working in mills and factories? I think it’s hilarious that people think women working is a new thing. And I think it’s troubling, what this attitude says about the “right” of working-class people to have children.

i work. i like it.
there are people who will judge me. they can go f%^k themselves.

that is all
:)

Don’t you just wonder if these people are this way about *everything?* My personal opinion is that they are because they are so freaking unhappy. They must throw huge fits right in the grocery store if someone makes their own decision to buy Tide instead of Cheer. I bet they fight with their neighbors over lawn height and with their own spouses over who should be on top. They make me happy that I’m not THAT judgemental of a person. Bitchy, yes, but not judgemental.

Are we still talking about it? Nope.

The people who are obsessed with the subject are invariably neoconservative hausfraus with holier-than-thou complexes who live to inflict their mores on everything that breathes. Sadly for them, their reign of error, largely enabled by the Bush administration and its catering to the religious right, will soon be over.

Oy I hate this conversation with fiery passion of a thousand suns because I think the SAHMs are mean spirited and make working moms feel like crap. And I think the working moms are mean spirited and make the SAHMs feel like crap. Holy crap WHO F***ing cares?!??!

I work. FULL TIME. My kid tells me he LOVES me, not a nanny or our daycare provider. He cries for me when he is has fallen down, is sick or is hurting in some way. My kid thinks the sun rises and sets over ME. I am NOT delusional about this, IT is fact.

I cared for myself & held that baby inside of me for darn near 10 months (I was 14 days late…), labored and delivered that child over a two day span, nursed that baby come hell or high water for TWENTY months (there is more but let’s just take a breath and stop there – the nursing part happened while I worked FORTY hours a week and came home to be Mommy without so much as a moment of complaint on this subject because I LOVED EVERY MOMENT OF IT!) so if any one tells me I am a bad mommy for working… well they can kiss my rump.

I work because I like it and I am a better mommy for it. I have watched enough Super Nanny shows to know that just because you stay at home you are not a GREAT mommy. Oh glory be you are a human being just like me with failings and strengths and we should all just learn to embrace (LOVE?) one another and the differences we have in our lives.

AND most of all support the choice each person has to make in this world because if we were all the same holy crap STAB me in the eye NOW! HALP, still talking over here too!!!

PS: if only there was a way to deposit cat-chewed string cheese in the Parent Dish comment thread! No words, just the cheese. Even better, regurgitated cat chewed string cheese. Maybe someone can get to work on this project.

*bangs head on keyboard*

For the love of Pete! When will parents start backing each other up instead of critiquing each other all to hell?

We are all hard enough on OURSELVES. We don’t need people who do not know us or our individual situations dumping crap on our heads.

*Steps off of soapbox*

I am so sorry you have a gig that requires you to read the opinions of people who need to STFU about how I raise my kid, or how they raise theirs kids, or how you raise your kids. Maybe the money you make isn’t sufficient compensation for the heightened rage and exposure to idiocy? I know my happiness has improved greatly since I stopped reading parenting forums, ceased feeling angry and guilty, and started concentrating on raising a happy, healthy, smart, funny kid the best way I know how.

Don’t tell those freaks, because they’d never believe it, but my daughter is NOT a ticking time bomb despite being raised by a single mom who works full time, but is in fact, pretty awesome and cool. And I don’t have to go around swinging my parenting dick and berating others to prove it to myself, either.

Aside from this entire conversation (because as a non parent…I am just going to keep my mouth closed and opinions to myself) I’d like to point out and compliment the fact that your website offers mom’s from all different walks of life to find a common ground and discuss (not argue) their parenting choices. I’m sure you make a lot of mom’s grateful to have somewhere they won’t be attacked but still be able to express themselves.

Ahhh, let it go Sundry; similar to discussing politics or religion, no one’s going to win this always-repeated argument.

I think that you’re (similar to me) going stir-crazy due to this CRAP-TASTIC WEATHER right now. Discussions and blog-commenters seem even worse while we’re all lamenting our lost summertime and suffering from extended cabin fever and vitamin-D deficiency.

Hang in there. Blog about the weather so the rest of your Seattle-area commenters have a unified place to come and vent!