On parenting advice and the idiocy thereof

A couple weeks ago, I was accosted on Twitter by a Twit without children on the topic of parenting and how I wuz doin it rong. I wrote a long (and witty, if I do say so myself) ranty blog post, which will never see the light of day (or the pixels of publishing), even though I loathe wasting a fully-written piece, because it just wasn’t sitting right with me. It’s too easy, when preached at by non-parents, to say “Just wait. Just you wait, and you’ll sing a different tune, and you’ll be schooled, and you’ll be humbled, and karma will bite you in the ass. Just wait, because right now you know nuthin’ about nuthin’.”

Which might actually turn out true. So many of us do change our tune: way back when, I had no clue about elimination communication, I thought everyone used cribs, hell, I thought homebirth was a little too out there (I’d take a freestanding birth center, thank you very much) — and all this was after the biggest about face of all, when I went from “No kids no how no way, certainly not without a practical uterine replicator no thank you!” [really!] to “Maybe…” to “Baby baby BABY!”

But then I spent years in a parenting and natural living community before getting pregnant (before even deciding to try), so I also know the sting of being dismissed simply for not having had kids yet. I know how much it hurts — and how wrong it is — to tell someone they can’t possibly know anything about children just for not having their own yet. And after I spent a couple years spending much of my time around other parents, reading parenting books, studying midwifery and everything baby-related (you should see my book collection!), and my parenting ideas gelled? They didn’t change when I had the Boychick. People told me “you’ll get a stroller, you’ll learn to love disposable diapers, you’ll let him cry — just wait, and you’ll sing a different tune.” And they were, simply, wrong.

I do think I gained some nuance after birth — after all, there’s nothing like having a baby to give one opportunities to practice breathing, and going with the flow, and accepting the unique differences of another’s personality and situation. And nuance is what was missing in the rant-that-you’ll-never-see, and it’s why you’ll never see it.

Because while yes, a lot of non-parents will change their tune, especially those who think it’s so damn easy to control kids in public (and thus engage in mother-blaming, as the Twit did to me), to “make them behave”, that particular infection is all too extant in the parents population as well. A recent dust-up on I Blame the Mother provides a disturbingly excellent illustration of this.

It is easy to dismiss the child-less as knowing nothing — but it’s quite likely to be wrong (I knew more about breastfeeding and birth and the benefits of babywearing before having the Boychick than too many parents do after). And it’s easy to say “no one who has kids would be so cruel to another parent” — but it’s quite likely to be wrong; witness the mother-blame in the aforementioned IBTM comments.

It all comes down to nuance, and to recognizing that no group of persons can ever be homogeneous. Some people without kids are clueless, cruel, ignorant, and ill-willed; so are some people with kids. Some people without kids know much of the difficulties of parenting, of unconditionality, of birth and breastfeeding and the vagaries of babies’ sleep; so do only some people with kids. Some of us learn to be kind; some of us learn to look past the checklists; some of us live by the checklists; some of us become more entrenched in our ways. It would be awfully nice to be able to say “Just wait, you’ll learn to support nursing in public, to welcome children in public, to smile supportively at a tantrum in public.” But the evidence says it just isn’t so.

The Twit on Twitter wasn’t wrong because she had no kids — she was just wrong. The mother-blamer on I Blame the Mother wasn’t right just because she had kids — she was wrong nonetheless. There are things that can unite us as parents, there are commonalities that can be found with almost any other person who has experienced the terrors and trials and joys of raising a child, but it is too simple, and too often wrong, to divide the world in to “those with kids” and assume they think like you, and “those without” and assume they don’t.

To the Twitterer who harassed me: I am sorry I ever derided and dismissed you, even in the rant-that-never-was, for the non-crime of not having children. That had nothing to do with why you were wrong for telling me I was wrong.

You were just a Twit.