I don’t think there’s an easy answer for that; it’s bound to happen. Kids aren’t developed and socialized, so they’re messier, louder and need more attention than an adult. It is what it is. I think there’s more room for compromise than either side wants to acknowledge, though. The “cult of the child” people and the anti-child people, rather than accepting that kids are there and need stuff, but aren’t the center of the universe at all times, seem unable to come to a compromise. My husband and I have no problem hanging out with our friends who have kids; we don’t mind the kids doing kid stuff, and our friends don’t insist that every moment be about The Golden Child. It’s not that hard when everyone’s being reasonable.
I also don’t mind covering for people at work when they have to leave for kids, as long as they’re still mostly doing their job; it’s like covering for someone who’s caring for an ailing parent or is ill themselves. (Pretty much falls under the “has to be dealt with, glad it’s not me” category)
You probably don’t mean it this way, but I’m reading a major lack of empathy here. Yes, any reasonable person is going to recognize that there is a world of difference between getting swamped at work and having two children deathly ill.
But it still stinks to get swamped at work. And if it happens to me, I’d like to think that I can go to my friend and say, “it’s awful how much I’m swamped at work.” And that my friend would be able to empathize and say, “I feel for you.” And not to say, “you’ve got no right to complain; it’s not like you’ve got two kids deathly ill.”
Just because some problems are more serious than others doesn’t mean that the lesser ones aren’t still problems. And being able to feel bad for a friend who’s having a problem, even a lesser problem, doesn’t diminish the seriousness of the trials that you’ve endured yourself.
That’ll be a question to be answered if she gets her work visa renewed.
And for clarification on a statement above that may not have been carefully worded enough:
Very few things SHOW you what you’re capable of like parenthood. That’s not to say I’m better than you, that’s saying, when an event is through, I thought ‘wow, I didn’t know I had that in me.’ I’m amazed at what a person can do if the events require it. It also reminds me of what I saw in my dad. (E.g. staying up 36 hours straight when mom’s appendix burst in the early evening, necessitating a rush to the hospital and a long night’s wait.)
Will running a marathon show you what you’re capable of? Sure. Not many people do that though.
Will figthing in battle? Absolutely. But not everybody does that either.
Seeing your kid in imminent danger? That stirs something primeval, and a little bit scary.
Exactly. Plus, those with kids, myself included, complain about stuff other than their kids. Most people I know who have children don’t live and breathe them, though they’re probably one of the largest parts of their life.
Are their mundane complaints more important than their kidless counterparts simply because of the presence of children? Not at all. I get sick and tired of constant interruptions at my work that prevent me from doing my job. It has nothing to do with my son and I’m not even thinking about him when I complain about it. My mundane and not-so-mundane complaints carry no more weight than the person sitting behind me who has no kids, but has exactly the same problem.
I’ve never really understood the whole godfather thing. Oh, I know he’s supposed to be a close family friend who can offer a child some sort of lay spiritual guidance and all that. But I never even met my own godfather, or at least not after I was old enough to remember him. For some reason, he was some guy in Iowa, which I’ve never ever been to. It seems he was a close friend of my father’s in the city out West where my father spent his bachelor days. He must have still been around when I came along. Then I guess he moved, and we moved. I recall a Christmas card each year to all of us. And that was it as far as a godfather experience went. Same with everyone else I knew in West Texas; no one I knew had a functioning godfather. I learned all I know of godfathers through movies and such (and no, I don’t mean the Mario Puzo character).
Your experiences mirror what I’ve seen in the past, and what most likely will happen here. Why do people do it? I dunno, seemed like a good idea at the time.
