I love my kids, I just hate parenting
If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you may have noticed a bit of a controversy last week, just before Mother’s Day.
I posted a meme that generated some passionate responses, and for once it wasn’t about Trump or gun control or vaccinating your kids.
This was about pet moms – more specifically, why they’re not actually moms.
No matter what kind of parent you are, you struggle. Whether you’re a stay-at-home mom or dad, a go-to-the-office parent, even a work from homer, raising kids is difficult and exhausting.
But each kind of parent has their own challenges, and on the latest episode of the Dad and Buried podcast, Pete and I chatted about all the different ones we face. With help from your comments (follow my Instagram stories to answer my topic-related questions and have your name called out!), we got into it. I’ve been a stay-at-home dad, it was not for me. But working parents don’t have it easy either.
One of the worst aspects of having kids is, well, just take a spin around my blog. I’m pretty sure I’ve covered them all at some point. Including this week’s podcast topic: how expensive they are!
It starts with diapers and clothes and formula, then it progresses to daycare and sports and food, and eventually you’re buying them cars and college tuition. It never ends.
But it’s not just money they cost you, they also steal your sanity, your time, your sense of self. We get into all the ways kids bleed your wallet, and I do an impression of Louis Gossett Jr. in everyone’s favorite 80s alien movie that almost no one has ever heard of!
A few years ago, I ranted hard against a couple who created a list of guidelines for visitors who wanted to stop by and meet their newborn. They were essentially expecting friends and family to barter for an audience with their baby via handouts and housework.
It made little sense that a couple with such bizarre manners and expectations would have anyone visiting them, let alone enough people who it required rules and regulations. After all, this was a generic newborn, not the Pope. It was utterly ridiculous, and my post quickly became one of my most popular pieces.
Most of us felt that the couple was entitled and oblivious. Apparently, they were pioneers!
I live in Brooklyn but I grew up in the suburbs. Pete grew up in London, for some reason. On the latest episode of the podcast, we talk about the different challenges of parenting in each location. It’s a City vs. Burbs Thunderdome! One place enters, one place leaves! I never saw myself raising myRead more about City vs. Suburbs[…]