I don't think he meant to be so offensive. He may just not realize how hard this problem is.

The fact is, finding a perfect solution for taking care of small children in an industrial society is probably an insoluble problem. And if so it's not one you can solve before having kids, or after them.

> I don't think he meant to be so offensive.

Looking at it again, I hope that he wrote quickly without really thinking about what his words meant.

You still haven't thought about what his words meant.

You said you were facing a certain problem "now", 2 months after the child was born.

You could have made your decision about how to handle it prior to the child being born. If you'd done that, you would not be facing the problem now, it would be decided. But you didn't.

He asked about why you didn't decide in advance. You got offended by the implication that you hadn't decided in advance. That was something you said yourself, so it's unreasonable to be offended by it, or to blame him for noticing you said it.

Do you have any kids? Do you realize how unpredictable it is to plan things for your child, for example, how sick the child is going to be, or how well-tempered?

My post is simply about logic and who said what. Nothing more. Why can't you read it rationally?

And, BTW, if you and other parents can't read it rationally, why should I believe you handle parenting matters rationally? Parenting matters are more difficult and more emotional than reading a simple forum post.

Here is the rational answer you seem to want. (a) This problem is so hard you can probably never solve it satisfactorily, and (b) you can't know what it's going to be like to have kids before you have them, or what your kids will be like. So however much thought you expend on the question before having kids, you're still going to be working on it afterward.

Society has a response to (a) and (b). It is called a social net, based on solidarity: it works like insurance schemes should (not speaking of fraudulent market schemes, e.g. the US health insurance). I think the biggest problem is, that you despise pooling resources into social systems purportedly designed to help in (a) and (b). "Old" Europe has suffered enough in WWII to recognize the importance of it, and erect such a system, which is frowned upon by "risk tolerant entrepreneurship" (they have enough personal wealth to fall back on). This social net you are missing is being therefore dismantled in the EU as well, since it is regarded as uncompetitive compared to the US or China. It is a race to the bottom (if you compete with slaves, you become a slave*), of which the GOOG kindergarten is just a sign.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener

We live in Europe, and no, handouts not really the answer we're looking for. We're aiming at a flexible schedule for both of us in order to both have time with our daughter. The safety net stuff is nice in some ways, but it's not really what we're after.

I didn't argue with that, or ask for an answer of that type, or say that davidw did anything wrong other than misread lisper's post.

I thought the waterfall development link basically answered the question about advanced planning. I'm mostly interested in the emotional fragility of parents and wanted to see what would happen if I pointed out that logic does not back up his reaction.

"I'm mostly interested in the emotional fragility of parents and wanted to see what would happen if I pointed out that logic does not back up his reaction."

= trolling

xlnt isn't a troll. He just operates within a zone of disembodied rationality so robotic as to make Spock look like Oprah.

Can I have my DH rating now? :)

Heh. Someone else told me today that I use "a lot of very emotive language" like a "preacher".

The form of my post was to make correct, logical points. That is not trolling. The fact I had an honorable motivation -- learning -- does not suddenly make my posts worse.

"and wanted to see what would happen"

So you didn't really care what people had to say, you were just trying to bait them? i.e. you were being a troll on purpose?

Did you consider whether I would enjoy your post, prior to posting it?

I wanted to learn something. Why did you post?

To point out that you are a troll. Wasn't that evident in my posting?

The thing is - one of the biggest factors in making the decision is the child! And you cannot know what the child is like, until it is there, and even then it takes a while to get to know it. Children are unique, and very different, one from another. What will be best for one will not be for another.

His tone was harsh, but I don't think that indignation is a fair response to the question. Did something change in your lives that made this problem unpredictable? Were one of you planning on staying home with the children, only to have finances shift such that you both have to work?

Obviously, you don't have to answer him in detail, but you could do more than simply scold the guy for asking. I know plenty of couples who never thought deeply about finances before they launched into parenthood.

> Obviously, you don't have to answer him in detail

I don't mind talking about my own job situation, but don't really feel comfortable talking about my wife's.

To keep it brief, my wife and I could live in any number of countries and both of us could find jobs in most of them. With choice comes a lot of thinking and a great weight of responsibility. Live in Italy, make less money, and have the grandparents nearby to help out? Live in the US, make more money at better jobs and pay someone? Stay in Austria with a nice social welfare system, and reasonable jobs? All of those have further variables and derivatives and basically end up being very much impossible to calculate a priori (and there are elements that are private and I don't wish to share publicly).

In any case, I think most parents would respond with some indignation if their commitment to their children were questioned. It's just something that's probably not very polite to do outside of a small circle of friends and family.

Ah...that's a more difficult problem than your original post made it seem. I can see how you'd be upset by the response, since you know the details of the situation.

For what it's worth, I don't think he was questioning your commitment to your children, so much as the forethought you put into the process. He just didn't do it in a diplomatic way.

Being someone who probably overthinks some things in my life, I tend to equate "not thinking about" with "not placing much importance on something". However, being something of a complex system, between family, work, society, and other factors, it's just impossible to calculate, even though we have clear, if rough ideas about what we'd like, and how we think things ought to be.

He wasn't really asking it was a rhetorical question and he was the one "scolding". I don't think he is "entitled" to an answer and think "davidw" was extremely polite in response to the tone of the previous comment.

Oh, come on. His question was obviously in response to your statements about what happens to your careers, not about whether or not you had thought about your daughter's future.

It's not like the career question is unforeseeable. Many people put off having kids due to that exact issue. You can be offended all you like, but if you really didn't have a solid answer to that question before you had your child, I do think you were being irresponsible.

If you put off having kids until things are 'perfect', you may never have any. Even then, something might go wrong - say a serious, chronic illness, a company tanks at the wrong moment, or any number of other completely unforeseeable events. We've thought long and hard about any number of things, but there are simply too many variables. And I think it's extremely presumptuous and unfriendly to go casting aspersions about someone you don't know on a site like this that aims to have a strong, friendly community.

Hopefully he just dashed off a quick response without really thinking about it.

You're broadening the scope of the debate again. I said you should have a plan in place for issues like who compromises their career. How does that balloon into "put off having kids until things are perfect"?

Of course, there are extenuating circumstances which can waylay any planning; I never intended to imply that there weren't. Go back and read my post, and you'll see that my criticism was conditional. If you did have a plan in place, and then extenuating circumstances derailed those plans, then fine.

Twice now you've taken statements that were pointed at a specific issue and acted as if they were broad indictments of your parenting skills that amounted to nothing more than ad hominem attacks. False umbrage hardly contributes to a strong and friendly community.

The debate is very broad in scope because many things are interconnected.

My umbrage was anything but false: the idea that we had taken the arrival of a child so lightly as to not consider and plan for the future most certainly implies negative things about me and my wife, especially considering that people here really don't have that much knowledge of our situation.

pg's response was quite astute: we thought and planned beforehand, but things change rapidly, and in ways that are unpredictable. One small, simple example is that I thought at this stage, since our daughter is basically in the eating/pooping/sleeping phase, it would be easy to get back to work, and leave most of it to my wife, since she has to feed her in any case. However, it's quite difficult to concentrate on work, and I really enjoy helping out and spending time with the baby, even if she doesn't do much. There are plenty of other things that aren't like we'd imagined them either.

Basically, unless you have experience with kids yourself, I think that it's not so easy to understand what it's like.

I haven't said anything outside of "If you had no plans for post-baby career changes, then you were being irresponsible." If the debate is any broader than that, it's only because you are taking that simple, focused statement and falsely taking it to mean something else. And I don't need (or want) any more information about your oh-so-unique situation, or kids of my own, in order for my simple statement to be true.

If you and your partner didn't make plans for your careers before having a child, then suck it up and accept that you were irresponsible. If you did make those plans, then put your reading comprehension hat on and stop with the broken-heart act. Christ.