Parenting, From The Outside Looking In

Just a bunch of observations from someone who hasn’t yet joined the club.

Been going through my own infertility dance for a bit now, and while options are on the table and discussions are being had about next steps therein, I’ve also now spent 12–15 years of seeing my friends be parents when I’ve missed that boat. No one really wants to hear about parenting from someone on the outside looking in, and I fully realize that, but I’m also bored before doing a job interview that may or may not go anywhere so I figured I’d take a few minutes and put this together.

Is parenting akin to a gated community of sorts?

I got a friend on Twitter named Leon who calls people with kids “BabyLand,” i.e. they have new friends, new activities, they focus on new things, they go to new stores, they go to new restaurants, etc. They enter a new area. You don’t see them as much.

Lest we start this post thinking that I am going to spend all of it bitching (I’m not), let me just say first that BabyLand makes complete sense. Responsibilities and time management and what you care…