Yay meara!

Having kids and sacrificing your free time as a result doesn't make anyone a better person than anyone else. It just doesn't.

Wrod.

Parenting does *not* force all parents to grow.

See, I think it does. Not everybody grows into an Earth Mother or World's Greatest Dad, but the role requires you to do a lot more than you did before. Even incompetent and bad parents take on more responsibility than they had previously. The world might've been better if they'd not chosen parenthood, but they did have to change.

I'm going to exclude patently evil and abusive parents as outliers in this discussion.

The "you" I'm generally addressing in this discussion is the cocktail party of Buffistas, not humanity in general.

Anyway, I'm not presuming to dictate what anybody should do. Just what I think people would do. Merely my opinion. ita with migraines galore doubts her ability, but Betsy with migraines galore is still an excellent parent.

I can put my money on ita if I want to. That's what I would bet on.

If Teppy were to become a parent, I'd put my money on her too. Should Teppy become a parent? That is up to her.

Meara, cool. Really. Even if it does make me wonder if I'm the Homely Dateless Bitch.

people who have lots of baggage

Everybody does meara...you just get to decide if her baggage fits in your overhead compartment, eh?

Though could i get some buffista words of advice on people who have lots of baggage and the wise-ness or lack thereof of being in some kind of relationship wtih them?

admires extensive personal set of matched luggage

Shoot, sweetheart. Also, yay you!

I have some discomfort with calling childlessness "a life of one's own." Everyone has a life of one's own. Parents have a life of their own--it is more proscribed and has more demands, but it IS their own life. People who choose to live with someone as a romantic partner, or single people who live with elderly parents or, hell, even folks with roommates they are close to all have their own lives. I know exactly what Teppy meant, and as a person with no children, I have had judgmental comments directed my way. This is entirely a picky semantic concern on my part.

David, I'm not trying to all up in your grill, but you are the one who described it as selfish:

If I'm misreading that, *please* explain it to me, because it sounds to me like you're saying that people who choose not to have kids in order to have their own lives *are* being selfish.

I was only addressing the people who had self-described themselves as selfish. I probably should've used quote marks to indicate that.

you just get to decide if her baggage fits in your overhead compartment, eh?

I adore this phrase.

"Mommies are people/ people with children." My mother says all the time that she wishes she waited to have us. But I never got the sense she'd trade or anything. Just to do more stuff first.