Fathers are sperm donors. Mothers are baby incubators and, afterwards, baby feeders.

YES. Oh my god, yes.

You're so right. Problem is fetishizing early childhood, when the stuff that happens when the kid is 8, or 15, can also really affect them as adults, just as much if not more.

Re: your first paragraph.... the studies on which AP theory is based were of severely neglected children. Those kids are, obvs, psychologically damaged by the lack of care. The problem is extending the results to all crying, in all families. Yes, parents respond to crying babies, but part of being a parent is also…

Yeah... that's my feeling too.

You *will* be raising your own kids, even if your mom, or someone else, helps during the day. Believe me, parenting is a 24-hr job, and it's a long-term thing. It's more than just feeding an infant. It's growing a human being to adulthood, with all the emotional and moral and intellectual effort that requires.

Yeah. Exactly. I roll my eyes when I see internet trolls going on about "Oh, what about the poor MENZ?", but the thing is, men are people too, and they happen to make up, on average, half of married persons. As a woman, I would be very unhappy if my husband unilaterally decided there would be no more sex in our…

uhoh_ohno, you are all kinds of right. It just riles me because new mothers are so good at internalizing stupid societal expectations (I know, I've just been through it), often expectations that are based on no reasonable evidence, and it's people like this who help make what is already a difficult time of life even…

A lot of people do not want to hear this kind of story, though it's by far not an uncommon one.

Sometimes a baby doesn't need emotional comfort, but needs to sleep. A parent needs to figure out what that is, not to assume that the kid needs cuddling all the time when it cries.

I hear you. Though I think you'll find a lot of people get defensive at these comments. Apparently, people who co-sleep are getting the most, and wildest, sex ever. Now, I'm being a little snarky there, but I'm a new parent, the kid has never slept with us and has been in his own room since about 2 months, and I'm…

Um.... but it's not just about her and what she does. Or even about her relationship with the kids. It's also about their father and his relationship to them.

I think the not jumping to conclusions is fair and mature. It's just ——ooooh so hard not to given that she wrote a book about her childrearing beliefs! With great effort I've kept myself from writing some kind of snarky, "well, duh" post, but lord almighty, it sure is what I'm thinking in my head. Is that right? As…

I didn't mean her theories as in, she made them up, but the theories she believes in. (Like, if a Christian talks about their faith or their god, they don't usually mean they made it up wholesale...)

I'm not an AP expert or anything, but I suspect a lot of it has to do with how extreme you are, as well as other aspects of your personality, your kid's personality, etc. I don't consider myself an AP parent at all, but I do carry the kid around in a sling, mainly because we live in an apartment with no elevator, and…

This is all kinds of true. Hubby and I talk about this all the time. All we can do is give the kid our best. But the idea that following one theory in a book is somehow going to save him from any psychological damage is wishful. Life is complicated, and a lot of shit happens.

I'm with you on the modern menfolk being as into childrearing as women are. But I do think it's important to keep in mind that there are situations where new fathers don't feel they have a say in parenting decisions, acquiesce to the mother's decision, but are quietly miserable about the direction their relationship.…

And, in turn, Mayim's kids will go to therapy to deal with their parents' divorce.