Anti-Parent Parenting

I went into parenting being unsure about everything; I didn’t know if I’d like having a kid at all. Especially since before I had my kid, I hated kids. Obviously, I mostly hated Other People’s Kids and assumed that when I had one of my own I’d be okay with him. But I couldn’t really know, not until I met the guy.

As luck would have it, whether by biology or nature or something L. Ron Hubbard wrote about, I do like my kid. I mean, obviously I love my kid, but I like him too. Which is huge. But it didn’t change my opinion on other kids. If anything it made it worse, since now they were being compared to the Platonic Ideal of All Offspring that is my son. And I dislike parents even more.

When I was single, or married without children, Other Parents meant nothing to me. For the most part they were out of my orbit. When my friends started becoming parents, I was hardly even able to hate them in their new incarnation, because they weren’t around anymore.

But now that I’m a dad, and I know a lot more parents than I used to, I have a different perspective on them. I hate them. They are terrible.

For one thing, they let their kids rule their lives, which… is actually understandable. Because as much as being a parent can suck sometimes, there’s never any doubt that your kid is the best thing that’s ever happened to you, even when he’s the worst thing of all time. But even before my wife got pregnant, she and I made a deal that we wouldn’t be those parents that we saw fade from our lives once they had their kids. We would do are best to live our lives – our old lives – the same way, even with baby in tow. It hasn’t been easy (hence this blog), but it’s been doable. Of course, we only have on kid, so I might be talking out of my ass.

That’s another thing. I AM talking out of my ass, and I know this. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING. Except those people that I like to call Other Parents. These are the parents that act like they have cracked the code. Like they are the experts. With all due respect to Dr. Spock and Dr. Phil and Dr. Kevorkian: there is no such thing as a parenting expert.

So this blog is not a manual, or a guide, or a rule book. It’s a life raft. It’s a place where I can not only bitch about my life as a dad, about my (slowly getting less so every day) stupid son, and about all those Other Parents who act like they know something better than everyone else.

So this is the Anti-Parent – and Anti-Parenting – Parenting blog, for two reasons:

1) Parenting is a drag, even when you love your son. Hell, it may be even worse than having a kid you don’t give a shit about. At least then, whatever happens, happens. No parenting required. But with a kid you love, you are responsible for his well-being and his education and his development into something-other-than-a-total-asshole. And that is hard, grueling work.

2) Other Parents are the worst. They never tire of judgment. They judge you, they judge your wife, they judge your son; only they know the secret to perfect parenting. Well, at this blog (and in Soviet Russia!), I judge them. WITH PREJUDICE. And a healthy amount of swearing.

Because they don’t know shit. Neither do you. And neither do I.

But that’s what makes this blog different from other parenting blogs: I don’t pretend to.