Discussion: PPC

Concur on parents per child.

The partner exercise you describe is something the Canadians call “Follow John” and I think it’s a great way to get into a map and also to up the level of concentration. Not sure why it’s not more popular!

An older friend at work once told me that we really needed to have a third child in order to avoid spoiling both the ones we already had. He pointed out that with one child, (s)he always gets attention from one or both parents, with two, they both usually manage to get nearly full attention from one of the parents any time they want, but with three, at least one of the kids has to either fend for himself or at least share one of the parents. So I guess we ended up with at least somewhat spoiled kids.

I don't worry about having a spoiled kid... I want to be spoiled as the parent! :)

I have a friend who is doing that intentionally (3 parents, 1 kid). It's an unusual, but very thoughtful, situation... they were interviewed about it on NPR: http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/11/06/three-pa...

That's pretty cool. It sounds like a win-win-win-win situation and I hope it actually works out that way as the kid grows. Also, geez, I'd give a lot for a third parent most days!

Wow, that's really interesting and cool. Thanks for sharing! Also, the guy's name is Hausfather, which somehow seems really appropriate.

Totally agree. Three parents would be useful, especially when there is more than one child. We had grandparents close by and often with us at O meets etc., which makes a huge difference.

Once they're a little older it's less of an issue (in many ways, more so in others...).
Rather glad we waited to get our second until she was almost 8! Definitely made the parent-child ratio less of an issue.