How to properly prepare for others becoming parents: empathy classes

...it's not just kalamata olives and physical labor that's expected of you. Now you're supposed to take pre-natal empathy classes so that you can properly support your friends who reproduce.

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Of course, it’s fantastic to welcome new people into your life, and in the sad twilight hours it’s important to feel you’re not alone. But there’s a babying here, I think – a sense that your old pals should not be bothered with the monotony, the infinite crushing love, the profundity of your new day-to-day; that it is too much for your old friends to know that you need them. It should not be the responsibility of the new mother to remind them she exists. Hence my proposal. As their friend’s due date approaches, a letter will arrive, inviting them to sign up for classes in empathy, memory, time-management, travel and humour.

She is getting slammed in the comments by both the CF and PNBs, although of course there are a few breeders on her side.

It's the breeders that need the empathy classes. My experience is that moos ditch the non moo friends unless they agree to be unpaid lackeys.

The last time I reached out to a moo was to email and text invites to whatever she could handle, when I finally got a response I realized she wanted a babysitter not an evening out with a friend. I said I was unavailable to babysit, and if she wanted to do anything she can contact me. This was in 2005 and never heard from her again.

That's fucking unbelievable. I think this falls into the very definition of self-centered.

Empathy is counterproductive and leads to undesirable outcomes in the long term.

Empathy goes both ways. I used to go out of my way to do nice things for a friend and her kids. This lasted about 6 years. Until one day I realized she was inviting me over and I was giving up an entire day to go to her house and as soon as I arrived she would shut herself in her bedroom with her boyfriend on the phone. I would sit in the living room for hours and her 9 year old needy son would bug the shit out of me, because he was raised to get attention at all times. There is no way in hell she could have been away from him for 5 minutes because she did such a shitty job raising him and refusing to discipline his bad behavior.

She refused to return any of my calls for 6 mos. for no reason at all, I left message after message and nothing. Six months later she left a message asking me to photograph her wedding for free. Never spoke to her since. Guess she figured out my empathy had run dry.

Even though I explained to her repeatedly I'm not having kids, she proceeded to bingo me left and right despite the fact that she is a poor single mahm. And logic (I'm single and work two jobs) didn't work either. She would also talk about how nice it must be to be childless and to have money (we worked at the exact same place, did the exact same job and she earned $12K more than I did, so she earned more than I did with 2 jobs). She also received free daycare through her job. Oh, and I had the luxury to work 2 jobs, because that is luxurious just like a vacation or spa treatment, right? Good riddance!

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kittehpeoples
That's fucking unbelievable. I think this falls into the very definition of self-centered.

I think it is pure projection. After all, I'm fairly certain it isn't the unchilded people who have suddenly lost the ability to remember, manage their time, and to travel, along with their sense of humour.

I saw this...OMG the entitlement! I was just...well, flabbergasted. Although not much should surprise me with breeders any more.

Why don't THEY take empathy classes to, you know, not lock their kids in a boiling car while they get their hair and nails done? So their kid doesn't end up as road pizza or falling into a pit of wild dogs at the zoo after they "only looked away for a second"?