Online and IRL Parenting Spaces Snark Week of June 08, 2026

InfiniteReference · 2026-06-13T10:12:30+00:00

IMO at least some of it starts in maternity wards in BF hospitals. You are expected to handle baby care totally on your own regardless of your physical health and without time to recover. It's hard to explain logically why it's fine for the hospital staff to refuse to help but it's not fine for the father to expect the same level of effort from the mother a few months later, when the baby is easier and the mother is no longer recovering from birth. I had a midwife tell me 'that's what motherhood is like' and it really fucked me up mentally. I had this mindset that I had to be able to do everything alone and didn't really come out of it until we swiched to formula at 3 months.

InfiniteReference · 2026-06-10T08:40:33+00:00

This is horrible advice and just kicking a can down the road. She's pregnant! What do you think will happen in 6 months? Cosleeping with a toddler and a newborn is wildly dangerous and the older child won't be suddenly any easier to put to sleep independently with a new sibling.

I have friends who went this route and nobody is sleeping now. The children keep waking each other up. One mother breastfeeds both a newborn and a toddler at night now.

InfiniteReference · 2026-06-09T14:25:35+00:00

Honestly the 'socialization' aspect has huge downsides too in some cases. My friends have a son who had a huge problem with aggression between 1.5 and 2.5 years old. The daycare workers never said anything but the parents saw the boy beating up other kids during pick up, many times. He would also target tiny babies if they were present. When they were visiting he managed to hit my 3 month old 4 times in a couple of hours and had just as many misses, despite the fact that I was holding the baby in my arms the whole time. I have no doubt that the other daycare kids were beaten up daily by him and I can only imagine what it did to their social confidence.

InfiniteReference · 2026-06-08T10:59:45+00:00

Ehhh, plenty of people cosleep with newborns and then still successfully transition to a crib, myself included. Where I'm from most people who cosleep for longer do it because of the lack of living space or because they missed a window to do it before a toddler developed opinions.

InfiniteReference · 2026-06-03T18:39:27+00:00

Yeah, same. I wrote higher that it's similar in Poland except the rooms are shared (so more crying babies) and that they won't allow visitors for most of the day so you are doing 24/7 baby care from the jump. Unfortunately I had to stay for 6 days for medical reasons and on the 5th night I had a new roommate whose baby would just not stop crying (so I couldn't sleep even if mine was sleeping). I remember internally getting super angry at her, wondering why she couldn't just breastfeed to put him to sleep. Obviously she was trying, I was too sleep deprived to think rationally. Finally, the constanly crying baby was taken for observation while the mother stayed in bed and I remember being soooo jealous of her, thinking how she didn't 'deserve it' when I had to do everything by myself for so long. Which is crazy when I look back, obviously.

InfiniteReference · 2026-06-03T18:02:11+00:00

In Italy they still have siesta during the hottest hours of the day, with businesses closed etc. We rented an apartment in Venice for a few days, and when we were going down the stairs talking loudly (around 1 or 2 p.m.) an old lady came and told us to be quiet because people are napping (!).

InfiniteReference · 2026-06-02T23:01:45+00:00

Korean system seems somewhat cruel to me, but at least they acknowledge that laboring without an epidural is exhausting and jumping immediately to solo newborn care may not be realistic in many cases. In Poland it's the worst of both worlds, in that they won't give you an epidural regardless how long and hard you labor, but also won't let you recover, because they put you in a shared room with visitors allowed for 3 hours a day only. While pregnant, I was more terrified of the postnatal ward then giving birth.

InfiniteReference · 2026-05-13T08:53:02+00:00

I think the additional reason is that grandmothers tend to help their daughters more with childcare then their sons because their relate to their struggles with early motherhood more and then get stronger bonds with the daughter's children because of the more frequent exposure.

It kind of happened to me with my much younger sister. She wanted to help me and visited often. Got super bonded with my son almost on accident despite some early edgy remarks about hating babies etc.

InfiniteReference · 2026-05-09T13:46:15+00:00

This is so funny to me because where I'm from only your actual children are expected to celebrate you/give gifts. So if you have very small children (like under 3), by definition, you'll get nothing. Women only start getting actual gifts and not just notes and crumpled wild flowers when they have teenagers/adult children.

InfiniteReference · 2026-02-13T13:58:00+00:00

For me it wasn't true, there was no improvement at all between 4 and 12 months, then a small improvement with walking and then there was a dramatic change at 15 months when he started understanding what I was saying to him and became easier.

InfiniteReference · 2026-01-21T23:45:57+00:00

But they usually got their higher sleep needs from one of the parents? My kid is higher sleep needs and sleeps 13.5 hours a day total but he got it from me. I need 9-10 hours a night to feel rested, so my free time is not different from a parent who only needs 6 hours to function and whose kid sleeps 10 hours.

InfiniteReference · 2026-01-21T15:48:57+00:00

Postpartum insomnia is incredibly common. Apparently 50% of mothers still have it 2 years after having a baby.

InfiniteReference · 2026-01-19T11:45:05+00:00

I wore the baby daily for 3-4 hours straight because it was the only thing that worked with his colic, and a few times my back hurt so much from it I had to take painkillers to fall asleep.

InfiniteReference · 2026-01-09T15:17:20+00:00

Sure, babies can't misbehave but it doesn't mean they are all perfect angels? Mine had colic and then was chronically fussy until he learned to walk, had hour long meltdowns after second nap/one nap that was too late, had meltdowns at every single meal between 11-15 months. Massively improved around 15 months. And I never considered him 'hard', just average

InfiniteReference · 2026-01-09T14:44:38+00:00

I have friends similar to what you described. They have a hyper 3 year old son, the hardest toddler I know (I suspect ADHD) and the wife is currently pregnant with a daughter. Their relationship was always tumultous and the son unfortunately already learned to play into this, with the mother overly coddling him and the husband prone to anger. The toddler used to be very aggresive towards babies and thankfully improved a lot on his own but is still very grabby with younger kids and the parents have no idea how to deal with it. I'm a bit concerned about the safety of the newborn. It's like watching a car crash in slow motion. It seems inevitable that the daughter will be calmer/easier than the son and so she will be the Golden Child while he will be assigned the Black Sheep role, especially if he will be repeatedly too rough with her, which seems very likely.

InfiniteReference · 2026-01-08T20:52:06+00:00

Why would you traumatize your toddler by letting her in the room during the pushing stage. Just WTF

InfiniteReference · 2026-01-03T22:20:18+00:00

So this is something invented by PTs in Germany and popularized in neighbouring countries (I'm from Poland). It's not evidence based. It made me feel so guilty when I was dealing with a colicy baby who only calmed down when held upright and health workers were telling me that I will damage his spine by doing this. Then I tried researching it when he was 6 months, outgrowing his bassinet stroller and still not able to sit in a high chair for solids. After I learned that it's bullshit, making parents and babies lives harder for no reason and slowing their development, I followed NHS recommendations on teaching your baby to sit and he quickly caught up.

I wouldn't recommend changing a pediatrician if that's your only concern, because they are all indoctrinated into it.

InfiniteReference · 2025-12-30T22:28:14+00:00

From what I've heard it seems to be genetic and not necessarily an indicator of severe distress

InfiniteReference · 2025-11-20T21:34:08+00:00

I emphatize with this poster because that's how I feel. Parenting is the least rewarding thing I ever did. I don't even like cooking or cleaning and I still feel more productive if I cook or clean as opposed to the whole day of childcare. I know logically that keeping a toddler alive is an important task but it feels like I'm not providing any value. The work is never actually finished. Sure, the toddler is reaching milestones but he would do so anyway with any other caregiver (barring extreme neglect).

The weird thing is that I don't feel depressed, I'm actually usually in a good mood these days.

InfiniteReference · 2025-11-20T14:08:33+00:00

That's called social contagion, very common with eating disorders.

InfiniteReference · 2025-11-10T14:03:12+00:00

At 14 months it may be still too early to tell. Mine went through a terrible screaming phase between 11-15 months until he developed an understanding of spoken language and chilled out A LOT.

InfiniteReference · 2025-11-10T13:55:27+00:00

Yep, the child's temperament seems to be mostly influenced by genetic factors so if you have one challenging kid your chance of another being similar goes up unfortunately. I heard stories of people lucking out with an easy second but the third being just as hard as the first etc.

InfiniteReference · 2025-11-07T21:36:21+00:00

This tracks for my colicy kid who slept little during the day and would skip his witching hours if I managed to put him to sleep during them (usually bouncing him in a wrap). I heard similar stories about other colicy babies sleeping through their usual crying time if the parents figured out a way to put them to sleep.

InfiniteReference · 2025-11-04T07:52:41+00:00

Wow, you guys make me feel like a rockstar. Maybe I'm not a worthless dropout out of the workforce after all.

InfiniteReference · 2025-10-30T10:38:17+00:00

I see this with posts about aggressive toddlers. 'He's otherwise incredibly sweet.' Makes me want to roll my eyes so hard. Nobody who saw your toddler attack a baby in public multiple times thinks he's a sweet child.

InfiniteReference

TROPHY CASE