It's heart-rending to see what goes on in online parenting groups. While the attitudes displayed are upsetting, it's worth considering why so many adults are turning to one another and are a mix of baffled, ignorant, frustrated, and bitter regarding child-rearing.

When I was working in childcare the attitudes of my peers & general cultural atmosphere boded ill. People were a mix of a) openly bored, revolted, and annoyed by children and b) convinced they'd be parenting experts after reading two books and following What to Expect.

Now they're online lamenting the day they had kids, complaining endlessly, then switching gears and oversharing every private moment of their child's life. And no one in these groups seems to want to ease the general tensions and internal conflicts.

There's a lot of contributing factors to this. I don't want to diminish our personal responsibility, and we've certainly created this climate where it's okay to be vicious about kids. But how we got to this appalling parenting atmosphere is a big story.

I'm not going to go into all the factors, but at least one is thinking you can just "turn on" parenting skills when you're 34 by reading a book or blogs. Children are a part of life, and age segregation & shrinking families have meant many people have 0 experience with kids.

Creating private pod spheres for different segments of society means people don't learn how to live together. We don't know what the elderly need. We don't know what children need. And when we find out what aging and toddler-hood entail we're shocked.

To this day I'm grateful my mom made me take baby-sitting courses when I was 11 (and, being certified, I immediately started baby-sitting! Babies! Imagine that!). Now we think kids are incapable of that or, far worse, that learning to change diapers is "beneath" certain children.