Are you ready?

[lillibet]

The Are You Ready to Be a Parent? quiz is actually not a bad checklist.

Comments

[cz_unit]

Guess not. Drat.

http://www.blogthings.com/areyoureadytobeaparentquiz/results/?result=44

CZ

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Well, I think being a parent already somewhat disqualifies one. I only got a 56%

[lionsburg.livejournal.com]

Interesting, 88% score.

The check list is very heavily oriented to coupled parents. I bet if there was another one geared towards being a single parent the scores would be much higher.

[bex77]

Huh...I looked at this and thought.."no one will ever be that ready!"

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Well, no, I would be surprised if many people got 100% on this. I certainly don't now and wouldn't have at any time in the past. But I think it's a good list of things to think about and work toward.

[dpolicar]

(nods) Looks reasonable to me, although "enough money" and "enough time" definitely suffer from lack of definition.

"You are ready to accept any child you have, including a child with a severe mental or physical disability" is a toughie. I'm not 100% convinced anyone can answer that (either way) absent the actual stimulus. But it's definitely a question one should be asking.

"You aren't [..] moody" is interesting.

[cz_unit]

Yeah, a lot of them seemed like "oh so peachy keen" questions. Isn't everyone so open, so willing to handle anything, so relaxed and at peace with the world that they can take a 8 pound chaos bomb dropped in their lives like a fragmentation grenade?

Parenting is. It's not something you can really sit there and dawdle on being "ready". When you feel you're ready give it a roll.

CZ

Wishes he did it at 16. I had a lot more energy back then.

[lionsburg.livejournal.com]

Perhaps "Enough Money" should be "Enough Money To Continue In The Lifestyle You Have Grown Accustom To"?

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

20% ready. Which is to say, Not Gonna Happen.

I have a very young mother on my f'list who perpetually needles me with "It's not too late!" badgering. I should post my results of this quiz for good and all. :-)

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Oh, how annoying! If it's any help, I think you are perfect childfree. If that made you unhappy, I would wish it different for you, but since it doesn't, trying to encourage you toward my own goals would be silly.

Good News

[kellyjmf.livejournal.com]

I got an 84 which apparently means I'm ready. Which is good because I already am one.

I have found that finding gross things funny REALLY helped in the first six months or so. One of Susan's favorite stories that I tell is of the time she finished nursing, gave me a big smile, and then hurled directly into my cleavage. I'm cracking myself up just thinking about it.

It's good to be easily amused...

Re: Good News

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Oh, a sense of humor helps so much! I don't know how anyone can get through the first year without a lot of laughter.

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

64%
Uh oh

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

That seems pretty reasonable. My own score was a 56%. Mostly, I think this is a good checklist of things to think about and perhaps work toward.

[kissoflife.livejournal.com]

This is of course also quite skewed toward partnered parenting. Support network considerations are included, but I'd like to see some treatment of 'have you thought through how you would handle it if suddenly or intentionally you came to be the primary caregiver'

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Good point. I became aware of how important that is after dating two guys in quick succession whose fathers had both died when the boys were two years old. The difference in their own stability and happiness correlated pretty directly with their mothers' acceptance of the situation, or lack thereof.

[kissoflife.livejournal.com]

Can you point to factors & behaviors in the two scenarios that were pivotal? Offer any items to the list? *grin* Inquiring, still-single minds would like to know.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Basically, it boils down to expectations. Dave's dad died of a heart attack and his mother passed along to him the sense that his father was an ideal husband and father whose example he could never equal and that life was deeply unfair for having left her alone to cope with single parenthood. Rob's mom never married his dad, didn't even have much of a relationship with him, from what I gather, and seems never to have planned on anything other than single parenthood. Guess which one is a better adjusted adult!

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

I got a 68%, and many the things I didn't answer yes to were kind of obvious to me as the things that make a rough day sometimes even rougher. Still not ready 3 years into the game, I guess.

For me, the coping with gross and icky things happens roughly as follows: something that seems gross at first becomes everyday, and therefore is no longer gross and then I can deal with it. Diapers for instance - having dealt with them every day for a while, I mostly just stopped thinking they were gross at all. But I'm still perfectly happy to stay arms-length away from other things I do consider gross. Plunging a toilet still involves gritting my teeth...

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

I just want to comment that I think it's interesting that straight people who can make babies by sex can still become parents if they have a 0% measure on this axis (and I currently know someone who's probably pretty low on this), while adoption-type agencies would really prefer to have people somewhere 80% or more, presumably.

[I am, luckily, childfree by choice. But if I weren't, well, yeah.]


[Oh, and it's also interesting to think of how this set of expectations has changed over the past 100 years. I wonder how "is ready to be a parent" would have have been defined in 1908; whether it extended much beyond, "is married".

[roozle.livejournal.com]

As far as I could tell, from what I remembered, I was 64% ready to be a parent. Which is better than I expected.

[roozle.livejournal.com]

For the record, I'm currently nowhere near as ready to be a parent, at least of an infant, as I was Then. 28% though I held myself to some rather high standards on some of the answers.