The Disappointed Idealist

There is such thing. Here's an example: you want to build yourself a house. You are not a builder by education so you hire someone. Then you hear a friend of yours got scammed and charged way too much by another builder so you start asking around for shit that can happen when someone builds you a house. Then you hear that someone's builder stole materials that they then charged to you. Another one's builder cut corners by building the foundation wrong and it was only obvious much later because the foundation was obviously covered by the floor. Some other guy didn't have all the paperwork in order. Soon your head starts spinning with all the advice you could get from people that built their own houses and had shit happen to them and they're pouring it all to you. The advice is occasionally conflicting. One says hire someone to supervise, the other one says if you do the two heads will clash and chaos will ensue. One says pay whatever it's worth, cause quality...

...that pisses some people off as much as it does? There are very heated debates on the subjects of gay marriage, gay adoption, to the point of people saying that children are better off in orphanages than adopted by a gay couple! Really? Have you ever been in an orphanage? Have you ever looked a parentless child in the eye and told him "You're lucky you're here. You could have had two dads, that would have been a whole lot worse!". Even assuming that you go to the best maintained orphanage in the world, with the staff that treats the children in the best possible manner (...but really, trust me when I tell you, in most of the orphanages around the world, children are treated horribly and live in the most abject of conditions), even there you will have probably one person to tend ten children at a time at least. How much time is there for love and affection when you have to tend to that many children on a regular basis? How many of those children are really feeling ...

I have met people who laughed at the concept that raising a child is the hardest job in the world. However, I would think that, while it takes being there to actually know exactly how hard it is, it is not hard to evaluate this as a true statement. Think about it: 1. At a job you have breaks. Yes, there will be days when you won't be able to take those breaks, but even so there will come a time when you will go home and sleep. Raising a child means that you have to be there all the time. If he cries in the middle of the night you can't say "time out" and just ignore it. You can't just say "fuck it, worst case, I'll get fired" and turn on the other side. 2. Even worse, especially in the starter years, every time your child is left alone to cry, he will perceive it as abandonment, even if that is not fair to you (you may feel sick, you may be literally unable to move - many times the child will not understand this). As such, assuming that you are...