May I borrow one of your terms? Rubbish! What different qualities? List, please.

As you often proclaim, that's a load of crap! Best balance? Oh please, how many heterosexual couples screw it up for lack of balance? Neither one of us has time to tally the stats.

Gender, regardless of it's source, is a disposable (or even adaptable) attribute when it comes to child rearing. Your needle is stuck in the Men are from Mars, women are from Venus groove. You can't or won't acknowledge that, simply as human beings, two men or two women are capable of loving, nurturing, and facilitating the emotional well-being of children the same way a "traditional" pair of parents can. And you come by this assumption... how? On what indisputable facts do you base this position? Your own bias? Sorry, not nearly good enough.

Nurturing by breastfeeding, for example, the natural tendency of mothers to engage in more holding of infants than do fathers and the natural tendency of fathers to engage in more game-playing.


That's right... breastfeeding and the holding tendency of mothers for example and game-playing by fathers.


Oh yeah I'm really looking forward to your example of male breastfeeding.


No, personal experience backed up by the research and conclusions of experts in the field.

km

So, by your logic, no breastfeeding = no chance of a normal upbringing? What's your story: none, or too much of it? I think you have a boob fixation!

When you buy something at the corner store (like, a carton of milk, for instance), do you ask for your change in nipples and dimes?

Depends on what you mean by 'normal'. The benefits of breastfeeding are well known so it's a disbenefit to be denied it - for whatever reason.

km

LOL. By "normal" I mean average, not an axe murderer, not a raging sociopath, not a habitual child molester, not a scat freak... But you seem to imply that without breastfeeding, one is at great risk of being any one or combination of the above. You propose that a child not breastfed is doomed to social, physical, and intellectual failure. You hypothesize that the parent that does not breastfeed her child should have her parenting license pulled.

And BTW, do you apply this same rather narrow criteria to a lesbian couple? Or in that case do you assume that a lack of tossing a football around places the child at an insurmountable disadvantage? I mean, can your argument possibly be any more stereotypically stilted?

Did I say LOL?

Verwey Interwesting.

2 more examples for each, please km.

It does get pwetty siwwy. Both of my girls are adopted. The oldest surrendered at birth to an orphanage in Bogota, the other abandoned on a dock near Wu Chang. Neither were breastfed — certainly not more than once or twice by their respective birth mothers, not while in foster care, nor after we received them. I guess that make our family dangerously unbalanced. Not to mention that any college savings will likely go, instead, to various psychiatrists, bail, and defense attorneys in the near future. *sigh*

Ah well, some people like riding carousels, too, even though all they do is go around and around and around and around ... ;-)

Fun to do sometimes, but at some stage ultimately becomes pointless ;-D

True dat, doc. How much is my copay?

If you have to ask ...

I'll definitely take payment in nipples and dimes, though -- sounds like fun!

=D