this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
210 points (99.1% liked)
Comic Strips
17546 readers
857 users here now
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
The rules are simple:
- The post can be a single image, an image gallery, or a link to a specific comic hosted on another site (the author's website, for instance).
- The comic must be a complete story.
- If it is an external link, it must be to a specific story, not to the root of the site.
- You may post comics from others or your own.
- If you are posting a comic of your own, a maximum of one per week is allowed (I know, your comics are great, but this rule helps avoid spam).
- The comic can be in any language, but if it's not in English, OP must include an English translation in the post's 'body' field (note: you don't need to select a specific language when posting a comic).
- Politeness.
- Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
Web of links
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
When you’re planning on having kids, or pregnant, your health care providers will recommend you take some parenting classes. There’s ways to learn, don’t let your parents not being there for you stop you. You will also likely get recommended to get a doula and midwife.
Classes might help. But the important part is someone with experience doing it for you until you get a hang of it. Someone giving you lession on what to do might give you knowledge but it takes practice, reminders etc. I know you said both is good. I agree with that as things change, some practice in the past might not be good now, but that might also come from every generation resetting the knowledge, if you have generational knowledge passed, and collected and refined with community and science, then the things that work well will stick out longer.
Also, no paternity leave in many places, and short maternity leave (looking at US with zero federally required maternity leave), means people take those for recovery and do not have as much free time before they have the baby.
I mean.. most of the world has parental leave, it’s literally the US and a few other places with nothing. If they offer maternity, most dual with paternity in some way.
So what do mothers do in the US? Do they take leave, unpaid; do they get fired or leave their jobs; do they get a nanny/childcare and show up for work after giving birth like it was just a cold? (Or maybe some are just stay at home moms)
It's not the same. For starters, none of it is free. Like every other aspect of capitalism, it disproportionately affects the poor. Also, I don't know about you, but I would never be able to trust a stranger as much as my own family. And the family is also missing out. It's so rewarding to raise a baby. I was involved in raising many of my nieces and nephews, and it was so great. Just interacting with kids is a beautiful thing, and a wonderful stress reliever. (I know not everyone likes babies, but many do.) I know that there's some real threat of perverts, but the fact that babies are pretty much isolated from the society is not great for their growth.
Free where I live.
And why do you think the family still can’t be involved? Your parents likely don’t know everything, and there’s recent discoveries to know about too. Even with family support, you should still do all the above as well. Prepare yourself, don’t expect others to always be there.
Lotta people lose their families
To christianity, fascism, just being personally shitty
Edit: oooooh downvoting. Don't want to be reminded how christianity shatters families?
No, you're downvoted for being incredibly stupid. People with lost families are not part of the discussion about why we don't let family help as much anymore. Because in that case it's very obvious
I'm not advocating against medical/professional help, but you were replying to a comment talking about the erosion of community. Also, this kind of help is not free in the vast majority of the world, afaik. Apart from EU, Japan, China, and maybe a few other small countries, it costs quite a lot.
And I was providing examples where there is communities still available. Just because one door is shut, doesn’t mean they all close. There’s free community programs in lots of places too. Don’t miss all the good to just complain about a few negatives.
Kids are expensive, what a shocker. Did you expect raising kids to be free and easy? Because maybe that’s why more parents need parental classes, to actually properly know how to ready their kids for their own kids.
Not easy, but it should be relatively cheap. If the community is there, it should be cheap. There should be free healthcare, free schooling, and paid leave for parenting. It's still gonna be hard, but not costly to raise a kid. Making it expensive is a product of capitalism.
Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see that in your original reply.