Community Profile

Parenting is a hard, hard job. But it's difficult to find an online parenting community that is sane and supportive. To that end, we propose I-Statement Parenting, a community founded on two fundamental truths:

1. Every parent is different, and every child is different. Therefore:
   1. Parenting is a different experience for everyone.
      
   2. Growing up is a different experience for everyone.
2. We can't know the whole of anyone else's experience. Therefore:
   1. It's impossible to say what's right or wrong for someone else.
      
   2. We can only say what our own experience has been.

Based on those precepts, our rules are:

1. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ablism, sizism, etc. We're not going to list every ~ism here, but we are all adults, and we expect that everyone will be respectful of others.
   
2. No personal attacks. Disagreement is fine; insults are not.
   
3. No one-size-fits-all parenting. Instead, please practice I-statement parenting. Instead of discussing what all people should do, discuss what your experience has been. If you find yourself saying "you should" (or especially "you should just"), step back and consider carefully: can what you're about to say be rephrased as "I did" or "Do you think it might be helpful to"? If not, maybe it's something that doesn't belong in this community.
   
4. Certain topics are especially sensitive in the parenting community. These include, but are not limited to, circumcision, breastfeeding v. bottlefeeding, spanking, and working v. staying at home. We encourage discussion of all these things, but in these areas it's important to be especially careful about I-statement parenting. (Note that your mods tend to be split on these topics, so pretty much no matter what you say, if you're making a blanket statement, you'll be insulting one of us.)