Almost nobody has a plan for how they’re going to raise their kids. What they have, instead, is a series of promises about how they won’t raise them. We see shrieking kids running around a restaurant or throwing shit-covered cats off of the neighbor’s roof while Mom talks on her cell phone, and we promise ourselves we won’t be that parent.
But when you actually become a parent, you realize that you were imagining a theoretical perfect child that you can grow like a plant — just dump the right amount of water and shit on it and he’ll be fine. In reality, kids have a way of making you look like an asshole. And all of those bold declarations will turn into a series of complicated compromises. Like …
