My wife and I have enjoyed informing family, friends, and acquaintances about our pregnancy. I did not expect this part of the process to be so rewarding…simply for propagating! Nonetheless, it has been a lot of fun to share this news. Not everyone responds the same way. I have noticed three consistent categories of response.Welcome to the Club. This is the most common reaction to our news - "Welcome to parenthood." These folks are conversational and enjoy discussing their experience with pregnancy. They tend to be very helpful. They also enjoy hearing about your plans. They ask questions and a discussion unfolds. These conversations are informative and insightful, often resulting in new connections to veteran members of the parenting club. On thinking back to these discussions you find yourself looking forward to another round of healthy discourse.
Story Tellers. This is also a conversational style but story tellers tend to relay anecdotes about personal experience or the experiences of others they know. The Story Teller’s face often belies priceless nostalgia and is awash in fishing that joy to the surface with your news. They’re congratulatory, genuinely excited, and their energy is contagious. These conversations are entertaining and often very informative.
Advice Specialists. We have only run across a small handful of Advice Specialists. They want to explain how to parent the right way. Unsolicited advice flows from their verbiage holes (plural because they talk out of both ends) like fluid from an infant. They only ask questions so they can criticize. Disapproval flits across their brow constantly. These immature specialists tend to spring leaks (“Pft”) if you share something that is contrary to the way they did it (or think they will parent). You don’t have to be Gottman to understand that they offer uneatable scraps of human discourse because they traffic in sound bites, quips, and odd comments disguised as jokes. The behavior of these advice mongers is defensive and sprinkled with preemptive verbal “fly bys” such as, “Your life will never be the same” or “It’s all about you.” Such windy pot shots end up informing you about them; devoid of sophistication, insecure, low social competence, and anti-intellectual. Avoid all conversations concerning politics, religion, health, happiness, career happenings, and of course parenting. Just listen to them until it is time to leave. Stick to inane questions such as, “Oh, you made the pie?” “What’s the temperature?” and of course statements like “Your child is the most brilliant to date.”