keep them in their cages.

I'm just so tired of the social war between those who are parenting and those who aren't parenting.

I'm of an age where the majority of my friends are having babies - many as single women who need to talk to friends, not having a partner - so I've recently had a period of reflection on what makes an interesting parent. These women fall simply into two categories, those who need to talk about body fluids in detail and those who don't. Those who do are, and always were, fundamentally boring and those who don't are, and always were, far more interesting to me - they still talk about other great milestones - i.e. first steps, who can't be happy about that? and would laugh at STFU. Those who do have found new friends and would be Outraged at STFU.

It's all a matter of interests - why on earth does it always become the fertile vs the (for whatever reason) not fertile.

I'm sharing STFU with the interesting people.

Well, I went to the link and a lot of those poopy postings WERE just too much information. The post from the mother smugly opining that parents are just the busiest compared to nonparents was truly obnoxious and I would unfriend her in a heartbeat.

However, I hooted when I read the opinion that they would rather read about wart removal than one more post about a child. Guess what I googled just recently? Got the answer I needed too.

I didn't get the outrage over the little girl in the costume. It was a fairly cute picture and the rant over making her a model and ruining her life made me duck to avoid the cyber spittle coming from that comment.

Look, 98% of Facebook is pretty ordinary day-to-day dreck, just like the letters I used to get from my grandparents which always started out talking about the weather, how is school, etc., etc. But I miss those letters now, and I would probably miss the day-to-day dreck I read from my now-grown nieces and nephews and daughter on Facebook if I didn't have it.

@ kgirl,

Brava for a well done response to the "Oh noes, the EBIL childfree are pickin' on parents!" whining.

Find a new drum to beat already. That one got old a long time ago.

And if you have alot of friends, who has the time to keep up with all the garbage posted. If there is major stuff going on in your life, then fine, post to facebook. Otherwise all the little stuff makes you look like an attention seeker. Lame-O.

...it's hard for me to understand why people get so obsessed with people "sharing" things that they can, after all, pretty easily ignore. Just like I'm ignoring this Broadsheet post! Um....

I've been on FaceBook for a few months, and while I do think parents who post potty-training pictures should have their head examined, I've yet to run across anything like that myself. No doubt it has a lot to do with the friends I've hooked up with, but all the same I have to side with those who say "If you don't want to see such things, then don't look."

Geez, that Edmunsun cat is a bore of the first order! I skimmed his column, peppered with references from Kant to Coleridge, and man o man, it was boring! Give me baby's watery poopy diaper FB anecdotes from solipsistic mommies any day!

On second thought, no. Don't give me those solipsistic morons from FB. I am a parent--who posts photos of his child on FB -- and I find those who have no sense of decency vulgarians.

Okay, the bodily fluids are disgusting. But are parents' complaints any more tiresome than the 20-somethings I know who feel the need to constantly tell us what alcoholic beverage they are consuming? Or the born-agains who use their status to tell us how we going to heck in a handbasket? Really, you either have to have a tolerance for the grand panorama of human experience, or you don't. If you don't, get off Facebook and go read a real book. It's what the rest of us should be doing, anyway.

Hey, everyone on Facebook - ya you - STFU! I don't fucking care what you are doing now. You know why I don't have a Facebook/Myspace/any social networking site page? Because I'm not interesting enough to read about - not even to my own family! If there IS something exiting, a few grunts get the point across.

And if I - the most important person to my id - isn't that interesting neither are you. I'm never going to friend you, don't send me invites. Think you're interesting? Submit something to Salon and get paid for it. Otherwise, I'd rather eat dirt that give you a moment of attention.

Thank the Spaghetti Monster I haven't looked at Twitter yet. I think the name has three extra letters at the end.

My sister in law, about three months before her due date, gets a letter from her friend who was also pregnant. Or was. Unfortunately, she had a stillbirth. EXTRA unfortunately, she sent a PHOTO of her dead child to her pregnant friend.

Yes, to a grieving mother, there may be an obscure thread of sense there, but she really needed a shovel full of STFU.

Facebook is full of people posting every little detail about their day. Why so much hostility directed at parents? Why talk as though all parents are the same?

We all listen to people talk about what matters to them whether they're breeding dogs or going on a cruise. Sometimes you're interested in what people say because they care about it. Why does talking about children suddenly get people so upset? Nobody complains about people who want to talk to you about their sports team.

Childless people who are truly secure in their own choices don't need to call parents "breeders." They don't get offended if parents are excited about their children. They can be glad when parents adore their children just for learning to walk. It doesn't bother them if parents make their family the center of their life. Getting upset that parents like having kids comes across as, well, envy. A little too much trying to convince yourself that children and parenting are awful.