You're broadening the scope of the debate again. I said you should have a plan in place for issues like who compromises their career. How does that balloon into "put off having kids until things are perfect"?
Of course, there are extenuating circumstances which can waylay any planning; I never intended to imply that there weren't. Go back and read my post, and you'll see that my criticism was conditional. If you did have a plan in place, and then extenuating circumstances derailed those plans, then fine.
Twice now you've taken statements that were pointed at a specific issue and acted as if they were broad indictments of your parenting skills that amounted to nothing more than ad hominem attacks. False umbrage hardly contributes to a strong and friendly community.
The debate is very broad in scope because many things are interconnected.
My umbrage was anything but false: the idea that we had taken the arrival of a child so lightly as to not consider and plan for the future most certainly implies negative things about me and my wife, especially considering that people here really don't have that much knowledge of our situation.
pg's response was quite astute: we thought and planned beforehand, but things change rapidly, and in ways that are unpredictable. One small, simple example is that I thought at this stage, since our daughter is basically in the eating/pooping/sleeping phase, it would be easy to get back to work, and leave most of it to my wife, since she has to feed her in any case. However, it's quite difficult to concentrate on work, and I really enjoy helping out and spending time with the baby, even if she doesn't do much. There are plenty of other things that aren't like we'd imagined them either.
Basically, unless you have experience with kids yourself, I think that it's not so easy to understand what it's like.
I haven't said anything outside of "If you had no plans for post-baby career changes, then you were being irresponsible." If the debate is any broader than that, it's only because you are taking that simple, focused statement and falsely taking it to mean something else. And I don't need (or want) any more information about your oh-so-unique situation, or kids of my own, in order for my simple statement to be true.
If you and your partner didn't make plans for your careers before having a child, then suck it up and accept that you were irresponsible. If you did make those plans, then put your reading comprehension hat on and stop with the broken-heart act. Christ.
Of course, there are extenuating circumstances which can waylay any planning; I never intended to imply that there weren't. Go back and read my post, and you'll see that my criticism was conditional. If you did have a plan in place, and then extenuating circumstances derailed those plans, then fine.
Twice now you've taken statements that were pointed at a specific issue and acted as if they were broad indictments of your parenting skills that amounted to nothing more than ad hominem attacks. False umbrage hardly contributes to a strong and friendly community.