Two People Feel Like They’ve Got the Answer Where Kids & Dogs Are Concerned

At Slate, “The One Thing No One Tells You Before You Have Kids: Don’t Get a Dog.”

There’s also all the other stuff, like having to walk him every day, and the fact that he loves to start a manic barking fit just as one of the kids is about to fall asleep… To all you young couples, thinking, “We should get a dog!” “I love you, let’s get a dog!” “We’re not ready for kids, but what about a dog?!” — don’t get a dog. Or, if you do get a dog, don’t have kids.

At the New Republic, “The Best Thing You Can Do Before You Have Kids: Get a Dog.”

If I’m more specific about the way in which Branston has made me feel more equipped to have kids with my husband, it has more to do with alleviating some of my gender-based anxiety about the household-chore tally and how it might play out against our careers, our social lives, and the different ways we want to spend our time when we add the biggest household chore of all.

And now, at the Hairpin, “The Internet Really Has No Place in Deeply Personal Matters Like the Timing of Dogs and Babies,” as well as a companion piece “Any Individual’s Agonizing Mastery of their Specific Situation is Often Meaningless in a Universal Sense,” and a final rejoinder, “Enough Already with the Insular, Class-Specific Milieu of Pieces That Revolve Around the Concept of Other People Doing It Wrong.”