Conundrums

[KCMax]

Copied from Slate's Conundrums. What do you do?

1. Would you rather be funnier or smarter than you are?

2. You have a wonderful child. You discover when the child is 1 year old that because of a mix-up at the hospital, the child is not actually yours. Do you try to return it to its biological parents?

3. Would you rather have a great job and live in a not-so-great city, or a mediocre job in an awesome city?

4. Which fictional character would you want to be (for a relatively short period)?

5. You're going to eat pie. You can only be guaranteed excellence in either the crust or the filling. Which would you pick?

[AllThingsKC]

1. Funnier.

2. Probably.

3. Great job in a not-so-great city.

4. I want to live in a pineapple under the sea (for a relatively short period).

5. Filling.

[aknowledgeableperson]

1. Smarter. Most people I know already enjoy my humor.

2. Return. It would be hard since you have an attachment to the child already but who knows, your biological kid may even be a better kid.

3. Great job. You can always make your surroundings better or travel but that job...

4. One of the gunmen in the Wild Bunch. That walk and shootout at the end is something.

5. Filling. You can always eat just the filling but just eating the crust ...

[Highlander]

Great job in a not so great city - Hell no. Great career that might take you temporarily to a not -so-great city? Yea sure, I'd take a few years in pretty screwed up place to get to next and better stop on the journey. I'd never move indefinitely to a shithole like my current location for a job though - nor should anyone.

[KCMax]

Copied from Slate's Conundrums. What do you do?

1. Would you rather be funnier or smarter than you are?

2. You have a wonderful child. You discover when the child is 1 year old that because of a mix-up at the hospital, the child is not actually yours. Do you try to return it to its biological parents?

3. Would you rather have a great job and live in a not-so-great city, or a mediocre job in an awesome city?

4. Which fictional character would you want to be (for a relatively short period)?

5. You're going to eat pie. You can only be guaranteed excellence in either the crust or the filling. Which would you pick?

1. Smarter
2. Yea, I think you have a duty to return the child, but I think you should try your best to maintain a relationship
3. I have chosen the mediocre job in an awesome city!
4. Phil Connors
5. Filling, although I do have a fondness for graham cracker crusts.

[bobbyhawks]

Copied from Slate's Conundrums. What do you do?

1. Would you rather be funnier or smarter than you are?

2. You have a wonderful child. You discover when the child is 1 year old that because of a mix-up at the hospital, the child is not actually yours. Do you try to return it to its biological parents?

3. Would you rather have a great job and live in a not-so-great city, or a mediocre job in an awesome city?

4. Which fictional character would you want to be (for a relatively short period)?

5. You're going to eat pie. You can only be guaranteed excellence in either the crust or the filling. Which would you pick?

1. Smarter
2. Return the kid
3. Mediocre job in an awesome city
4. Don Draper. Really anyone with whiskey and women involved. A loner liver would also be nice.
5. It is difficult to make a filling so bad it ruins a pie, and it is really easy to make a crust that ruins a pie. Definitely the crust. Once you have had an excellent crust, I don't see how there is another choice.

[phuqueue]

I'm not really interested in answering most of these, except I think it's interesting that everyone would return the child, either without regard for the traumatic effect this might have on the child itself when it loses the only parents it's known, or because other concerns apparently trump that one. I think you should certainly establish a relationship with the child's biological parents and with your own biological child, but I'm not sure I would rush to swap. And if akp's assertion that "your child might be even better" isn't meant to be tongue-in-cheek (I mean, I assume it is, but if), then you'll have to excuse me for a moment as I pick my jaw up off the floor. We're not talking about a flat-screen television here.

Obviously, kids are adopted all the time and it doesn't necessarily have long-term effects on their development, but I wonder how many babies are adopted when they're a year old -- a newborn hasn't yet formed a relationship with its parents and an older child can at least understand what's happening, but a one year old strikes me as being particularly vulnerable (although I say this as someone who doesn't have children and has only ever had limited interactions with babies).

[aknowledgeableperson]

"And if akp's assertion that "your child might be even better" isn't meant to be tongue-in-cheek (I mean, I assume it is, but if), then you'll have to excuse me for a moment as I pick my jaw up off the floor. We're not talking about a flat-screen television here."

That wasn't the point of my post. Go to the original statement. It made of point of saying "wonderful child" which I take to mean a child you wouldn't want to give up or was that rare perfect kid (cough, cough) that causes no problems at all. Although you have a "wonderful child" that should be of little to no concern in your decision.

With regards to the "traumatic effect" I don't think anyone would just go to the front door of the other parents and just exchange kids.

[phuqueue]

A one year old baby isn't going to understand what's going on no matter what procedure you go through to make the exchange, though. All he's going to know is one day his parents are gone and now there are strangers taking care of him.

And I know what the original post says, but treating that situation like it's a chance to trade up to a "better" kid is ghoulish.

[aknowledgeableperson]

By stating that you currently have a wonderful child that is not yours would imply, as a choice, that you would not want to exchange for you biological child because your own offspring my not be as wonderful. Which would be more ghoulish.

True, over time the child will adjust to the new parents but what about the parents themselves?

[IraGlacialis]

1. Smarter. If some people don't care for my sense of humor, **** em.
2. Return if the other parents want to do the same (at that age, the kid will adapt bond with the new now-biological parents and so-on). However, if they want to keep the kid they got, and kid I have is as wonderful as the description says, I see no problem in keeping it; genetics don't dictate bonds. Though there will probably be an... interesting talk down the road.
3. Awesome job.
4. Gentleman John Marcone.
5. Filling.

[phuqueue]

By stating that you currently have a wonderful child that is not yours would imply, as a choice, that you would not want to exchange for you biological child because your own offspring my not be as wonderful. Which would be more ghoulish.

True, over time the child will adjust to the new parents but what about the parents themselves?

It doesn't imply that at all -- describing the child as "wonderful" doesn't mean that the child's being wonderful is the only or even necessarily the primary criteria for making your decision. I think I already plainly stated that my decision is based not on the "quality" of either child but on the welfare of the child. Obviously, there are a lot of things in play to determine what's best for the child in any given situation, but we don't have any information about any of that, so holding all else equal -- the biological parents would be equally good parents with equally sufficient means and whatever -- I would think that a major disruption like giving the child to people it has never known before would not be good for it.

Plus it depends on what you take "wonderful" to even mean here anyway. The kid is one year old, it's not like he's a piano virtuoso skipping grades at school and captain of the football team or something. Personally I construed it more to mean that you have a wonderful relationship with the child, not that some children are objectively "good" and others are "bad" and this one is the former (bearing in mind my previous disclaimer that I have limited experience around babies in the first place, I'm nonetheless inclined to believe that at one year old it's less a matter of whether the child is good or bad and more about the quality of the parenting). That, I admit, is one interpretation that needn't be universal, but I am actually sort of curious what you picture when the scenario describes a "wonderful" one year old.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Instead of saying "wonderful child" it said "awful child" or "difficult child". The implication is that by having a wonderful child your decision would be harder to make instead of having a child that has you at wits end.

With regards to giving a child to strangers just think of a recent court case about white parents who adopted a newborn that had Native American heritage. Federal law states the child belongs to the tribe and therefore in the custody case the adoption was nullified and the child given to the father and tribe (the Supreme Court did rule for the adoptive parents though). Other custody cases have awarded parental rights back to the biological parent even though rights were originally signed away.

By questioning "wonderful" and stating "quality of parenting" does reinforce your statement about "limited experience". Now I am not going to get into the whole nature vs nurture debate except by saying not all babies are the same. Wonderful can mean 10 different things to 10 different people but I think here it does not mean relationship or just relationship but more about how does the baby behaves. One could take the Father Flannigan stance and say there are no bad babies but it isn't about good or bad. It probably is better stated as "this baby is easy to take care of" as the opposite of "this baby is a difficult baby to take care of". It can range from how, what, and how much they eat. Do they cry a lot when you put them to bed or down for a nap. Do they understand what the word 'no' means. Do they always have to be around you as opposed to they can entertain themselves. Do they sleep in or are they early risers.

[phuqueue]

Instead of saying "wonderful child" it said "awful child" or "difficult child". The implication is that by having a wonderful child your decision would be harder to make instead of having a child that has you at wits end.

Of course that's the implication, but that doesn't mean "wonderful" isn't still a red herring.

With regards to giving a child to strangers just think of a recent court case about white parents who adopted a newborn that had Native American heritage. Federal law states the child belongs to the tribe and therefore in the custody case the adoption was nullified and the child given to the father and tribe (the Supreme Court did rule for the adoptive parents though). Other custody cases have awarded parental rights back to the biological parent even though rights were originally signed away.

1. Just because something is law doesn't make it correct. And in the case of Native American law in particular, ordinary considerations are frequently overridden by the fraught history of US/Native relations. I don't know what case you're talking about but evidently by your own admission the Supreme Court still saw past all that to do, presumably, what it felt was right for the child.

2. These "other custody cases" you speak of have no particular bearing here if you're only going to refer to them in such vague, broad terms. It is entirely possible that, in those cases, returning the child to its biological parents was the right move for the child's welfare, for any of a number of reasons beyond the simple fact of their biological relation. Leaving the child with its adoptive parents is not necessarily always the right move, but in this scenario in which the crux of the problem simply seems to be "are you willing to raise a child that isn't biologically yours?" there is no reason to think the child would be better off with its biological parents.

By questioning "wonderful" and stating "quality of parenting" does reinforce your statement about "limited experience". Now I am not going to get into the whole nature vs nurture debate except by saying not all babies are the same. Wonderful can mean 10 different things to 10 different people but I think here it does not mean relationship or just relationship but more about how does the baby behaves. One could take the Father Flannigan stance and say there are no bad babies but it isn't about good or bad. It probably is better stated as "this baby is easy to take care of" as the opposite of "this baby is a difficult baby to take care of". It can range from how, what, and how much they eat. Do they cry a lot when you put them to bed or down for a nap. Do they understand what the word 'no' means. Do they always have to be around you as opposed to they can entertain themselves. Do they sleep in or are they early risers.

I didn't say that all babies are the same, and certainly some babies are easier to care for than others, but none of the difficulties you've listed here have been beyond my imagination in the course of this thread -- if you want to trade in your baby because of its eating or sleeping patterns or how much it cries, I think you shouldn't be parenting in the first place. Do they understand what no means? It's a baby, if it doesn't know what no means yet, it will nonetheless acquire human language as it develops. You sound like you're talking about a dog here (which I guess is at least a step up from when you sounded like you were talking about a television -- incidentally, as dogs are generally amenable to training in most circumstances, I also don't think you should get rid of a dog just because it's harder to take care of than you expected). It doesn't strike me as fair to hold an infant responsible for any of these things (which is why my interpretation of "wonderful" doesn't encompass them, and I had expected, or at least hoped, that yours went further as well), and even accepting for a moment the nature side of the nature vs. nurture argument and holding that some children are just inherently, by their nature, "bad," I wonder how evident that really is at one year, when the child can't even speak yet. I'm not sure the baby's failure to consistently sleep through the night and penchant for crying can be accurately regarded as early warning signs of intrinsic juvenile delinquency that will never be stamped out despite despite your best efforts as a truly model parent. What you're advocating here is basically just an abdication of responsibility. And that's fine, but if you aren't a responsible person, you shouldn't have even made yourself responsible for another person in the first place.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Just talk to some parents with multiple offspring. Not all but I would say many would comment that child A was a piece of cake (wonderful) and child B was difficult (a pain in the ass), and so on with other children. That doesn't mean more or less love (it might in some cases) but more a reflection of how the child behaves.

[phuqueue]

And I'm sure if they found out child B wasn't biologically theirs they'd all rush to trade him in for a better kid

[aknowledgeableperson]

At times they just might be willing to trade the kid even if it is theirs in the first place.