Babies Aren't Just Inconvenient Accessories

Get a babysitter and get away from your newborn—you need to keep your sanity. So goes the unsolicited advice to young parents. But since when did babies become just inconvenient accessories? "Had we had actually had a baby, I wondered, or simply gotten a goldfish?" asks Tracy Moore over on Jezebel. These days, the pressure is on for young parents to get back to their "real" lives and not let babies "get in the way of one's social cachet, cultural with-it-ness, last-minute vacations or weekly get-togethers."

At first, Moore says, she and her husband were simply too tired from the newborn to go out. But over time, her opinion grew stronger. "Perhaps, at least initially, early parenthood should be a period of confinement," she speculates. "A meditative retreat into a new self, a quieting down of all the usual clatter." Because there are precious few chances in life when you can just drop out and forget about the outside world. "And most of them don't come with the added benefit of making you a better person." Read her full essay. (More families stories.)