| I was slightly surprised by the author tackling such a time-tested knot as first-time parent decision-making and "OMG how do we make good decisions about _anything_" decision theory. But then I realized that in an existential periodical like The New Yorker, there just can't be a final answer. More like some observations about various points of view. Which is cool. But the strange definition of an "ambitious parent" toward the end of the article does read a bit more like a misguided knock on ambitious people in general, ever the clowns of the infinite-pie existentialist world view. :-) As a coach myself, I'm frequently in situations where clients ask me to weigh in on decisions. While I'm happy to do so, even the best news from me--maybe something like, "you are absolutely on the right track, and I know it, and I think you do too" is not nearly as great as a different sort of piece of news: The decision-making sphere _even after becoming a parent_ or making some other drastic decision is so wide open as to be essentially incomprehensible. Our senses so often tell us lies about our actual options. IMO this is why we have cultural archetypes like Doctor Who. People who come in and show us that our reductionist views and the resulting expressions of judgment are often just so childish and self-protecting. Dive in! It'll be OK and we'll just keep working on it. It's not like you make a decision and _then_ stop making other decisions. And that's another really important thing that's often overlooked in favor of the decision-theory or intuitive spreadsheeting-weighting stuff: You can build a personal model for navigating change. Using such a model, you will simply be more bad-decision-proof on the negative side, and on the upside you'll be more prepared to capitalize on good decisions. In fact you can in many cases derive from that change-navigation model a sort of time machine. Ziiip! The worst parts of the decision just got undone. Parenting might seem unique in this way because you probably can't undo that child--there's this new dependency that didn't exist before that now demands your attention. But really, here comes Doctor Who! Look, it's a fascinating new world, not a problem. And in balancing the needs of the subject (I don't know what I'm doing!) and the needs of the object (wahhh!) there is an incredible new world teaching us lessons that apply everywhere else. |