Second paragraph is an easy one on my bingo card. Parents are so predictable always thinking they are more tired or more stressed than any non-parent. It doesn’t work like that.

Parents do have a lot of reasons to be tired or stressed but it is self elected. Non-parents (and Parents!) Can also have self elected things that are stressful or tiring. Worse when is when someone has a non- elected thing that is stressful or tiring-- parent or not.

Being a parent is just a low level way to group people, but it doesn’t mean anything other than they just decided to procreate. I certainly have empathy when my coworkers are telling me about how they are tired because of a kid. But empathy should go both ways. Listening to conversations thinking that you have the trump card on stress is a shitty way to approach conversations.