There’s a giant gulf between those who have children and those who don’t.

You can see this in the way people without children often confuse babies with puppies. I call this Mistaken Puppy Syndrome (MPS).

Here’s an example of MPS. A 20-something sees a frazzled mother coming down the street dragging a toddler. It’s near lunchtime and the toddler is howling. The 20-something cuts her eyes at the mother and says: “Gee, why didn’t you leave that thing at home?”

Presumably she meant, outside, tied to a bush, with the appropriate amount of milk in a bowl nearby. Hello, did you see a leash around this kid’s neck?

More than likely, the mom just needed to get something from the store, and there was no one at home to “leave the thing” with. Maybe the child needed medication and she was hurrying to get it.

Or what about the childless friends on a lunch date who say things like, ‘But enough about the baby, what’s happening with you?’ Honestly, when your baby turns over or smiles for the first time, that is what’s happening.

There was a recent posting on Facebook by a mom who received an anonymous note in her mailbox. The note said something like: “The other moms and I are tired of all the pictures you post on Facebook of the baby. The baby is three months old now, you should be over it.” The letter writer was obviously a fraud, because what mother would expect another mother to “be over” their three-month-old?

Again, it’s a baby, not a poodle. The Facebook complainers are usually the same people who clog your feed with selfies. To them I say: You’re 30 years old, you should be over yourself by now.

Don’t these people know where the defriend button is? There’s even a way to discretely stop seeing posts from particular people without defriending them. Learn to use the buttons!

A friend of mine said to me: “My wife and I never had children because we didn’t want to take care of it when it was sick.” I just spent eight days caring for a sick child. He was right, mopping up sick was a nuisance, as was the worry, but I don’t think I’ll be sending her to the pound just yet.