Trees are big in the Torah and Bible generally. The Bible Project did a whole series on trees in the Bible. You've got the Tree of Life, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the cross, the tree in the book of Jonah, the fig tree, the parable of the vine and the branches, etc..

It all makes sense for a religion steeped in a desert culture. Trees are (relatively) rare, and what they offer is incredibly important and life giving.

Universal healthcare is real and human. If we can't use an article to inform how we think about current problems, what's the point of it?

> I don't have my own kids, but my experience with people with kids is that they're often desperate for social interaction, they feel limited in their ability to go out of the house, and they really don't want the extra work from having guests over.

It depends on the age of the kids and situation, but visiting people can be helpful if done carefully.

From reading (likely too much) internet commentary about having babies I assumed I'd be completely exhausted and worn out from constantly giving the baby attention for the first few months. Then I discovered that newborns sleep literally 3/4 of the day.

The hard part is the disrupted sleep schedule when their newborn stomachs are small and they need to eat every few hours. It can be really hard to adjust for people who have lived their lives with 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep all the time.

Funnily enough, having lived with middle of the night insomnia and disrupted sleep my life I wasn't really bothered by the newborn feeding schedule (via pumped milk in bottles, my wife did the real work during the day).

The value of socializing for us, which I didn't expect at all, was to fill the boredom. We were lucky enough to both be able to take a lot of time off work at the same time, which combined with the newborn sleeping 2/3 to 3/4 of the day left us feeling unplugged from the world.

Everyone is different, though. I've had friends who just didn't want to see anyone or have other people in their house for the first few months, so we respected that. I know some people who got tired of endless visitors trying to help, while others lamented not having enough help. It can be tough to feel it out so try to be especially intune with subtle social signals and look for hints to take.

it very much depends on how prepared the parents are. if you or your partner grew up with a lot of siblings you have plenty of examples from your own childhood to draw on that make things easier.

i didn't have that, so i struggled, especially in the beginning, not because it felt hard, but simply because i didn't know what to do. the mechanics are easy to learn, feeding, changing, sleep, etc, but beyond that i simply had no examples to draw on. but i was able to compensate that with continuously being aware that this is what i wanted. i chose this adventure, and i was not going to despair over making that choice, nor would i regret it.

but we were also lucky, and our kids were not fussy and slept well. they got plenty of breastfeeding because nobody told my wife when or how to stop and she didn't complain, so she stopped when the kids were ready on their own.

That’s an impressive run.

The mother and child’s health are likely a factor in this, surely? Depending on how the delivery went, there may be a period of recovery. Combined with disrupted sleep and newborn feeding, the combination can be rough.

> They sleep most the day, giving you an opportunity to sleep and cook.

I got some douchebag babies, because they were breastfeeding every 2-3 hours for a long time. Probably every 2 hours for the first few months, so that doesn’t allow for quality sleep cycles. It also takes a while to put them to sleep, so the total period of free time could be as little as 15 to 30 minutes.

The first one needed time to learn how to breastfeed (and the mom to learn also).

And also, physical recovery from tears in the flesh and other complications such as hemorrhoids and hormone fluctuations.

You even have to be careful with bringing meals. When we lost a family member and all kinds of food started showing up, it was very sweet of people. But it became just one more hassle to deal with at a time when we already had too much to deal with.

The person needs to never see a commercial kitchen from the inside, lest they starve