Should we discourage questions and answers that reference specific (i.e. "my") children?

Question

I am interested in what others think about this, but my initial feeling is that explicit mention of specific children has two disadvantages:

1. It violates a child's privacy. For example, if I ask about pacifiers but don't reference a specific child, said child will not have to explain to his girlfriend why his pacifier use was being discussed in 2011.

2. Asking questions that are too specific may promote questions and answers that are situational rather than general.

   • For example, the question are the effects of breastfeeding quantifiable starts with a fairly objective question and then side-tracks to a specific case that, in my opinion, decreases the value of the question

3. Answers that reference one's own child are more likely to be anecdotal.

4. Referring to one's own children not be required for credibility in the stack exchange system.

   • another question suggests that it is helpful to state the number / age / sex of ones own children on parenting sites, so that other readers can judge how credible the user is; the SE system allocates points to determine credibility, so this may not be require here.

Answer 1

No. I think if we cut out those questions/answers we'll pretty much kill the site. I'm certainly not going to name my kid here, and I'll be one of the first to edit kids names out of posts. But the whole point of the site is parents helping parents parent... you kinda have to talk about your kids to accomplish that.

Answer 2

It violates a child's privacy. For example, if I ask about pacifiers but don't reference a specific child, said child will not have to explain to his girlfriend why his pacifier use was being discussed in 2011.

Okay, if I said "My child, John Jacob Smith..." it might be a problem. If my kid's friends are Googling me by user name, they aren't going to assume that my discussion of pacifiers are about someone else. So, I think this one is moot.

Asking questions that are too specific may promote questions and answers that are situational rather than general.

Many people don't know what is relevant until after they've found an answer, so we should absolutely include as much context as humanly possible. I can't know to suggest that parents talk to their doctor about a possible sensitivity to aldyhides as a reason for their child's picky eating if I don't also know that the normally well-behaved child throws tantrums over clothes shopping, loves hand-me-downs, and gets headaches after drinking diet soda.

Answers that reference one's own child are more likely to be anecdotal.

Sometimes what we need are anecdotal answers. Kids are incredibly different, the fact that an experience isn't statistically common doesn't necessarily make it irrelevant.

For example, if someone rattled off symptoms of CAS (Childhood Apraxia of Speech) observed in their toddler, and I jumped in with anecdotal information about my son's experiences, that anecdotal information would be the best info available. CAS is relatively rare to begin with, and very few CAS children (too few to do any kind of study and thus have non-anecdotal information available) are diagnosed before elementary school age.

Referring to one's own children not be required for credibility in the stack exchange system.

• another question suggests that it is helpful to state the number / age / sex of ones own children on parenting sites, so that other readers can judge how credible the user is; the SE system allocates points to determine credibility, so this may not be require here.

I definitely don't think it's helpful from a cred standpoint, regardless of whether we have user points or not. A bad parent with six kids is going to be less knowledgeable than a very engaged, but childless, uncle.