In the early days, people asked us questions like how long we would take off from work and had we researched daycares in the area. Had we read about attachment parenting? Would we let our baby cry it out?

But other recent parents asked nothing about parenting at all.

Instead, they asked us which television series we had lined up to watch.

At first, I did not fully grasp the significance of the question. But. Today, after countless barely conscious feedings interspersed with anxiety dreams, thousands of loads of laundry, a million cups of tea, endless periods of semi-solitary confinement with a tiny tyrant for a cell mate, never knowing what to do, never knowing what to say, and experiencing a limit state of humanity in which I am no longer able to form sentences in a recognizable language…I understand why they asked.

To new parents, those people inside the television are everything. They take on more emotional significance than most of us are willing to admit. They become our friends. They become our strength.

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