Writing on purpose is hard!

Also hard?  Writing about parenting when you are not a parent.

I've spent the past three days typing and deleting about a half dozen attempts to put together a meaningful article on attachment parenting co-sleeping and all I have to show for it is a semi-decent intro and a link to James McKenna's website, where readers can go to learn about all the stuff I can't seem to manage to sum up on my own.

The thing is, I am invested in this topic. Every time I hear someone go off on their unsubstantiated tangents about how sleeping near your kids is ridiculous and backward and just the stupidest thing ever, it makes me want to tear my hair out. I really want to write something that might make someone stop and re-think their knee jerk opposition to co-sleeping because the appeal, for me is not only based in the science (of which there is a good amount), but also in the idea that it just makes sense to me on a very fundamental level. And so although there is a bias that I want to avoid having show through in the article, it's in the background coloring my thoughts on the subject, making me excitable and chipping away at my focus. I want to keep piling on the evidence- from physiological studies, yes, but also from ethnographic accounts and psychological literature. Each of these perspectives alone can fill a book. And everything I present can be- and probably is, somewhere in the vastness of the web- refuted with equal conviction.  So there's that to address, too, if I am going to do this right.

The scope of this subject is bigger than I realized, and my desire to responsibly and thoroughly discuss everything about it  is paralyzingly ambitious even without bringing in the fact that my not having children will potentially cost me a lot of credibility with some readers right off the bat.

Of course, this isn't all about co-sleeping at all.  I will likely find myself up against the same challenges when I try to write about vaccines, or mental health or obesity or pretty much any of the topics I would feel compelled to weigh in on in a public forum.  This is about me learning how to effectively deal with false starts and crummy first drafts and meandering paths to a final piece.  It's about me being letting something be not-so-good before it gets good and accepting- really accepting- and taking advantage of the fact that my perspective is limited and a responsible piece of writing in the social science simply should not be crafted just in the microcosm of the author's head.

So there it is.  I'm not sure how much to say, how to say it, or who I should rightfully say it to.  Clearly I am off to a great start.