Thanks To a Comment (TTC)

A couple weeks back I received the following lovely comment on this post:

I came across your blog on TBB. You are absolutely hilarious! Can't wait to catch up on your posts. I wish you the best of luck on your TTC journey :) ~New follower from frommrstomom.blogspot.com

I was genuinely touched by the sweet thought and wanted to respond immediately... immediately after I determined the meaning of TTC.  I decided it was a baby related acronym (fair assumption) and racked my brain for baby words that begin with "T".  My first and last guess was "tiny", so I moved onto "C".  Again, my brainstorming produced only one result: Child.  Did the acronym stand for The Tiny Child?  No, probably definitely not.  Maybe it was something blog related (versus baby related).  Could the "C" stand for craft or cyber?  I was Truly and Totally Confused.  (Side note: TBB = Top Baby Blogs, it's a website http://www.topbabyblogs.com/ that Next Stop Baby is listed on).

My own devices left me nowhere so I turned to the internet, of course.  I started by googling the acronym itself.  That was a quick fail.  It only further confused the issue:

TTC = Toronto Transit Commission

TTC = Trident Technical College

TTC = Table Tennis Club

I returned to my initial instincts and narrowed the search with "TTC baby".  A-HA!

TTC = Trying To Conceive

Who knew there was an acronym for the term trying to conceive?  Answer: not me.  Before starting this blog I didn't know the terms DINK or SAHM either.  Apparently acronyms run rampant in the online world of pregnancy and babies.  But I think that's more about the online factor and less about the pregnancy and babies factor.  When it comes to live conversation the terms "unofficially trying" and "officially trying" and "plain old trying" remain standard.  You may remember my post on the subtle differences between these highly technical phrases (here).  

What other acronyms don't I know?  I know C-Section (DUH) and I just recently heard the term VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean).  What else?

First there was DINK, now there is SAHM

Remember those DINKs?  Well, today is all about SAHMs - an entirely different demographic.

You may be familiar with the acronym SAHM.  I, however, was not until about 10 minutes prior to writing this post.  I first saw it on a twitter profile, "I am a SAHM."  It reminded me of "I am Sam, Sam I am" (...Dr. Suess anyone?) and I ignored it.  By the third or fourth time, I arbitrarily decided it was some sort of club, likely religious in nature.  Around the tenth time, it was google/urbandictionary search time.  The results revealed that I was way off (not surprising) and SAHM has zero to do with religion or spirituality in general.  Rather, it stands for Stay At Home Mother.

I will not eat green eggs and ham,
I will not eat them Sam I Am

A couple things struck me about this discovery.  First, the twittersphere is occupied by a lot of stay at home moms, which makes sense.  Home-based jobs, including the job of mothering, allow for unfettered and unsupervised access to the internet.

The other thing I noticed is that the job of stay at home mom is a touted badge of honor.  The SAHMs are a proud bunch.  And of course they should be, but I note this because non-stay-at-home-mothers don't seem to proclaim their motherhood as dominantly on their twitter profiles as the stay-at-home kind.  Whenever I saw "SAHM" in a twitter profile it was the first identifier (i.e.  I am a SAHM, a photographer and a lover of lucky charms cereal).  For non-SAHM moms, it was one identifier tucked into a list (i.e. I love pickles and road trips and my twin baby boys).

I have no doubt that working moms love their children and their motherhood just as much as SAHMs.  Perhaps I'm overanalyzing an underwhelming amount of data, but my guess is that SAHMs self-identity is spread less thin than working mothers, making it more natural for them to put their SAHM hat front and center.  I also think the publicized pride might be a tiny poke at those feminists (there is a camp of them) who think that modern day SAHMs are a step backward in the women's movement.  For the record, I disagree with this camp - the feminist movement was about gaining choices, not about being required to do the exact opposite of past generations.

My last hypothesis on the matter of SAHMs is that there is a lot more put into the stay-at-home versus back-to-work decision than a mere "what strikes my fancy?" question.  Household income and the specific career at hand are certainly two of those questions.  But, I think a discussion of those considerations (and the many others) is fodder for another post...

A Couple of Dinks

DINK is an acronym for Double/Dual Income No Kids.  Yes, the word dink has a couple other humorous and not so humorous definitions (in particular, definition #7 on urbandictionary.com gave me a chuckle).  But, let's stay relevant.  The DINK I'm talking about refers to a couple without children who have abundant disposable income due to their lack of financial responsibility.  It's like a couple of yuppies (young upwardly-mobile professional people, the late 70's backlash to hippies) who prioritize growing their combined wealth and not growing their family.

I learned about the DINK demographic recently and was amused (by the name) and intrigued that there are so many of these couples out there that an acronym has been coined.  It was a nice reminder that while my post-marriage plans include starting a family, not everyone feels the same way.  The DINKs  are the target market for luxury brands.  They are characterized by their love of spending money on travel, fine dining and consumer products in general.  They take pride in having absolutely no financial responsibility other than themselves.  Not even pets.

In addition to spending, they love building their assets.  There are blogs, websites and even a DINK facebook page where fellow DINKs share investment strategies.  They hate hearing "you'll change your mind" from friends, family and strangers...because they won't.  Ill-behaved children at restaurants and movie theaters are a huge pet peeve.  And if they made the rules, babies in general would not be allowed in public place because they're too unpredictable and take up too much space with all their accessories.

All this is a stark contrast to the theme of this blog - the baby craze.  And while the typical reader of Next Stop - Baby is more likely to be part of the MEWK demographic (Many Expenses With/Wanting Kids), it takes all kinds.  

If you're a newly discovered DINK (or just interested in stealing their finance secrets), check out the Dual Income No Kids blog for your Kindle or http://www.dinksfinance.com/.