When I was walking from the Village to Penn Station the other day, I heard the sounds of someone struggling behind me. I turned around and there was a woman with a double stroller, trying to navigate everything that is a city (sewer grates, construction, limited space).

I did what I could: I stepped aside.

She looked back and gave me a big smile.

I loved how she seemed like she wasn't expecting the small courtesy, but that she was grateful for it. It felt like a nice exchange.

Sometimes Adam and I will be in restaurants and a kid will pipe up, getting loud, revving up to cry. It really pisses him off -- worse than me, actually. I'm not going to go so far as to say the presence of kids pisses him off, full stop (to poach a limey phrase that I like) ... but it's the ones who take up space, physical and aural and mental. Yet I know he would be courteous to this woman on the street as well.

There really is no one type of parent. There are those who move through life as part of the world, and those who act as though they own that world. I think both Adam and I can tell the difference, and we act accordingly.