My Question of the Day: The birth of a child is usually a joyous occasion no matter the circumstances of conception. New life is usually considered a welcomed miracle. Imagine a person with whom you’ve been friendly for many years has a baby. You don’t necessarily consider this person a close friend, but you have gotten to know a little about him/her over the years, and you’ve even spent a few hours here and there with this person. You’re happy for your acquaintance, and you send a gift for the baby and you include a card of congratulations for the new parent(s). A few days later, you get an email from your acquaintance asking you to be the godmother/father of his/her newborn. What do you do?

My 2 cents: If an acquaintance asked me to be the godmother of his/her child, I would have to tactfully and respectfully decline.

The ultimate responsibility of a godparent is someone who agrees to raise a child in the event that the parent(s) die before the child is able to take care of and/or provide for him/herself. That’s a major responsibility to agree to when you’re not even close enough to the parent(s) to be able to keep his/her/their memory alive for the child. I wouldn’t be able to say to the child, “I knew your mother/father/parents extremely well, and I know they would want this or that of you/for you.” If the child came to me and said, “What was my mom/dad like?,” I wouldn’t have a good enough answer because I would have to admit I didn’t know him/her/them very well. I’d hate for the child to think, “Man, did my mom/dad/parents care anything about me? He/she/they left me with someone who is only one step above a stranger.”

Check out My Question of the Day With A Twist to this question.

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Take a few moments to check out the tweets from Twitter on this subject:

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JoshDamage I accept the offer

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The commentary doesn’t have to end!

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My Question of the Day: The birth of a child is usually a joyous occasion no matter the circumstances of conception. New life is usually considered a welcomed miracle. Imagine a person with whom you’ve been friendly for many years has a baby. You don’t necessarily consider this person a close friend, but you have gotten to know a little about him/her over the years, and you’ve even spent a few hours here and there with this person. You’re happy for your acquaintance, and you send a gift for the baby and you include a card of congratulations for the new parent(s). A few days later, you get an email from your acquaintance asking you to be the godmother/father of his/her newborn. What do you do?

My Question of the Day With A Twist: The birth of a child is usually a joyous occasion no matter the circumstances of conception. New life is usually considered a welcomed miracle. Imagine a person with whom you’ve been friendly for many years has a baby. You don’t necessarily consider this person a close friend, but you have gotten to know a little about him/her over the years, and you’ve even spent a few hours here and there with this person. You’re happy for your acquaintance, and you send a gift for the baby and you include a card of congratulations for the new parent(s). A few years later, your acquaintance and the other parent of the baby are killed in a car accident. You wonder what will become of their child, and a few days after the accident you find out. You are contacted by a lawyer who tells you that in their will the parent(s) have requested that you become the guardian of their child. What do you do?

RULES FOR COMMENTS

1. DO NOT include links in your post. There is a place for you to include one link when you’re filling out the Name/Email/Website information. Comments that include links will be deleted.

2. If your post is obviously irrelevant to the question at hand, it will be deleted. This is a tactic spammers use to simply show up on blogs.

3. Please keep your comments respectful. We can agree to disagree without attacking each other.