Although I try to refrain from judging people as much as I can (even those who would judge me so effortlessly), lately a certain group of people are getting on my nerves. These are the people who claim that they are parents when they are anything but.

Take, for example, the dog owner who insists that Biddy the dog is her baby. It’s one thing to refer to her as a baby in name; it’s quite another to lavish said dog with more toys, designer “outfits” and collars, and even expensive food than millions of kids see in their lifetimes. You are not a parent. You have a pet. And though it’s your money to do with what you choose, it would be so much better spent on, say, feeding homeless vets or clothing orphans rather than getting Fido a diamond-studded collar or doggie cookies for every holiday.

What’s even more annoying to me are all of these people—maybe they’re aunts or uncles, or even nurses, or simply friends of people with kids—who say that the kids they sometimes hang out with or care for are “like their own children.” No, they are not. If you see a kid once a month, a week, hell, even every day, he’s still not “like your own kid.” He won’t be “like your own kid” until you worry about who’s going to watch him while you work, or struggle to find a sitter for him for that thing you were invited to, or you’re answering thirty questions a minute every second that he is awake, or you’re struggling to get him to take medicine that’s pretty much keeping him alive every night while he pukes over every shirt you own, or your puzzling over growth charts with a pediatrician who doesn’t even seem to give a damn, or you’re struggling to make enough to feed him (as well as get him to eat in the first place), or you’re holding his arms down while he gets shots and you are the target of his subsequent wrath. He might be special to you, you might love him a lot, but he sure as hell ain’t like your kid.

And this next group that makes me angry will likely step on some people’s toes, but I have to get it off my chest. These part-time parents—these parents who have their kids once or twice a month, a few days max—who like to pretend they’re full-time parents. If you’re struggling for custody, if you work a weird job that keeps you from your kids, I get it. But to be an average Joe who’s just comfortable with his or her lifestyle and sliding a kid in a small slot of it every month and then say, “Oh, yeah, I know how that is!” when you talk about the nights of sleep lost or the nights up with a sick kiddo or the pain of being separated due to time at school or the long waits at the doctor’s office or the nights at the emergency room or just the need for a teeny, tiny break—man, that pisses me off! I call these people—and I only know male ones; I’m not trying to be sexist, I’m sure there are female ones out there, too—part-time parents. They’re those people who really could spend more time with their kids if they wanted to—who could, say, have full joint custody, or live closer to their kids, or incorporate them into their “new” lives with their new wives and new babies or whatever—but choose not to. You have to wonder at people like that.

Hell, maybe there’s even a good reason sometimes. Maybe there is a drug problem that the parent is trying to overcome and doesn’t want the child hurt or exposed to it. There are surely good reasons why this sort of thing happens. Some may say that a job far away from the child comes first, which I think is a load of crap; children are more important, and jobs can be relocated or changed. I think many people are simply happy living their convenient, largely child-free lives, which unfortunately leaves the other parent and child without a vital resource. On the other hand, it can also be a good thing, since a lot of the single parents I know are likely better off without their harmful exes.