in a situation themselves? One thing that I have a big issue with is people giving advice or criticism to someone about a certain situation, when they themselves have no personal experience or knowledge of the situation. Take some of the major topics on her: stepparenting, working moms, stay-at-home moms, spanking, child beauty pageants. If someone has no first hand knowledge or experience on a subject, should they really be dishing out advice or criticism to others about that subject? It is easy to have an opinion about something, but if you have never personally been in a specific situation, do you really have any real knowlege to offer? Take someone who has never been a stepparent, criticising someone for how they deal with their stepkids. Or someone who only knows about childrens beauty pageants from what they see on TV. Or judging someone for being a working mom, when you haven't been in their situation. SHOULD, not CAN, someone really have an opinion, when they have no real experience with that subject?And, because I know someone is going to bring this up, I said SHOULD they, not CAN they. This has nothing to do with the fact that Yahoo Answers is an open forum or that people have the right to have their own opinion. Having the right to do something is totally different from whether or not you SHOULD do something.What really prompted me to ask this, besides my own personal experience dealing with people doing this to me, was because a woman on here asked a question about her stepkids. Since I also have stepchildren, I answered with my own opinion based on my experiences. A man, who obviously has never been in the roll of stepmom, answered with a very critical answer, as he always does on the stepparent subject. I have had this mans wrath on me before on that very subject, so I felt bad for the woman, since I knew how she felt. He has no first hand knowledge of being a stepmom, yet he feels that he needs to criticize those who are in that roll and have a hard time dealing with it. I have pointed that fact out to him before, that he has no first hand knowledge of it therefore shouldn't really be giving advice to a stepmom, yet all that got me was having him stalk me on here and call me every nasty name in the book, and give nasty answers to any question I ask, which will probably include this one

i think an opinion would be different from a critical comment so if their asking you what your point of view is then theirs nothing wrong with giving it

In some peoples' cases, just because they do not have fisrt hand experience with something doesn't mean they can't give proper well guided opinions. It's called wisdom, some ppl. just have it without needing first hand knowledge.

no i don't think I should give advice on something I know nothing about and i try to never criticize anyone for anything (unless what they said is just so stupid i cant help myself ) if i don't know about a topic i don't answer the question at all or i go look up the information if i can not do that and still feel i need to answer the question then i "only " give my opinion on the topic