I’ve observed “if I were a parent” may be a nonsense phrase. I’m not aware of any parents who still hold the same beliefs across the board as their preconceptions of how they’d think about their kids.
I wonder why parenting is the one that always triggers this kind of response. "You have to be a parent to have an opinion about parenting." What if I had said "if I worked for Gaggle" or "if I was a teacher". Would you have the same response?
Haven’t observed such a universal perspective shift across other fields of ‘expertise’, nor do those perspectives seem to shift until after more experience, while with parenting it seems to often shift on first realization (“at first sight”).
So no, “if I were a teacher” or “if I worked in medicine” and the like don’t seem as likely to be subject to change.
// Just to be clear: not saying this as a parent. I am not a parent.