cafeteria style

I have really only seen people criticize "cafeteria style" when talking about religion. Taking what you like and leaving the rest seems to get a lot of people in a tizzy. When reading about the religion aspect of it, I always kind of thought to myself... everyone does that whether they realize it or not. Everyone believes what they want to believe, even if they are completely sold out to one particular religious "label". I have seen so many people consider themselves die-hard Mormon, or die-hard Baptist or die-hard whatever- and I have seen each one of them believe their own thing, regardless.

Over time, I concluded that we not only do this with religion, but we do it with every other aspect of life. I think it's human nature. I always have thought this.

So, then, why do I feel uncomfortably guilty doing cafetieria style with two important aspects of life:
Baby care, and
Financial advice

I read a lot on attachment parenting and "Natural Child" before I had Anna. Perhaps because I always worked with so many kids, and felt bad that I didn't have time for every single one of them? Now that the baby is here, it seems like some of that advice works and some doesn't. I won't go into the specifics. I suppose this is just part of what people said I would "change my mind" about once I actually had a kid. So, no big deal.

With financial advice, I have no problem following the basic advice - stay out of debt, save, live beneath your means, etc, etc.
I have trouble, though, with homeownership, which I talked about before on here. I also have trouble with how many months living expenses you need in your liquid savings before trying other kinds of savings. I have heard 3 months, 6 months, 8 months, and 1 year.
In reality, who really does know beforehand what kind of emergency will strike, and how long you would need to dip? The fact that there are suggestions for this is absurd in and of itself, because every situation is different.