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DS sees a pediatrician, and I feel better about it since my family practice doctor is a bit older.

We go to a pediatrician's office (there are 4 plus an NP there) and we really like her. I'd go anywhere where I felt like the dr took us seriously and such.

honestly, I only see a general practitioner when I have a sinus infection or something small like that, so I don't even have my own GP

We see a pediatric practice. I didn't really give much thought to a family practice, though I can see the convenience! I haven't seen my own Primary care doc in probably 3 or 4 years (haven't been sick and have only seen docs about pregnancy and birth stuff).

Our pediatrician is 3 blocks from us so that pretty much sealed the deal for me.

Our pediatrician is also an internal medicine doctor so it's cool that he'll follow LO through adulthood.

OuR baby is due in November and barring any unforeseen circumstances, we will be using our family medicine doctor. We love her and she is supportive of our healthcare goals.
ETA: she is young, so maybe that plays a part.

Pedi. They specialize in children and issues specific to children where as a family doctor knows a little about every age group.

Pediatrician. I see a family doc as my PCP, but the office doesn't seem all that kid-oriented. By the looks of the patients I've seen, even though they're open to taking young children, it seems more like young adults and up.

@anbanan15: I would argue that family doctors sometimes get more outpatient training in pediatrics than pediatricians do - it's part of the reason I picked family over pediatrics because I knew I wanted to do primary care and most peds residents only spend half a day per week in clinic before graduating, whereas I did almost all clinic my final year of residency (including a lot of peds, including many babies I delivered!). My specialty pediatric training wasn't as intense, but if my patient had short gut syndrome or something else they'd have a specialist on board anyhow! I also have a lot more comfort with counseling my teenagers about birth control than some pediatricians I've worked with. I definitely have worked with family docs who were out of touch with pediatrics, but those are generally the exception! Some of us really (really really) love peds and are super up to date on everything. So don't count us all out, we may have a lot of age groups to span but that just means we had to be extra smart to do it, right @sapphire: ? Okay, off my family med soap box! I just love my job and love taking care of kiddos

I will only take DS to a pediatrician. That being said, if you have a great family practice doc that you really trust, go for it.

Absolutely a pediatrician....but I'm also biased because my husband is in residency to be one (in one more year).

We also both saw pediatricians growing up, so probably would have gone that route regardless of the specialty my husband chose.

eta: my husband is in a residency program that emphasizes primary care, so he gets a significant amount of experience in that field. I'm not sure what other programs are like - he knew he wanted primary care, so looked at places that focus on that.

I think my answer is coloured by being English, because pretty much everyone uses a family doctor for their kids there.
But, I had the choice here in Ontario and chose family doctor. It's a teaching hospital and sometimes we deal with residents first. Some are excellent, some are awful. But I absolutely love and trust our family doctor and know that even if I deal with a not-so-great resident first, she will come in straight after and all will be right.

@sapphire: Oh, that's good to know! The practice I do go to when I'm sick is a family practice, but I think of them as my GP/primary when i have to put them down on a form.

We switched from a family doc to a ped when we moved and are looking for a local family dr. We got better care at the family dr. They knew us and our kids we could walk in the office and they knew who we were it was much more comfortable than just being a number at the ped's office.

@rosegold: I haven't read the other replies, but we were in this situation. I loved our family doctor and trusted him completely. However, I found that I didn't trust the other doctors and nurse practitioner in the practice. I hardly saw any kids in the office and I found myself questioning the last time they'd treated a child. This became a problem when LO was sick and her doctor didn't have an opening that day or when we needed to call the on-call doc for advice. Ultimately it was a deal breaker and we switched when she was 9 or 10 months. We've been much happier with the office (particularly the nurses, too!) at the pediatrician practice. My husband still sees the family doctor and he understands why we left.