— Comments —
Fred writes:
This reminds me of an incident that took place many years ago. A couple who lived across the street from us had a new baby with cholic and crying, and the mother and father never got any sleep. Frankly, these two people were having a very hard time dealing with each other as well, because there were many arguments and sometimes the weary husband would cross the street to visit me and tell me how hard it was.
None of that is unusual. And it is not my point to judge their marriage, except to say what happened one night. The baby was crying for hours, as usual. The husband got up to tend the baby and he dropped her.
The baby suffered a broken hip, was taken to the hospital, and wore a hip cast for the next several months. The baby’s hip healed, and later the family moved and, for all I know, they may have all done well.
But what I thought at the time is — how could you drop a baby? Would the mother have dropped the baby?
I see the new fathers carrying babies today and some of them are doing it well, but others carry a baby like it was a sack of potatoes. Could we say that a mother instinctively knows how to carry a baby and would, as an almost unconscious reflex, protect the baby in a fall or stumble? And the father could learn to carry a baby, and do pretty well at it, most of the time. But if I was a baby, and if I was given the choice, I’m riding with Mom.
James P. writes:
Fred writes,
Could we say that a mother instinctively knows how to carry a baby and would, as an almost unconscious reflex, protect the baby in a fall or stumble?
No, we cannot say anything of the sort. That’s ridiculous. Plenty of women have dropped babies. Plenty of men know how to carry babies properly, and do so without dropping them. I’ve carried babies plenty of times when I’ve been dead tired, and never dropped one yet. If I stumbled or fell, I would certainly protect the baby. The notion that men are innately incompetent to raise children, and women are innately competent, is a pernicious product of feminism and should be rejected out of hand.
Laura writes:
Of course, men can carry babies and can care for children. Carrying a baby properly is not instinctive for either men or women. It takes practice and a little instruction at first. But the notion that women are more competent than men at child care is not feminist. It is feminists who always say men can do everything at home as well as women and should do fifty percent.
James P. writes:
Feminists argue that men should do as much work at home as do women — but they simultaneously argue that men are incompetent at housework, meaning that a man would have to work much harder than a woman in order to get his 50 percent of the work done. Feminists promote the image of male domestic incompetence in order, among other reasons, to ensure that the father is deprived of custody and inclusion in the children’s lives after a divorce. The mother should automatically get custody, because you can’t give the kids to an incompetent man, right?
Laura writes:
I don’t recall the idea of male domestic incompetence ever being publicly argued or promoted by feminists or the run-of-the-mill press, which generally gloats over the ability of men to be moms, but in private life there are these contradictory standards you mention.
James P. writes:
I think the press and Hollywood overwhelmingly portray men as domestically incompetent. It is a staple of many “comedy” shows. The “men as moms” stories always have an “oh isn’t that amazing and cute” tone. If men were viewed as domestically competent, there would be nothing remarkable about them and no story to write about.
Laura writes:
Yes, you’re right. I see what you mean. In advertising, television shows and movies, men are promoted as moms but simultaneously mocked. A good example is the movie Mrs. Doubtfire. The man doesn’t become competent until he actually becomes a woman.
Robin writes:
This photo disturbed me more than I expected, and while I was rocking our daughter to sleep a few moments ago, I realized why (at least in part). This past summer while thumbing through a “gift” subscription of Parents Magazine (I know, I know), one of the feature articles was showcasing the losses of families who had “forgotten” their children or infants in their searing hot cars during the summer months. At the time, I read the article (which rent my heart) and thought little more of it, except my husband and I both commented on the sheer idiocy of leaving your sleeping child in the car unknowingly while you work a full ten-hour day.
What bothers me is this: from the moment precious children are born in America, their mothers are trying to get away from them! They are six weeks old (sometimes TWO weeks old!) and shoved into the hands of a stranger for ten hours a day. They are plopped in highchairs, bouncy seats and countless other expensive gadgets so we do not have to cuddle them very much. We whine when they don’t instantly “sleep through the night” as mere newborns in their cavernous nurseries far away from the comforting skin of Mama and Daddy. We can hardly wait as a society to rid ourselves of them; a sad commentary in a day and age when I wonder who it is that is actually going to care for the aging population in a few decades.
You should see the looks I receive for carrying my thirteen-month-old daughter on my hip or in a sling, or upon hearing that I am napping in the same bed with her. You should field the strange and accusatory commentary coming from well-meaning people at church who wonder why I am in my home most of the time and never “get out” without my daughter (they view me as some kind of victim; some sort of home-bound prisoner without life). “You need to ‘socialize’ her”, they quip. NO! She needs to have relationship with her Mama; then, when she is older, she will be prepared to have relationships with others in a healthy way.
It is no wonder we forget our children in our automobiles and have to fasten large notes to the dash in order to ensure the lives of little ones: we have no idea how to have a relationship with them. From the moment they are born, we generally want to continue our own sick and twisted relationship with ourselves far too much to give them the relationship they crave to really thrive and not just survive. “Me, me, me…I need some “me” time”…I hear the ladies say. Really? What about all of your younger years? Didn’t you have enough time to focus on yourself already?
Imagine a woman in some third-world slum; entrenched in poverty and living in little more than a tin can with her husband and her multiple children under the age of five. Now: imagine this woman having to write a note to remind herself not to leave her youngest child in the filthy, overheated street in a box so he doesn’t dehydrate and die while she works. Imagine this woman complaining of lack of sleep and trying to “Ferberize” her newborn baby in her fetid, one-room shack by setting the child outside so he can “Cry It Out” without her comforting arms. These things are unimaginable because these people, poor as they may be, know how to have relationship. They are forced to have relationship with one another; totally interdependent upon one another not for simple comfort, but for sheer survival.
What has happened to us? Why do we view our children as burdens and little more than vehicle accessories? We have no relationship with God. We have not died to self. We do not take up any cross daily. Only when we have returned to right REALationship with our Creator does the power to have selfless relationship with others flow freely.
Oh, how I ache for a return to this as a nation. Oh, how I ache to have sweet fellowship with like-minded ladies.
Laura writes:
Robin is right, what is normal and healthy is considered strange so it’s no wonder that what is truly bizarre, such as leaving an infant behind in a car, happens.
The mother of infants and small children lives at entirely different pace. Those critical comments Robin receives are inspired by envy or annoyance. The mother of an infant is a reminder that life is not all efficiency. She also inadvertently draws attention to the loss of intimacy.
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