Yeah, I don’t get this at all. I work full-time, and I make a point of doing everything for my daughter myself during the hours we are together. My husband and I very, very rarely go anywhere without her…I have her in very good daycare, but I believe that if she is going to be away from me for 7 hours a day, then the very least I can do is spend the rest of the time we have together. Believe me, I am often mind-numbingly bored reading the same books over & over (I hide certain ones sometimes because I can’t take it anymore). But…the kid doesn’t know this stuff is boring…they just want to be engaged with you.
Chalk me up for a vote in the “she’s a selfish bitch” column.
There is a flavor of overdone trolling for reaction in her column.
Lost in the outraged reaction, though, is the issue of what sorts of kids are being created by smothering overattention.
*All us bored mothers can take comfort from the fact that our children may yet turn out to be more balanced than those who are love-bombed from the day they are born.
Research increasingly shows that child-centred parenting is creating a generation of narcissistic children who cannot function independently.
‘Their demand for external support is enormous,’ says Kati St Clair. ‘They enter the real world totally ill-prepared. You damage a child just as much by giving them extreme attention as you do by ignoring them altogether. Both are forms of abuse.’
Child experts are increasingly begging parents to let their kids be.*
The people who feel an obligation to be superparents, and who apparently feel they must haul their kids everywhere (including, as the OP mentioned, infants taken to the movies until their screaming (and the glares of the unfortunates sitting around them) finally alerts the parents that there might be a problem) are not necessarily superior to those who set a few boundaries and don’t feel an obligation to trundle off to all those kiddie birthday parties.
You’d hope though, that if taking your kids to the park on occasion is that onerous that one might consider not having them in the first place.
No kidding. I recently ordered about 20 books for my son in hopes that he’d develop a love of reading. It worked, and he asks for everything from the simple The Rainbow Fish to the tediously long One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. His expressive language skills, which were lacking (his father was reading encyclopedias before he began to speak sentences at age four,) have improved exponentially since.
I read several books a night, sometimes to the point that I start to lose my voice. His whims lead him to ask for any number of the nearly 50 books he has, but I always have to read The Pokey Little Puppy, One Fish, Two Fish, and Goodnight Moon.
When you add that redundancy to his insistence that I sit and watch the Care Bears’ Big Wish Movie from start to finish each night after dinner, one can imagine the dread I feel each afternoon when I back out of my driveway to fetch him from daycare.
But I am fortunate that my looking forward to being reunited to him at the end of each day outweighs the knowledge of unrelenting, tedious routine. During my drive to the preschool, I turn off my radio and remind myself that I planned a pregnancy, but that he didn’t ask to be born. I make certain to acknowledge that this is a phase and that toddlers need routine in order to feel secure. I remind myself that I searched for a movie that he would love, and how I had hoped that he’d develop as insatiable an appetite for books and knowledge as both his father and I have had during our lives.
I’m no supermom. I detest going on walks to the park or playing in the backyard. Toy noises annoy the hell out of me. My son wants to play outside when I get him home, but I tell him that he will get to play outside tomorrow at school, and that it is getting dark outside and that it is time for food. On weekends, my husband takes him outside, sometimes for 3 hours, even in the worst of Florida summer heat and humidity.
If I tell my son that “*Toy’s loud * frown” he knows that he can either take the toy to his room, where he is free to make as much noise as he wishes, or choose a quieter, similar toy to play with in the common room. He usually opts for saying “*Sorry, Mama,” * then pats me on the head, hugs or kisses me, and reduces his noise, or gets a quieter toy.
(For the record, we have 12’ ceilings and hardwood floors. Some toy cars makes HORRID noises in those conditions.)
Too many women these days seem to have children because it is the only thing left to do after getting a career, becoming a trophy wife, and buying a house they can barely afford. Breeding isn’t another thing to add to a list of accomplishments. The world is plenty populated these days. We don’t need extra hands for the family farm nor do we need cannon fodder for wars.
People hound me constantly about having another child. Personally, I don’t think that I currently have the resources (financial nor emotional) to have another, and am not willing to do so. As long as I feel that I could offer more patience, attention, and compassion that I currently provide to my son, why should I compound the situation.
The woman in the article is a bitch. I hope that it is an exaggeration or spoof, but unfortunately, I believe it. I remember my aunt lamenting that she was tired of nursing her kids, and that she wanted time for “adult conversation.” It’s okay to miss adult company, but to resent your kids over that loss is simple incomprehensible to me.
Sorry this is so long, I could type for hours about this.
My mom taught us (the older group of my eight siblings and myself) to play canasta and pinochle with her. Candyland is not the only way to entertain kids.
That said, the columnist has a point. Kids need to learn that they are not the center of the world, and that even their parents have an existance and a purpose in life beyond being the focus of the child’s world.
I wonder if it is the smaller families these days that makes the full attention trend so marked. Though my family was exceptionally large even for the 60s, a case could be made that having a number of siblings helps to socialize a child.
Let’s say that the article probably isn’t exaggerated (d’oh!). All it means is she probably has some Russian ancestry. Ivan and Constantine (sometimes even spelled Konstantine, or even without the e, IIRC) are both popular Russian names.
So yeah, okay, it’s probably a spoof, but considering all the idiots out there…
(C’mon, pop a DVD in and keep a book on your lap, or something.)
I know women who are honestly like this - they got pregnant because that’s the thing to do, have babies. I fear that if I ever had a child - without a major change in attitude towards them - I would be like her. Instead I’ll be satisfied with being a weird “aunt” to friends’ kids.
I had to just let you know that I laughed right out loud at this. In fact, every time I re-read it I laugh. Ed Anger is my role model for life. Pig-biting mad indeed.
Some of my richest classmates had moms who seemed to think of their daughters as fashion accesories. One of them has managed to avoid falling into the same kind of behaviors; the husband of another was saying that they hadn’t had a kid yet because “you know, it’s just so expensive to have one” and another co-worker told him “yeah, I simply can’t imagine how you guys would give up one of your two regular cars, the Jeep, the bike, the golfing, the tennis club or the horses”
Yes, indeedy. During college, a friend of mine worked summers at a camp for kids of wealthy parents who didn’t want to be bothered. To be fair, some of the parents actually were really great and their kids liked camp, which was why they were there.
However … one four-year old in my friend’s group showed up on a Tuesday morning in the same stained clothes he’d left in on Monday. There weren’t any clean clothes, he said. He also happened to mention that he was pretty hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, at camp, the day before. Why, you ask?
Because his nanny had taken the week off. His mother and father, who were both home, had not seen fit to bother with him at all, even to feed him.
My friend took him to McDonald’s and got him an Egg McMuffin. Then she talked to her boss, who talked to the kid’s parents. They worked out some sort of subsistence program for the kid that wouldn’t bother his parents too much until his nanny got back. :rolleyes:
I asked my friend why this woman had children (kid had an older brother who was at an overnight camp, and was presumably fed all three meals there), and she said, “Well … I think she already had the husband and the house and the car and the golf game. I think it was just the next thing on the list.”
Several of my classmates (two singles and a set of three sisters) had moms who seemed to view their kids as fashion accesories.
The mother of one of them was an “artiste”. I have no idea whether she ever produced anything of real artistic value, but apparently she’s very artistic and we should all be in awe of her. She dressed her daughter everyday until we were about 15. That’s when her little brother came along and the princess suddenly got tossed onto the cold fireplace, landing on her butt among a cloud of ash. She’s managed to recover but had several horrible years.
The three sisters and the other girl have gone on to choose fashion accesory husbands and have fashion accesory children. One of the sisters hasn’t had a child yet because “it is so expensive” (they might have to drop one of the two regular cars, the shiny Jeep - why would anybody have a shiny Jeep, the memberships in the Spanish equivalents of several fancy country clubs, the horses that other people care for, the motorcycles or perhaps stop going to the hairdresser twice a week - both husband and wife do this).
I’m certain this article is not a spoof - but it is clearly exaggerating an unpopular feeling. Trolling to stimulate debate.
But being a devilled avocado for a second, to those who say she shouldn’t have become a mother - how was she to know she was going to find child rearing so tedious until she had kids? If the choice for someone with such a lack of interest is between being an uncaring mother, or “jumping off a bridge”, surely the former is preferable?
I can completely respect this attitude. It shows a sense of self and at least you know you won’t be a good parent BEFORE you have kids.
I’m also a bit :rolleyes: with the Supermoms who trundle their kids to ballet and tap and piano and gymnastics and karate classes, then wonder why the kids want to sleep in on the weekends. To me, all that stuff is more for the parents than the kids. The Ivykids used to have one extra curricular activitiy each before their schoolwork got demanding.
But not to read a bedtime story? Not to take your kids to the park? Not to play a frigging game of Monopoly? That shows an utter indifference to the children. There’s a balance between getting the kids to every extracurricular activity you sign them up for, and pushing the kids off on the nanny while you get your nails done. She’s at the extreme end.
I’m not advocating suicide, but she’s hurting her children, if that’s truly her attitude. I would think once you reach 30 you know whether or not you like to be around kids. If you don’t, that should be a hint maybe you shouldn’t be downloading any of your own.
I’ve been more of a Mom than my bros. Sure don’t need to give birth to tell you how I feel about Bday parties, diapers, telling The Three Pigs twenty zillion times… thanks God, lilbro was such a stickler even at a young age that he would correct you the first time you made a “mistake” and continue the telling himself… but middlebro hadn’t been, in his case it was The Seven Little Goats…
Even if I hadn’t, I would still know how I felt about my neighbors in the flat below when they played Disney’s Snow White directly below my bed every Sunday morning for several hours.
Well, it wasn’t my boss, and I wasn’t there – this is a not a “my friend has this problem” story. It was also a fair amount of years ago. So I’m not sure if the authorities were involved or not.
Let’s suppose, however, that they were. Would the parents have broken down sobbing, admitted they were cold, selfish people unsuitable for rearing children, and handed the child over? No. They would have said that the child lied, or exaggerated, or was mistaken. If the authorities pursued it, they would undoubtedly have hired a killer attorney and found some way to make the cops and children’s services look like morons. And yanked the kid from camp, where he was being fed and taken care of and getting hugs from the counselors. (In fact, I believe that my friend and some others took to preparing sack lunches for him and sending them home in his backpack, just in case.)
In this case, I really don’t think calling the authorities would have produced a good result for the kid. Figuring out how to feed and clothe him until the nanny was back was probably a better option, even if it wasn’t perfect.
