The Latin American concept of family seems a lot healthier to me in some ways, although it seems not to afford as high a degree of adult privacy. What I saw when I dated a Mexican immigrant and hung out with her family was incredible–lots and lots of kids running around, but the parents were still relatively sane because they spread the work of child care out evenly, and any of them could get a babysitter from the family at a moment’s notice without any expectation of payment or returning the favor in the near future.
Oh, I didn’t say it was all good. Simply that having a uniform culture took some of the pressure off families to provide all the values and raising. A kid could be allowed to spend lots of time without supervision and yet still scramble into adulthood by absorbing the values of his culture from the general atmosphere. I didn’t say that the culture was always a good one–clearly it wasn’t–simply a commonly-agreed-upon one.
In the long run, we may be better off for having a zillion choices of cultures and constant media available, but it’s not any simpler or easier; rather the opposite. It puts a heavier burden on parents, because there aren’t necessarily a lot of other people around with the same values who can transmit them. Instead, MTV will happily raise our children for us if we’re not paying enough attention and actively working to do the job.
By other adults stepping in, I don’t mean that they took children into their homes or anything. Just teachers, local neighbors and inhabitants, that sort of thing. I hope that’s clearer.
I think you and Marienee are right, and it reminds me of this well known essay, “Why Nerds are unpopular”.The article argues that society has become so complicated, that kids really don’t have anything real to contribute untill they’re adults; and left to themselves, all that is left to kids is to pursue success in the popularity contest that is highschool.
I don’t believe my husband likes his kids, or at least not all of them. I recently asked him why he’d had them, and he said that he’d had the last two (twins) for his ex-wife. As far as I can tell, these kids have been raised mostly by the TV set.
He doesn’t get along with my kids well either. They’re good kids, but he’s a very authoritarian-type parent with them. To give one example, last night he was…how can I put this…speaking very sharply to my son because he has used almost enough cell phone minutes to cost us money. I think we should certainly talk to the kid about this, but I don’t see any need for the angry tone. My husband is very sensitive to things like kid-noise and kid-mistakes. He’s a good man, but there’s no doubt we’re frequently walking on eggshells.
Last night, one of his twins moved in with us because her stepdad hurt her feelings when he slammed a door. One of her friends had parked in the driveway and took a little too long to move the car when asked. My husband is very sympathetic to her situation, but I can’t help wondering what would have happened if one of my kids’ friends had left a car in our driveway. I guess we’ll have a fight if he reads this. Oh well.
Oh yeah, so we were talking about people who despise their kids! Well, to be honest with you, I had mine by accident and it took me a long time to bond. These days, they’re my favorite people in the world, but back when they were just sticky, noisy little babies, I’d pawn 'em off on their grandmas at any opportunity. Now my daughter is noticeably more affectionate with her grandmother than me, and that’s nobody’s fault but mine. I wish I’d been different, but it took the child some time to change me.
IANAP, but I had a nice long conversation with my SIL over the holiday. SIL’s whole mission in life is to be a parent. Many, many, long hard years of trying for pregnancy were followed up by adoption of two children over a period of 3 years. The older child is now at college, and is having a hard time. She’s never been expected to have much responsibility, or was ever given much in the way of freedom. SIL says she’s trying to “fix” that now, with the younger child, giving him both more freedom and more responsibility so that he’ll be more prepared to be an adult when the time comes for him to go to college. So, no, I don’t think that the whole coddling of children is a good idea. Love them, teach them, provide for them, but help them learn that life isn’t all puppies and rainbows and prepare them to be responsible adults.
I think part of the problem is that raising children is largely regarded as an afterthought in our society. The expectation is that smart, ambitious people are supposed to pursue careers (as if working for some giant bank or corporation is the height of personal achievement). Children are an unwanted distraction that can derail those careers. So for the most part, you have a significant number of children who either are effectively raising themselves or are being raised by hired surrogates such as nannies or au pairs.
I also think that a lot of people get married and have kids because that’s what they are “supposed to do”. They move from trandy neighborhoods in urban areas to some dull suburb. Then instead of complaining about how their life isn’t all glamorous and exciting like “Sex and the City” they complain how it isn’t glamorous and exciting like “Desperate Housewives”.
And then, of course, you have a lot of people who got knocked up or otherwise ended up with uplanned or unwanted pregnencies or simply can’t afford to raise children and become overwhelmed by the financial burdens.
But ultimately, I think the bigest problem is that we, as a society, have not really set things up to reflect the reality that people have kids and they require a significant amount of time and care to be raised properly.
This must be a geographical difference because in this area it was always the exact opposite. The expectation is that no matter how smart or ambitious you are (at least for women), kids are necessary and should come first. And I’d bet you that no one in the building has ever met a nanny or au pair (and some undoubtedly don’t know what au pair means).
My father never was able to see us as anything other than “his kids”, never as individuals… now my brother is repeating the same pattern, the idiot. He considered having us his duty, a necessary thing, but never really “looked” at us. That’s different than what the OP is saying, though.
jsgoddess, just last year there was a poll here in Spain where 45% of respondents said women should stop working (either for several years or forever) once they have their first kid. Made me feel like emigrating to the South Pole, it did…
I actually did not like my child for the first month of his life. Most of that had to do with the complications I had related to his delivery. If you had a seizure, then a two-week migraine, you probably wouldn’t like the screaming, pooping blob attached to your boob (making you bleed), either. Then there was getting used to putting someone else’s needs over any of my own. Have to go to the bathroom? Not without a baby on my arm. Hungry? Gotta wait until I can get the baby to sleep. Tired? Tough. In so much pain it hurts to think about sitting up? Too bad - someone’s gotta nurse the baby and the migraine’s making me too uncoordinated to do it lying down. But…
All in all, I wouldn’t do anything different. Not for the world. Yes, there are days when I secretly fantasize about fleeing to Brazil. And there are occasionally days - sometimes weeks - when my little boy is so unpredictable that I don’t know if he’ll scream if I offer him food or grin and eat it. But there are two things that remain constant:
I’m the one who can calm him down, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s great because it makes me feel good. It’s awful because I’m the one who always gets the screaming, crying child if he’s having a bad day.
Most important, there are moments of absolute transcendancy that completely, absolutely eclipse any and all the bad experiences I’ve had with my child. Those moments make the frequent tantrums associated with his age and everything I went through to get here worth it.
And yes, having children is hard on a marriage. Not only are there an insane amount of hormones involved in the beginning (especially if you’re nursing), both of you are sleep deprived and adjusting to putting someone else’s needs ahead of your own and you don’t have time to yourself anymore, you’re also bound to disagree on something and, speaking from a mom’s point of view, you’re bound to feel personally attacked when people suggest you do things differently than the way you’re doing them, even if it’s your husband. But you work through it. That’s just what you do.
Now that my son is here, I don’t feel less happy. Just the opposite - though it’s hard sometimes. Really, really hard. But it’s different, too. In ways I never could have imagined.
That’s a problem I see in many other places. Bosses who don’t know how to delegate probably won’t be spouses willing to negotiate with their partner, or parents willing to trust the teachers or to let their kid get a scrapped knee (much less trust the elder ones to babysit the younger, or a kid of any age to help in the kitchen).
I think my husband doesn’t like his kids, especially the older of the two. I don’t think I’d describe it as “despise”, but he really doesn’t like her (owing to her behavior, neither do I, nor do most other people, including relatives). But for my husband, I think it’s more than her recent crap. I wasn’t around when she was small, but from the time she was 11 or so, it’s been clear to me that he just didn’t like her. Same with the younger one, but not as pronounced. I believe a lot of it is jealousy on his part - he likes a lot of attention, and children have a way of snagging attention, from grandparents, spouses, etc. and I think he doesn’t like the competition.
I have no doubt that his attitude has caused a lot of the problems the older one has.
I think many people’s expectation that having kids is going to be like a catalogue - you pick the one you want, he’s always happy, health, smart, clean and attractive. You get to choose cool accessories. In catalogues everything’s so shiny. Life is rarely shiny, and when you look at others’ shiny-seeming lives, you can’t figure out what’s wrong with yours.
I’m sure parents often are angry/frustrated/tired of/fed up with their kids. Heck, I’m often angry/frustrated/tired of/fed up with my dogs, my car, my job, my health and every other part of my life. But the key to life is making the best with what you’ve got and learning to live with the fact that your dog still has accidents sometimes, your car occassionally doesn’t start unless you jiggle the key just so, your job’s well…work, and you can’t afford to get your teeth fixed. And that person with the sparkly new car? Has a big car payment.
Suck it up. Life’s what happens when you’re waiting for your UPS catalogue delivery.
In my experience, people are far more likely to openly despise their children. People are usually bad at keeping such strong feelings a secret. They might not say it to the kid, but they tell everyone else what a loser s/he is and undermine him/her. I have seen this quite often in life, actually.
The thought of my mom and dad hating me kind of breaks my heart. I mean, they don’t (or they’re the world’s greatest actors), but I don’t feel like I would have accomplished as much as I have (at least academically/career wise) in 28 years if I had the nagging feeling that they just plumb hated/resented me. I mean, who would have been there to scream “you so awesome” in fob if not for them? They’re very accomplished themselves AND they make me feel valued so it helped drive a lot of my ambition.
Reading threads like this just makes me feel like I won the genetic lottery 70 gazillion times over.
I think it’s more of an urban / Middle America thing. People I know who live and work in places like New York or Boston seem to get married later. People who stayed around in places like Ohio or Pennsylvania or Indiana got married right out of college (and often divorced shortly after).
This has been a very interesting thread, Lizard with many great points discussed, but you do understand that you are getting a very self-selecting response here, right? It’s like any thread asking about personal things that people aren’t too eager to share - I guarantee you there are any number of parents reading this thinking, “Yeah, I would have my tubes tied at 21 if I had it to do over again,” but they’ll never post to a thread like this (or even admit it to themselves, probably). I’ve come to realize that the responses we get on boards like this must be taken with a very large grain of salt.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. The fact of the matter is that when you have children you do have to subsume your lives in order to rear them. At least if you want them to grow up properly. At least until they get older, there’s no more going out late partying or spending hours hiking or long ski weekends or whatever your interests have to be.
And children can hurt your career, especially if you are a woman. Companies like family men because they are stable. With women, the perception can often be that they are not as career focused once they start down the marriage and kids path. Some companies are better than others, but the stigma still exists. Personally, I don’t think it should be a stigma. I think it’s sad that work and “career” has become so important that it should be placed above all else. Yes, it’s nice to find purpose, but when did a job stop being something you do to support your family and became and end in and of itself?
Part of the problem is that children these days do often know more than the adults when it comes to things like technology and the Internet. It has placed parents in an awkward role of having to defer to their children for knowledge and guidence, almost like non-English speaking immigrant parents of second generation Americanized children.
Also, according to much of the literature I’ve read, young people these days are coddled more. They live very structured lives under the protective wing of intrusive “helicopter parents”. I’ve even heard stories of parents who have called their kids boss when they recieved a bad evaluation. If one of my staff’s parents ever called me like that, I would question their professional maturity to such an extent that I would take a personal interest in having them terminated.
Plus, I think part of the problem is the “youth culture” that we’ve created for ourselves. Quite often parents in their 30s and 40s are trying to act more like peers of their children in an effort to seem “hip” or “cool”. Or they have little interest in actually raising them, instead preferring to pursue personal desires.
How much of this is true and how much is pop-media hyperbole I can’t say. I know a lot of people who are good parents and have decent kids. I also know a lot of people who’s kids turned out to be douchebags. The only thing I can think of is that often, the people you knew growing up who were jerkoffs don’t suddenly stop being jerkoffs just because they get/get someone knocked up.
I think you answered your own question, didn’t you? We expect parents to immolate themselves on the altar of parenthood by becoming helicopter parents - by being involved in their children’s lived to an unhealthy degree. It starts before birth with home Dopler kits to hear the heartbeat (which started as a novelty, but are now pushed as being “for peace of mind” - that is, better start monitoring Junior at 14 weeks and make sure his heart’s still beating!) and progresses to intrauterine storytelling and music, Baby Einstein DVDs and Lamaze educational toys for newborns, playgroups and Parent/Child music or yoga classes at 6 months, preschool prep groups (no, I’m not kidding)…I really did have some of my inlaws asking me if we’d applied to preschools while I was still pregnant.
Then they get older and it’s monitor their internet use and know their friends and schedule enrichment activities so they have something to put on their college applications and drive them to school so Stranger Danger doesn’t get them - all of which sound perfectly reasonable, and any of which would get someone castigated in the Pit for not doing, should something bad happen to a kid, hindsight being what it is. But what it means is that one day you look around and realize that this kid has never had to make a meaningful decision without you in his life, and you’ve not had a moment to contemplate a sunset without worrying about whether or not the kidlet needs another coat of sunscreen and a snack.
