Considering we already have children, and if we were pregnant and at the hospital and the choice was saving their mother or their new sibling, we would save their mother.
If it was our first child, the answer may have been different. But in this case, we felt it was more important for the already existing children to continue to have their mother.
This scenario- save spouse or kid?- is actually used by marriage counselors and therapists quite a bit to demonstrate the significance of putting your spouse first. When you marry, you are, in effect, becoming one person and swearing to always put the other first, before literally anyone. Which does make sense- after all, children feel more secure knowing that their parents are united, and no child really wants or needs to be put up on a pedestal and treated as if he were king, anyway. This concept is extra-important in stepfamilies, when it can cause great strife if you don’t know where your loyalties lie- with your spouse or your kids.
But with the loss of a wife, for my part, I would be leaving the child “that killed her” at the hospital and wouldn’t really want anything to do with it anymore. I would be too resentful and could never bond with it.
(all purely hypothetical from a guy who had a vasectomy before he had sired any brood! )
Save whichever one is the easier case. That’s the emergency responder in me talking.
This is no different than the wife and kid drowning in the car from last year, and that was my answer back then, too. You always save the easy ones first, because if you don’t, you can lose everyone including yourself.
See, I find this interesting, because I think that’s actually what most people would say. At birth, before you’ve bonded with the infant and it still seems more fetus than baby, most people in this thread (and I’d agree) say save the wife. But I wonder when that changes–at two weeks, are you still picking the wife? Two years? Twelve?
Obviously there aren’t many likely scenarios in which a person must choose between the lives of their toddler and their spouse, but I do think that evolution of the relationship is compelling.
Do you really think there are that many marriages where the father loves and is bonded to the child more than he is the mother? I know there are a lot of men out there that hate their wives, so maybe… but personally, my parents always made it very clear to me that they were cleaved unto each other, not us kids.
Maybe there should be another poll, asking about an older child. My thoughts were the same as Renee’s, but then my upbringing was the complete opposite of yours.
I’ve been in several serious relationships(yes I was even as in wuv as you are with your current SO) but not once, not one single time, have I ever felt like I would put my SO before my daughter. Maybe in this specific scenario I would put my hypothetical wife first, but once I’ve bonded with that child it’s game over for Mama. I know everyone wants to be the center of their lover’s universe, but imo the reality is that SOs are replaceable too. And don’t give me that frontier crap because I’m certain your wife isn’t dropping out a baby on a break from chopping wood and running from hostile natives.