I seem to see this a lot on the boards (and have encountered it not unfrequently in real life), where Poster X makes a statement about Parent A. Parents and Posters Y and Z feels it reflects negatively on them. Poster X asks if they do whatever activity it is that s/he is complaining about. Both agree that they do not and Poster X then insists that s/he isn’t talking about them then. More discussion follows with more people feeling unjustly maligned and others reiterating that they are taking it too personal.
And the beat goes on.
So my question to you guys is do you ever feel yourself doing this? Or have you ever noticed you’ve done it in hindsight? Or, if the first two don’t apply to you, do you recognize this trait in others?
Finally, what’s your assessment on the meaning behind why this happens?
Ok, anyone want to give a crack at this? What inspired me, which I forgot to mention in the OP, was the thread about the father insisting that the grandmother take classes before babysitting his child. It seemed a lot of folks were indignant on the behalf of grandmothers everywhere (says my over-the-top summarization) and no amount of asking to ‘see the other side’ (if you will) made much of a dent.
So, can a body help me out with this attitude? Being childless myself perhaps I’m not understanding things the way I should.
Thanks from the One Gratuitous Bump Company.
I couldn’t say exactly (being also childless) but it seems to me that at least some people think that being a grandparent confers an earned right of access to a grandchild that cannot be taken away without an extremely “good” (in their judgment) reason.
I’m not sure why that right seems to trump the preferences of a parent, but there you go. The way people talk about it, its almost like the grandparent has some kind of property/possessory interest in the baby, which creeps me out a bit, now that I turn it over in my mind.
At the end of the day, its about social mores and what you’re used to. If some request falls too far outside the norm, at least a certain amount of people instinctively react negatively without really considering both sides (because the normative side just seems righter). For a similar example, see previous discussions of people who breastfeed children to age 4 or older.
The whole point (or at least one significant point) to the IMHO forum is to get a glimpse of how the world works through other people’s eyes. You’re supposed to put yourself into the stories and show how it could look differently from another perspective.
Perhaps that’s part of it, really not considering the other (both) sides and instead just reacting negatively to it. But that still makes me wonder… why do people react negatively to it if they’re not doing X behavior? < scratches head > But you make good points and for some reason, this seems more pronounced for me regarding parents than pretty much any other group.
I’ll have to think on why because I’m sure that can’t be true across the board.
Exactly. And that’s why I’m asking is because my perspective is so far from what a parent goes through, perhaps one of them can explain it better to me why it seems they take it upon themselves to extrapolate others’ opinions of parenthood in general to mean them. I just don’t get it.
Could it be the same thing as how, some ladies get offended when someone says “Women take too long in the bathroom!” or some such, when they themselves aren’t guilty of that behavior? I’m not sure what to call that.
