To think there is nothing more pathetic than a man who

[emkana]

is jealous of the attention his partner give to their children.

My brother being a case in point.

Not ahead of their interests SGB. But priorities for time and attention shift in this house. We all have our share, but it is shared. I don't think it's harming my children to see me give time and attention to DH, or for him to give it to me. They get plenty for themselves. The OP doesn't talk about the nature of love, or life or death situations. She talks about attention.

my BIL. this is him. the kids get spoilt rotten by my sis but whenever theyb get BIL has to chime in with can i get new trainers/jacket/games console/games/computer/snake/reptile/insert other 14 yr old boy request here.

he is not a 14 yr old boy!! he is a 26 yr old man with 2 kids who wants to be spoilt like a child and when he isnt he storms off. in fact at the moment he is shacked up in his dads with a 19yr old.

DD1 gave a critique of Marley & Me. "It's shit" was her considered and eloquent reply to me asking if it was any good.
When DS was born by EMCS XW put him first. So did I. In fact, the first night he ever slept right through I took him out for a walk (on my own, apart from DS) in his pram an hour before his scheduled feed as he was grizzling. We just meandered around, with me talking at him, and him looking up at me. He fell asleep after 10 minutes or so and I carried on pushing the pram for about half an hour before taking him back home.
XW asked whether she should wake him up to feed him and I said no, leave him, he'll wake when he's hungry. Well, he slept for 11 hours solid. We didn't sleep at all, we were checking him every half hour! After that, he slept through every night. He was 6 weeks old. If only our DDs had done the same...
My point is; we both put our DCs first but still had time for each other. OK, we split up, but that was years later when our youngest was 4. I think it's natural to put your children before your partner, but I am told I'm weird, which I take as a compliment!
So, to precis, no, YANBU. First post in a proper AIBU thread. Aren't I brave?

Can anyone else see this straying dangerously into boarding school territory... :)

I agree it;s naturalto put children before partner. Presumably it's evolutionary, your DCs begin life unable to survive without their mum (or another committed care giver).

Discussing whom you would save in a terrifying emergency situation is beyond childish.

You have no fucking idea how you would react in a burning building.

Sitting around having wankathon "I love my kids so much I'd kill you to save them" conversations really doesn't prove anything except that you are a self-regarding arsehole.

Bloody hell SCOTT, I think I preferred your earlier, nicer posts, are you OK?

have been wondering who "SCOTT" was - just understood :)

I love it when people use hokum evolution to explain why they are "natural" and therefore right.

OK OK quit now. It wasn't a scientific assertion, just a thought. I will take my thoughts elsewhere. Don't think it's particularly radical to say we are programmed to see babies as vulnerable and respond to them.

I'm fine. I just really fucked off by trite burning building "who I love most" scenarios.

They sicken me, truly.

Making yourself feel a warm glow of virtue by imagining you saving your children from a burning building while your husband chokes to death on smoke is really fucking sick.

The reality is that if such a situation were to befall you, you'd be lucky if you woke up. Any choices you made would be severely constrained by panic, terror, self-preservation and circumstance. If you saved anyone, it would probably be the one that was easiest to save, not the one you loved most (after consulting your pecking order chart).

The chances of any of us ever having a simple choice between the lives of two members of our family is thankfully tiny. What is wrong with someone that they would spend time working out whose life matters most in a horrifying (and pretty much impossible) scenario?

That is nothing to do with how much you love your kids. It's about how much you love your own idea of yourself as selfless parent.

Ugly. Not heroic.

I can't stand OP's that set out to slag off blokes, or anyone else for that matter.

There is nothing more pathetic than an MN poster.....

Shit LeQueen, how terrifying for you all.

Your DH was very, very foolish to go back into that building. Thank God he got out OK.

Interesting that you know how you reacted. The thought of a housefire with 2 children virtually trapped in cots is the sort of thing that keeps me awake at night.

It's not a universal behaviour SCOTT, but going on the chemicals that are released in my brain when I look at my children, I would say it is 'natural' to some extent.

I think it's entirely valid to discuss the different ways people feel about their DP and children when looking at why some men feel jealous of their own children.

I am a selfless parent in a lot of ways, I have to be or my children wouldn't thrive, I'm proud of that given what a selfish, self indulgent twat I used to be.

It has everything to do with how much I love my children.

'I think as soon as you're thinking of family members' interests as being in opposition to each other, you're approaching it wrong.'

I think the OP was about men keeping a running tab in their heads, and seeing the arrival of the baby in terms of their need for attention not being met, seeing the baby as a threat. They are indeed approaching it all wrong.

Sadly, there are men (usually narcissists) who feel threatened by the babies in their lives. My exH used to try to tell me that our babies were 'manipulating' me when they cried and that 'giving in' to them and attending to their needs was weakness on my part. In one particularly fine example of a tantrum, he screamed at me that he had had a miserable life since ' that baby ' had been born (meaning DC4/DD3). He was the fifth of seven, and hated his next younger brother with an insane hatred. His mother once boasted to me that she had never once got up in the night to take care of crying babies; she wasn't even sure if any of them had cried at night or not.

SCOTT, you may well have it all measured out and you may well be very clear where your priority lies, and sure that your H's heart is in the right place, but men like my exH wreak havoc with their jealousy. It got to the point in my life where I couldn't go out and leave the DCs in exH's 'care' because I found out he would hit them, and not just a tap or two, when my back was turned. I look back at times I managed to go out and get the grocery shopping done or times I went off to church on my own, feeling good at the time about being able to get out on my own, and I remember the horror I felt when I got back after being out for an hour to find DD3 ('that baby', by then a toddler) asleep with her little face soaked with tears and red marks on her legs. The DCs still tell me about things exH did when my back was turned (kicking DD2 on the leg when she was 3, knocking DS to the ground when he was about 8 and he was trying to help exH with a plumbing job).

Same f*ing eejit said he would prefer to have his DCs fear him than love him. The whole fatherhhood thing for him was nothing but a massive egotrip. But he got his wish.

YANBU

On another note, Marley and me has to be the worst movie made. Although to be fair I didn't cry at Bambi. But that bloody dog!!

I sobbed my eyes out at Marley and Me, you soulless harpies!

Absolutely Agent and mathanxiety

Shit, I'm not saying that there aren't shit men out there that compete with their children for attention. I'm just saying that there are women who become completely obsessed with their own children and completely ignore their husbands.

Whether a man is being a childish asshole, or a nice bloke who is now being treated as surplus to requirements, depends on everything else that is going on in that home.

Of course it's valid (and interesting) to talk about the ways we love our children, and how that compares to and differs from how we love our partners.

I do think the standard MN "you come second in the pecking order" is very reductive and simplistic. A good father's interests are almost never in competition with his own child's interests. If an otherwise good man and devoted father feels pushed out of his own family, the first thing to consider is whether he has good reason for those feelings.

Making a Dad feel included isn't putting him ahead of the children. In fact both interests are equally served by making that effort, because children love their Dads. In a good relationship the mother is also best served by this course of action, because she wants what is best for everyone in the family.

But where the woman is the self (and baby) obsessed narcissist, she will prefer that her children love her the best, and get off on her supposed martyrdom to her kids. Women can be assholes too.

I think a family pecking order of importance is as good as useless in a happy family. Family life is about balance, not hierarchy.

To go back to the fire scenario (that annoys me so much) - you help children first because they are vulnerable, and your job as a parent is to look after them. That isn't the same as more love. The way I feel about my children is a deeper love than I had ever experienced before, but their arrival changed my love for my husband too. They are the physical embodiment of our love for each other. He is central to this family. I feel no need to relegate him.

What SCOTT said - too lazy this morning to formulate my own reply but she put it very well.

And the thing I don't get about "I'd manage without my husband, but not my children" is that for all the claims of selflessness, it's a pretty selfish way to view something like that.

I'm a grown up, so if something terrible were to happen to DH (God forbid) I would have to keep my shit together for the girls. But they would suffer a terrible loss if their Dad were killed in a house fire (or some other horrible accident where I'm not supposed to care much if he survives).

He is important, and loved, not just as my consort, but as their father.

SheCut i agree with some of your points.
The women i know in rl who are like this are the ones who never really loved their dh anyway. They married the 'ok man' with the good job with the main purpose to have children. So it isn't who you love more because they are two different kinds of love - the one for dh and the one for dcs. But if you never loved him there is a hole there in your lives.

I think i have said this before. My happiest memories are watching my parents being in love. The kisses, the way they sat in the balcony having a drink in each others arms watching us playing in the street, when they danced together or walked by the sea holding hands. I think it is healthier than hoovering all the time over the dcs.