To think mothers react differently than fathers to the sound of their child crying?

[BoardsofCanada]

We (me, DW + DD) went out yesterday for the first time with DD in the new bike trailer. Obviously it was a new experience for DD (18 months), and she wasn't really happy with it at first - there was crying and refusing to sit down in the trailer, all while trying to work out where to put the diaper bag and other stuff, but I was sure that once we got moving she would calm down, which she did. What made the whole thing a million times more stressful was DW telling me what I was doing wrong and snapping at me because of the time it was taking to get ready and because DD was crying / angry. It seems like my DW and I react differently to our DD crying, DW seems to find it incredibly stressful, whereas I don't. Is this a common experience for other couples with their children?

There's a difference between crying and whinging. Whinging (fake cry... putting on shoes, not being allowed to grab something breakable etc) sets me on edge within seconds. It's enough to make me want to jump out of a window some days and have been known to pass DS straight to my husband when he starts. It puts a knot in my stomach and really stresses me out. This is probably what she's feeling if it's about silly things.

A genuine real upset cry, it feels totally different. It's inbuilt. It's part of you to try and rectify it.

Thankfully my son does neither often.

Clearly my biology is wonky. DH finds crying incredibly stressful and I am all ‘meh let him cry, no one died.’ Yesterday ds2 was having an almighty toddler tantrum which lasted maybe 10 mins but I could see DH was finding it hard so I sent him off to finish some chores, have gave ds2 a talking to (anyway the toddler tantrum stopped as soon as daddy’s audience was gone, kids are clever like that) and then ds1 and I calmed him down a bit. With very small babies I don’t like leaving them to cry and I have ‘sleep trained’ with minimal minimal crying.
But for an 18mo as long as their main needs are met a bit of whinging did no harm. I frequently ignore it. In fact with ds1 I used to jump in at the first cry and I don’t with ds2 and I have noticed that he’s much better at problem solving and sorting himself out even as a toddler.

Finally sometimes we all need a good cry and a moan sometimes esp if one is non verbal. Nothing worse than people constantly trying to ‘solve’ things while you are letting it out. So when my kids have the big meltdowns I just offer hugs and cuddles but let them finish crying rather than what DH does which is try to magic up one solution after another which aggravates them further. And that’s because he can’t stand the crying.

To clarify I didn’t sleep train a very small baby, nust nudged them on to good habits and then got slightly stricter after 12 months but again no crying or v little. I don’t think it is good for babies to be stressed out like that.
Toddler whining is a whole other kettle of fish.

For me - yes. I get in incredible stressed and it’s not a ‘British society’ thing .

Mine is an innate feeling of urgency and stress that I need to solve by comforting our baby.

DH is good at acting quick and acting well (I.e he wouldn’t just sit there while the baby cried) but that horrible twisting inner feeling I get when my baby is distressed is just within me.

Funnily enough I’ve just written an essay on exactly this.

I think you're right, OP. Just from personal experience I cannot stand to hear my DD cry but DH is much more relaxed. When she starts crying it's almost like it's louder than other sounds and it's all I can hear. I think DH takes too long to settle her and most times end up taking over. I find myself constantly reminding him to pick her up when she starts crying and trying to hurry him up as I think he moves too slowly.

My DH is way less sensitive to our children crying.
I’m beginning to find it a bit easier with the older one, as it’s now crystal clear what’s is tantrum/attitude and what is genuine upset, whereas the little one in my mind is still so little (20 months) I have to respond to his cries immediately. I’ve never been one to ignore their cries from when they’ve been born, but my DH finds it easy to think “He’s crying because he’s frustrated at the sippy cup”, whereas I find it an absolutely heart wrenching sound, and I have to fix whatever problem is upsetting him so much.
It’s totally irrational I know, but it is what is is!

In general women are the ones who do most of the care for small babies. There may be biology at play but it's worth remembering that if you experience a situation where a person painfully rips its way out of your body and you then have to go straight into caring for and feeding that person from your own body day and night without sleep for months, you develop a somewhat traumatic reaction to their cries - especially when horrific sleep deprived experience tells you that the sound of one particular cry means you'll likely be up for the entire night. That's nothing to do with being a woman, that's a human reaction to an incredibly stressful experience. And it doesn't just wear off either.

It’s the complete opposite here. My husband can not stand crying. He gets ridiculously worked up over it. I am capable of just tuning it out but he feels like he has to address it.

It’s good that you are trying to understand the difference and I think you should appreciate that women have different physical, biological reactions to their babies than men do.

For me, other babies crying doesn’t bother me in the least, but when my babies cried I could literally feel the hormones flooding my body - for you to relate to it, it’s a bit like going into fight or flight mode I suppose, although the reaction I felt was panic and almost physical pain when they cried. It was an absolutely awful feeling and I did everything I could to prevent them from crying for the first year of their lives. I found it absolutely awful. If your wife has the same feelings I can understand why she found it so stressful.

I’m sure it’s difficult to relate but it’s not something she can prevent, and you really wouldn’t want her to be switched off to her child’s cries, it’s an important function even if it’s heightened in some.

I really think I deal with the baby crying in a completely different way to my husband. For example our 7 month old son was screaming in the car yesterday. He was physically fine but had had enough of being strapped into his car seat. My husband could still have a laugh and chat with our older two kids and listen to the radio whereas I was so tense that I practically bounced out of the car like an uncoiled spring when we stopped. If the baby bumps his head while he's crawling around and starts to cry, I'm first up and usually panicking he's really hurt himself, my husband can usually see that the baby is not hurt and is much more calm about the situation.
Interestingly though, my husband is the big worrier when it comes to giving the baby finger food. Hes so stressed at feeding time that he can't eat at the same time as our son incase the baby starts to gag

Also, physically, when mine were tiny and cried if I didn’t get to them fast enough my boobs started to leak. They also leaked if I could hear a baby cry who wasn’t mine...!

I think it taps into a very primal part of my brain and makes me incredibly stressed, I can't ignore it. This is a natural reaction that has been studied. When a baby is distressed their cortisol levels rise and the mother's rise too. It's called synchrony and it's very important. It helps mothers to sooth their baby and is an important part of attachment.

I have a toddler and a 6 month old. The 6 month old hardly ever cries except for when the toddler cries, that always sets him off. When they're both crying I feel like I'm going to lose my mind, stress levels go straight through the roof.

Definitely the case for us. I respond immediately to a whimper whereas DH will look at me blankly and protest that the baby is "just talking not crying". If we're somewhere that I can't get to her immediately (eg driving in car) I literally can't think about anything else until she stops crying. It's like the sort of mental torment you get with fingernails down blackboard. I start sweating and my blood pressure continues to increases the longer it goes on. Utterly instinctive and visceral. My DH can seemingly remain utterly calm and unbothered. It does seem to pass as the child gets older though, I'm not as affected by my 3 year old who whinges constantly

This is so fascinating. I have literally never felt any of this. I mean I feel the general stress of parenting but I hadn’t realised how different from the norm I was. 18mo just bumped his head and I said, oh dear, want a kiss, gave him a kiss and carried on. He wailed for a few mins more but then carried on playing. I had absolutely no physical reaction to either him being hurt (other than ouchie!) or his tears. Similarly I have never felt bad about vaccinations. I am all ready for kisses and cuddles (and Calpol) but I am always baffled by people getting stressed and in tears (DH who is a medic finds it way more stressful!)- it’s really fascinating to read this and I wonder whether I lack an empathy gene somewhere. I hope not- I like to think I’m a good mum and spend time with them and give lots of cuddles but I just don’t find this stuff as stressful as so many do.

I can identify with the wife here. And a lot of what has already been said.

My DCs are 2 & 4 now, but when they were babies and they would cry, I’d have some kind of instinctive, primal, biological reaction. I simply could not ignore it and I would feel stressed and upset myself until they were soothed. My youngest hated being in the car as a baby and would scream and scream. I often had to pull off the road and park up somewhere to comfort them but also because I was so stressed myself I couldn’t drive safely. I’d often end up in tears too! (I did have PND though.)

Now they’re older I can tell their different cries. The youngest has what I call a FOMO cry, which always happens at bedtime and which I am able to completely ignore. But I was downstairs the other evening and heard FOMO cry turn into ‘genuine’ distress cry, and I was straight upstairs to find their leg had got stuck in the cot bars

Whinging crying makes the red mist descend and it takes all my self control to stop myself yelling ‘shut the fuck up!!!’

But when they’re genuinely upset or hurt I can’t ignore it. The youngest DC trapped their fingers quite badly the other day. DH was ‘first on the scene’ as I had my arms full of shopping. DC was really crying and DH just removed him from harm’s way and then ignored him. I had a real go at him about that.

The science behind this is really interesting. It’s a chemical response to ensure the survival of the species. It’s explained quite well here: www.sciencenews.org/blog/growth-curve/how-baby-cries-bore-mom’s-brain

I hate hearing a young baby cry. It really gets to me when e.g. in a supermarket the mother - it nearly always is the mother - just ignores it. Yes, I know it's not always possible or practical to pick it up, but my instincts scream that they should.

I do think (most) mothers' instincts are more finely tuned than others' - Nature has done it for a very good reason. When mine were very small I would invariably wake way before they started full blown crying - even from another room I would 'hear' the faint, snuffly-grumbly build-up to crying.

Tbh I think men have more or an issue

My husband gets super stressed when DS2 cries, he can't handle it at all! Whereas I can just block it out if I have to and I react much more calmly to tantrums and screaming.