Page 11 | "As a parent..."

LaPerduta · 2023-04-20T13:29:50+00:00

I've just read about a local teenager who was recently subjected to a rather distressing mugging. The person who posted about this said that, "as a parent," she found this horrifying. AIBU to think that it is not necessary to be a parent to be able to feel empathy/sympathy towards a child who has had a traumatic experience? As someone who is not a parent, I find this trope to be quite insulting and it's usually completely unnecessary to state. (I'm assuming the person who posted details of the attack doesn't actually mean that they would have found it acceptable had they not had children of their own.) Why invoke a pro-natal hierarchy, unnecessarily?

wornoutslippers · 23/04/2023 22:29

@fitzwilliamdarcy no one's suggesting they're the only ones capable of experiencing them.

They're just describing that as a parent you can feel something differently. But having that view seems to bring the parent bashers out - are they suddenly the bosses of how parents are allowed to feel?

Is the rule now that you can and must only feel things as a human being? Not as a woman, not as young person, or as an old person, Jewish or Asian, Rich or poor etc.

You can and must only feel things at a universal human level and anything else is wrong/insulting/acting in a superior way.

In the grand scheme of things saying "as a parent" is such a minor thing, but wow the umbridge taken on this thread is wild.

Persuaderama · 23/04/2023 22:48

@coeurnoir I’m not insulting you in any way. I’ve not been rude. I have simply asked you

a. Do you know what a mega-analysis is?
b. Why do you think the published paper I posted is ‘crap’?

Neither question you’ve answered - and now regressed to the ‘dear’ scenario…..it’s fine, I bet lots of people over claim to prove a point but don’t keep going at it as it’s a bit silly.

fitzwilliamdarcy · 23/04/2023 23:23

@wornoutslippers I think we’re reading such different threads that it’s pointless continuing to debate further.

SparklyBlackKitten · 23/04/2023 23:48

Being a parent doesn't make you more empathic

But boy do things feel/hit different when they happen when you ARE a parent. It makes you feel a whole other planet of feelings when you have kids

EveryWitchWaybutLoose · 24/04/2023 01:14

They're just describing that as a parent you can feel something differently. But having that view seems to bring the parent bashers out - are they suddenly the bosses of how parents are allowed to feel?

@wornoutslippers what many (not all!) people who've become parents don't grasp in these discussions, is that non-parents - and particularly women - in our society, are generally regarded in a stereotypical way as (take your pick o these):
selfish,
unempathic,
child-hating,
not fully human,
not fully experienced in emotions
not fully adult.

This is the undercurrent of many public comments (by "celebrities," for example) along the "as a parent" comments. That non-parents are somehow completely lacking in these extra empathic feelings.

It's more than "just describing." Such comments are underpinned by a more general set of social stereotypes about non-parents, and particularly childless women.

I can remember someone saying - in a group chat - to a mutual friend who'd just become a father: "Welcome to the adult world." As if any non-parent is not a real adult.

wornoutslippers · 24/04/2023 08:57

EveryWitchWaybutLoose · 24/04/2023 01:14

They're just describing that as a parent you can feel something differently. But having that view seems to bring the parent bashers out - are they suddenly the bosses of how parents are allowed to feel?

@wornoutslippers what many (not all!) people who've become parents don't grasp in these discussions, is that non-parents - and particularly women - in our society, are generally regarded in a stereotypical way as (take your pick o these):
selfish,
unempathic,
child-hating,
not fully human,
not fully experienced in emotions
not fully adult.

This is the undercurrent of many public comments (by "celebrities," for example) along the "as a parent" comments. That non-parents are somehow completely lacking in these extra empathic feelings.

It's more than "just describing." Such comments are underpinned by a more general set of social stereotypes about non-parents, and particularly childless women.

I can remember someone saying - in a group chat - to a mutual friend who'd just become a father: "Welcome to the adult world." As if any non-parent is not a real adult.

So what's the solution then? Are parents supposed to live and speak as though they don't have children? So that they don't offend the child free? Because it's difficult to know what innocent comment is going to offend them.

On the "welcome to the adult world" my friends have said that at several points in our lives... my first post-uni job, first time I signed my rental contract, and when I got my mortgage. Do you think you might just be reading into it a bit too much?

KimberleyClark · 24/04/2023 09:52

On the "welcome to the adult world" my friends have said that at several points in our lives... my first post-uni job, first time I signed my rental contract, and when I got my mortgage. Do you think you might just be reading into it a bit too much?

Those are really not comparable, certainly not for the childless not by choice.

sonearly · 24/04/2023 14:18

KimberleyClark · 24/04/2023 09:52

On the "welcome to the adult world" my friends have said that at several points in our lives... my first post-uni job, first time I signed my rental contract, and when I got my mortgage. Do you think you might just be reading into it a bit too much?

Those are really not comparable, certainly not for the childless not by choice.

We all lack something not by choice.

If that was a reason for others to stifle their self-expression it would be a very sad world.