"As a parent..."

[LaPerduta]

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?

a point without children @PussBilledDuckyPlait

It really annoys me how people treat child free people as less emotional or sympathetic - some of the kindest people I know are child free

Thing is. If you read every single post on here really carefully you’d see that no-one has even suggested this. There are people arguing over nothing here. Guess that’s the internet for you

This phrase always annoyed me too. I am a parent now, and I still find the implication that childless people don't feel empathy as much, insulting. I'm sure it's not intended that way but I felt empathy, both before becoming a parent and "as a parent".

a point without children

This is where people aren't getting it - childlessness is not 'a point' in my life, it is my life. You are basing your comments on the fact that you, personally, changed as a person when you had children. It doesn't seem to have occurred to you that not everyone's emotional development through life will be the same.

You are not considering the reasons why people might choose not to have children; or the impact that wanting to but being unable to have children might have on a person's emotional development. You are taking one experience - your experience - and extrapolating it to everyone.

I understand why posters are saying that having a child the same age as a child who experienced a terrible situation enables them to draw comparisons. However a lot of people say ‘as a parent’ and then go on to discuss how they are distressed by a tragedy such as 911 totally missing the point that not only parents can feel empathy and loss in this situation and actually sisters brothers and wives experienced equal loss. There’s just something ‘top trumps’ about it and even though I am a parent I don’t like the phrase unless it’s used in a very specific sense to talk about parenthood (ie as a parent I don’t like the fact there aren’t any baby change facilities in x shop).

@PussBilledDuckyPlait i have literally said nor suggested any of those things. It’s irrelevant if or why you choose (or don’t choose) not to have children.

The literal ONLY point I am making is that you cannot know that you wouldn’t change if you had children because you don’t have them. And you can’t know if there’s a deeper emotion/ feeling that people who’ve had children feel. The only people that can know are those who have not had and then had children. It’s a pretty simple and indisputable concept!

If it had been phrased like this, for instance "While everyone must find this event horrifying, as a paent I also......" that would be OK.

Na. It's OK for someone to speak on their own feelings as a parent and not have to lengthen a sentence in case a small amount of people take issue with the fact that persons experience and emotions don't revolve around them.

And you can’t know if there’s a deeper emotion/ feeling that people who’ve had children feel

And YOU can’t know that what someone else already experiences without having to have kids isn’t just as deep as what you feel having had them. Because you can only speak for yourself, not anyone else.

The only thing indisputable is that nobody can truly know the depth of anyone else’s emotions.

Exactly what fitzwilliamdarcy said below.

That could just indicate you are quite a shallow person, incapable of sympathetic imagination about anything outside your direct experience.

Which is exactly what I think when I see "as a parent" written or said. It's also rather selfish because it is admitted they can only empathise by imagining it is about their child. Wow.

Society does venerate motherhood. There's no point pretending it doesn't. (Well, some types of motherhood. Single mothers don't seem to attract the same level of veneration, but that's a different thread). Even the name of this forum, for parents, singles out the mums and gives them pride of place. And quite right, too. Mums do an awesome job.

Now, people who aren't parents fall into three categories. 1) Those who aren't parents yet, but hope or expect to become parents one day. 2) Those who haven't become parents so far and fear they may by losing the chance to change this - and are upset by it. And 3) those who feel they don't ever want to become parents and are OK with it. These categories aren't immutable, and people may move between them during their lives. But they are mutually exclusive and exhaustive.

Let's be honest ... groups 1 and 3 aren't the ones jumping on these threads and complaining. Those that genuinely are OK with things, are - by definition - OK with things. They have no envy or jealousy of parents, and feel no hurt about the tone of parent-y type conversations. Their lives are busy and full with other occupations and concerns. Those that haven't yet faced the spectre of their waning fertility and the disappointment of not fulfilling their wish to become a parent aren't coming and posting here either. Its group 2. And they aren't OK with it. They are hurting, and most people need a long time to find and accept an alternative role in a society that they know venerates motherhood, and which they fear won't venerate them. Especially if they are also ordinary in other regards. With luck, they will find a path to acceptance and will eventually become comfortable in Group 3, but right now they clearly aren't there yet and they are looking for ways to heal. Coming onto Mumsnet and railing at parents is a pretty cack-handed way of doing it, for sure - but what they are really looking for is validation that their deeply felt, complex and nuanced thoughts on a topic are of equal value as if they were parents. As such, it has much in common with dysphoria, as does their online behaviour.

What a fabulously patronising post, @Mark19735. The empathy parents have for their poor sad dysphoric lessers is wondrous to behold.

what they are really looking for is validation that their deeply felt, complex and nuanced thoughts on a topic are of equal value as if they were parents

Incorrect. This isn't about 'thoughts on a topic'. This is about (supposed) greater depths of feeling in parents.

'Thoughts on a topic' is a completely different issue, where it's far more likely your life experiences will indeed add value or ease of interpretation to your observation.

For example, in comments such as 'As a parent, I think standards of education are falling' or 'As a non-parent, I don't object to children in restaurants' or 'As a retail worker I think customers are becoming ruder' it's perfectly reasonable to state your qualification or perspective. That is not what we are discussing here.

The other thing is in news stories when someone has been killed (for example) and the first thing the newspapers say is “So and so, a mother/father of two, was tragically killed”

Well ... to quote the OP "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?"

So it is clear that "the topics" under discussion are the happenings of horrifying things to children, and I maintain the perspectives of parents are more salient due to their innate understanding of the parent/child relationship - emotionally, legally, morally and in their daily lived experience. Some parents may say their experience of parenthood has not deepened their emotional response to such topics, but overwhelmingly most do - and the feelings of non-parents towards this fact are irrelevant.

Which ironically is the same point that you made - e.g. the perspective of a retail worker on the rudeness of customers is more salient than that of other kinds of worker - so we agree.

This is about (supposed) greater depths of feeling in parents.

I don't think parents feel more deeply in general, they just have specific feelings about an aspect of life, which is being a parent. But that doesn't make your feelings deeper across the human experience.

I haven't suffered from infertility, for example, and I wouldn't presume to tell someone who has that my feelings about it are as acute as theirs, even though I know what life was like before children. I know it's not the same thing.

Which ironically is the same point that you made - e.g. the perspective of a retail worker on the rudeness of customers is more salient than that of other kinds of worker - so we agree.

Where did I say it was more salient? It was an example of where context can add relevance to a view - so it might be set against 'As a hotel worker, I think customers are becoming more polite' or 'as a call-centre worker I think customers are just as rude as they have always been.'

I maintain the perspectives of parents are more salient due to their innate understanding of the parent/child relationship - emotionally, legally, morally and in their daily lived experience.

What bollocks. I have an innate understanding only of my relationship with my own children. My daily experience is only of those children. Two of them.

I have been lucky in that neither have had any harm, however we had several years of my daughter fighting an eating disorder that threatened her life. Throughout that time my childless friends, and my sister, gave me unconditional support and love and, most importantly did not try and tell me they knew what I was going through.

Of my friends who were parents..

1. Did not come near us even though her daughter had been my daughters close friend since primary school. She banned her daughter from staying in touch with mine because she didn't want her daughter to be influenced by mine as hers was "highly sensitive and just so empathic" and obviously might catch an eating disorder

1. Told me that she understood what I was going through because her twins used to be fussy eaters. I kid you not.

1. Visited, phoned often and outwardly supported me and gave me a shoulder to cry on. Then told me one time, a particularly bad day when my daughters weight dropped to terrifying levels and she was very close to dying, that she was going home to give her children a tighter hug because she had spent the whole weekend imagining how it would feel if it was her daughter. She had two sons. She didn't have a daughter.

I am a parent and agree. While I understand that parents have heightened emotions about certain events, it feels quite an insulting and needless thing to say. It has annoyed me when people have said it both before and after having my own children.

Maybe you’re right @Mark19735. Maybe you have access to some deeper level of understanding and empathy through having children.

But I can’t imagine ever being so arrogant that I’d declare myself more empathetic than another group of people, and then say that group’s view on the matter was irrelevant. So swings and roundabouts.

@Mark19735
4th group: those who wanted kids but it didn't happen for them. These can mourn the lack of children in their lives but will not have them, and are not group 3.

Dear God @coeurnoir, that is truly dreadful. I hope that your daughter is doing better now. I truly can’t imagine how difficult that must have been, and you really didn’t need friends like that!

I think you are overthinking this.

She is much much better now thanks. A gorgeous healthy 25 year old. But we are not so naive as to assume that she is completely recovered.

I think before then, having been a parent for almost all my adult life and probably a bit smug and superior about it, I would have said things like "as a parent". But that experience taught me that other parents don't understand how I felt then, they were just projecting my experience onto themselves and their children.

That was quite humbling for me and why I now hate the phrase.

It doesn't mean you can't be sympathetic but as a parent when something happens to a child it hits your emotions differently