Mothers, fathers, children and the family heirarchy

[Ormirian]

Thread obliquely about a thread. Sorry.

But as I read more I got and then and finally downright .

I have always thought that having children was a joint project. Both parents have as much invested in the child, both care equally about the outcome. I always beleived that was a given. With good decent men anyway.

When children are small they come first. Always. Simple logistics demand it for a start. The parents gets what is left over in terms of energy, time and affection. In a solid relationship with similar attitudes that is absolutely fine because it's temporary and for a worthwhile goal.

I have heard about fathers being jealous when a new baby arrives. I can understand that I guess - mother's do tend to get wrapped up in newborns, exhausted and emotionally drained. However I always assumed that jealousy of a baby (who also happens to be their child) is something that would be regarded with embarrassment and shame. Something a man would fight against and certainly not mention seriously to his partner. If he was jealous of his own child he'd do his damndest to sort it out himself and not parade his ego in front of his partner and demand she massage it for him!

Have I been suckered by the myth of the New Man? Do most men really feel as if their infant children are 'in the way' and taking up too much of their partner's time? How can you be jealous of the affection your partner shows to your child and the time and energy she gives them? And what happened to supporting your wife/gf in what is a hard time for her too? When she needs your support and love? When she doesn't need more demands?

I don't get the maths, but I do agree with the quoted part of whollyghost's post.

The job of a parent is to prepare your children to leave you. But there is an expectation (not always realised) that your spouse/partner will stick around beyond that. Ranking who comes "first" isn't really a helpful concept in that.

All members of the family unit require care and attention. Infants of course take up the most time as they cannot meet any of their demands themselves and it is an absolute requirement that they be well cared for. And I strongly agree that both parents (if present) need to be involved in this. But what precise division of tasks this might mean needs to be settled within the individual family (too many variations of circumstances to generalise usefully).

There is however no place for expressions of jealousy. Parents who feel this strike me as still being in need of growing up a bit. Yes, the family dynamic changes with every new baby. Yes, a parent might look back nostalgically for aspects of their previous life, and yes it can help if those feelings (which can arise from other changes - house, career etc) are acknowledged - but what is then done with that insight is what matters.

Yes agree meditrina.

It's not that absurd feelings of resentment, jealousy etc. should not be there: it's that they should be accepted, acknowledged as absurd, and worked through from the premise that though they are natural, they're not reasonable and must be overcome because the needs of the baby come first.

We don't expect older siblings not to be jealous of younger ones. But we don't validate those feelings, we acknowledge them and work towards overcoming them, living with them etc. The difference being, a jealous sibling is three, whereas a fully grown man of 30 paying a mortgage, functioning in the adult world, needs to grow the fuck up a bit quicker than a three year old.

It seems to me that some men do not cope very well with not being the star of the show when the baby arrives. Grow the fuck up !

Herbex - because a scientific theory involves a few numbers it must be 'someone with a maths fetish?' -

Omirion - sorry don't mean to derail your thread and won't post any more. I just thought it was tangentially relevant, particularly to Wholly's point and I think it is one of the most useful things I ever as a parent.

It's only a scientfic theory in the same sense as men are from Mars and women are from Venus is

at Evolutionary Psychology as Scientific Theory... Those are the same guys who like to justify rape on evolutionary grounds...
forgetting that a woman who bears the child of a rapist is a) likely to spontaneously abort through stress b) quite unlikely to care for the child in the way she would if it was planned c) will possibly be unable to provide the child with the resources it needs to survivive and thrive..being as it wasn't planned.
IN other words, rape is an evolutionary dead end... but not according to evolutionary psychology "scientists". Apparently rape is an evolutionary phenomeon that men can't help.
In fact, if anyone is in any doubt about how men's minds work (and how bad it really is ) just look at Evolutionary Psychology. Men will tell you themselves. All women need to do is listen and believe what they're saying.

The more I learn about feminism the more I am having serious doubts about the nuclear family . It seems to me that feminist basics is "marriage/het partnerships is the bedrock of the patriarchy" just as the seventies feminists argued that it was...
If women stopped pairing off with men patriarchy would collapse. I really believe that.. then there would be no more bombing lebanon or anywhere else the macho governments decide to rattle a sabre

Well this

"Each child is made up of genes from their parents, fifty - fifty from their mother and father. A child is therefore twice as related to herself as she is to her sibling."

for a start is nonsense as far as I can work out.

In our house we have kind of the opposite of this. DP dotes on DD. He has as much as said he loves her more than me. But I dont act like these bratty men.

"the more I am having serious doubts about the nuclear family "

Me too sakura, me too.

DH and I are both relatively mild-mannered compromisers but even we struggle from time to time. I often think that life would be easier and less complicated if there was just me and the DC here. I am sure that DH would still be part of their lives but semi-detached. It would suit him. And it would suit me. I don't think the DC would mind at all. He's a good bloke but I look at him sometimes and he looks like some cramped and irritable animal. Personally I could so without the sulks and the moods. But I couldn't suggest it. The Nuclear Family is written into our social DNA - the generation we grew up in saw divorce as a shameful secret - it was almost whispered in conversations. And as a good man he doesn't deserve the sense of failure that he'd feel from a divorce. We have both worked hard for this family. But it would be better if it didn't have to be such hard work iyswim.

Thing is I have seen so many relationships break up. Crap relationships that had outrun their course - but every time the partners plunge into another similar relationship that is just as bad, and spend the next few miserable years defending it and working so so hard to make it Ok when it was never going to be and it wasn't essential anyway.

I like men. I am simply not sure they can be house-trained.....

I reckon I could cope with an all-female commune. Just as long as they largely left me in peace and didn't make me weave lentils

Personally I dont get why you still wouldnt be giving each other attention. You can still give the babies/children attention but its not a 24/7 job there is still time for each other. My husband did just as much for our daughter as a baby. He wont feel left out if he gets up with you for every night feed and you talk and hug. There is still time for sex and affection, just cause you are a parent, even when you are a new parent ime.

"but its not a 24/7 job "

No, of course it isn't.

The 8 hours plus a day paid job, the need to keep the house together and the larder filled, and the sanity of both parents intact, is though. Not to mention the care for any older DC.

Or do you have the secret of being in many places at once ilovedora? In which case, MARKET IT at once! You'll be minted.

And re affection..... if 'you alright?' or 'fuck me I'm knackered, how are you?' count as affection then I agree with you

IIRC.

Heh. I think we have a bit of affection - though "god I'm tired" and "have you fed the dog" does happen to be part of our evening (eg, after the baby's asleep) repetoire, where once there would be snuggling, videogaming, and even - gasp! - hotttt sexxx.

But - we enjoy each other's company, and we get each other's sense of humour. So we laugh about stuff, even about how tired we are, and that's a kind of affection. We got a new mattress delivered recently and we giggled about how we were so excited about 'testing it out' and yes, that meant sleeping - and oh how we've changed - but, yeah - we get time for affection. And we make time for sex. I've noticed my libido has dropped (poss. TMI, sorry) since the birth and I wonder if it's breastfeeding. I hope it is, as I miss it - but still, we have plenty of sex. I just have to recalibrate my brain to 'oh, sex, yes, that's always rather fabulous' from the zillion miles away that it has been, like "oh I'm tired, we need to pick up toys, christ where is my XXX I just saw it, have you walked the dog this afternoon or shall I?" - I don't quite just leap into sex like I used to when I had less on my plate. But it's still possible, and still totally worth the focus

Thanks for your last post Ormirian Yes I agree with you.. I like men, I do... believe it or not.. I just don'T like patriarchy, which is when men group together to hog resources and power and use women's labour and energies to reach their goals (women's taxes paying for men's wars or banker's bonuses etc)

What I hate about patriarchy is 1) systematic violence against women and children, porn etc 2) war 3) environmental destruction. Those three things are woven into the social fabric because we live in a patriarchy.

If not living with a man in a het relationship means these three things won't exist, (or will exist to a lesser extent) then that's a price I'm willing to pay..

cba with a commune though.. I'm too anti-social. And didn'T HerBex used to live in a commune? She said there were loads of rules!! I'd live on my own with my kids and perhaps a friend or two.

I think one of the reasons MRA's hate this site so much, is because women are talking to each other and coming up with unhthinkable (to the patriarchy) solutions on how to organise the way men and women live with each other.

I find that living with my children and having a lover every now and again, works extremely well for me.

And yes there were lots of "unspoken" rules in the communue I lived in....

Yes to 'getting a man 'in for sex

Oh bugger! This makes me feel so disloyal to DH - who is a one of the good guys in the main. I am just talking hypothetically.

blackcurrants - I was talking about specifically the baby and toddler time. Things are much easier for us now. But I do think that expecting people to 'make an effort' to maintain their relationship when there are small children in the house is unreasonable. Any relationship needs to be strong enough to manage without constant ego-boosting in the baby years.

I think you do need to make an effort to maintain a good relationship when you have small children, surely that is exactly when effort is required, when it's not easy? Obviously it's a two-way thing though - I'm thinking both sharing the crap stuff, showing appreciation of each other and being tolerant, not 'wife makes herself constantly available for sex'.

Yy to affection but the point is if it's mutual and welcome. I couldn't face sex for a few months after birth as I was touched out. DH was obviously fine with it but I bet lots of men aren't.

How far do you take it though re. Putting children first? I imagine DD would most like co-sleeping and being able to feed Every time she stirs all night. I would rather get a full nights sleep , not worry about squashing DD, and for her to go say 6 hours without feeding.

I think that the parnership is central, you are with someone because you love them and want to have DCs as an expression of that love. The DCs come through you, but they are people in their own right. You are very honoured to have them for a very short time. The parent's job is to produce a happy, caring, well rounded, fully functioning adult-to give them roots and give them wings. Parenting successfully means letting go gradually. When they have their wings and have flown you are left with the two central people for the next 30/40 yrs. You need to still like, love,care for and know the partner and leave your DCs to make their own way and mistakes in life, being there as a support, but not telling them how they should live their life.

It means that in the years of early childhood you need to consider everyone in the family. Being 'devoted' to the DCs isn't a virtue-they need to stay with granny, have babysitters etc.and know that parents are people in their own right-it is a huge burden to have a parent living through you.

It does mean compromise-I am always surprised that when couple's disagree on things like co sleeping the advice often comes up -'tough if he doesn't like it-just tell him'. From some posts you get the impression that the mother and DCs are a unit and the father is a bit of an inconvenience or the junior parent in that mother is the boss and never goes off for the day and leaves him to it-or not without a huge list of instructions (as if he is a baby sitter and not an equal parent).

I don't like the term consensual living (it is one of those things that people have been doing for decades and suddenly someone writes a book about it-like unconditional parenting etc) -but I think that is what everyone should be aiming for -finding mutually agreed solutions and the parents being important too.

On the whole, as long as parents are doing things in the DCs interests, happy parents will make happy DCs.

"the father is a bit of an inconvenience or the junior parent in that mother is the boss and never goes off for the day and leaves him to it-or not without a huge list of instructions "

Completely agree. Treat an adult like a child long enough and he will begin to behave like one.

However I don't for one moment beleive that pandering to a man's ego because his nose has been put out of joint by the arrival of a real baby, is looking after a relationship.

jing - if your child is happy with things as they are I don't suppose it matters whether you co-sleep or not. And sleep is hugely important to the whole family. I would take issue if anyone didn't co-sleep because they needed sleep themselves and then their partner insisted on sex every night.