Parenting involves sacrifices… No, really?
In today’s Guardian, Charlotte Raven writes about how hard it is being a parent.
Oh, boo, hoo, hoo.
The birth of my daughter was a terrible shock to my psychic system. Like most of my generation, I’d assumed that the goal of parenting was ego gratification (we called it fulfilment) of the kind we’d been taught to expect. I had imagined my daughter as a mirror in which I would see myself reflected back and was somewhat surprised to discover that this was exactly what she thought of me. The struggle for primacy that ensued was unseemly, looking back. At a time when old-fashioned mothers would be bonding with their babies, the modern woman is fighting to retain her (false) belief that the universe revolves around her.
She won, of course. I tried tuning her out, but her cries were insistent and incessant. Nobody else could see that she had wilfully set out to destroy my sense of self, so I felt lonely as well as defeated. The next few months were hell. I did my best to besmirch her character but no one would listen, except other mothers bearing the scars of the same narcissistic wound.
The thing that gets me is that both of the methods of parenting this self-obsessed, empathy-free emotional cripple describes, the apparent “liberal” and “conservative”, are fundamentally selfish. At no point in the article is there any assumption that the child is an independent human being with feelings that matter as much as the mother’s, and the need to be cared for, which the mother doesn’t need, being an adult.
Here is the news: parenting involves subordinating your own desires to the small, helpless, needy, beautiful human being you brought into the world. You have to actually care for him or her. You actually have to put yourself to one side. Stuff “self-actualisation” and “fulfilment” - they’re just excuses for selfishness anyway.
You know, maybe selfless parenting is in fact a self-obsession in its own right, a kind of martyrdom. But you know what? At least the kid gets a bit of acceptance as a human being.
July 15th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
“The birth of my daughter was a terrible shock … The struggle for primacy … I tried tuning her out, but her cries were insistent and incessant … At a time when old-fashioned mothers would be bonding with their babies … she had wilfully set out to destroy my sense of self … I did my best to besmirch her character …”
What a horrible mother. Poor baby (and I mean the infant.)
July 29th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
OK, but if having children is not all about the parent’s/parents’ self-actualisation and fuilfillment then what is the pay-off from bringing the little fellows into the world?
July 30th, 2006 at 6:48 am
Who says there has to be a pay-off?
July 30th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Children eventually get jobs and pay our pensions…
August 28th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Steady on mate!
This article seemed to me to be about realising that this other human being has feelings which matter just as much as hers.”I had imagined my daughter as a mirror in which I would see myself reflected back and was somewhat surprised to discover that this was exactly what she thought of me. ”
She was used to believing the universe revolved around her. She found out different. That’s a learning process. The way she behaved in those few months may not have been pretty but how many of us behave prettily under duress? Isn’t this meant to be one of the biggest lifestyle shocks you can go through?
August 29th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
yes.