It takes a village

[percival]

There is so much discussion about parenting styles, and so much blame and responsibility is laid on mothers' shoulders. You can't win whatever you do. queenriley has been writing about the lack of status of women who choose to stay at home and raise their children. On the other hand, we get parenting experts such as Steve Biddulph who tell us that by sending our children to nursery, we harm their social, emotional, and mental development irrevocably. As if this weren't enough, we live in a culture that teaches young girls to diet so that they can become sex objects, with glamour models or Paris Hilton as role models. And to top it all off, mothers engage in pointless wars with each others - mothers who choose to stay at home versus mothers who choose to go to work, mothers who breastfeed versus mothers who bottlefeed, mothers who sleep train (whatever that means) vs mothers who don't. Pointless not least because there are so many grey areas. For example, there are mothers who give their children a bottle at night, breast during the day and vice versa. Mothers who let their 15-month-old cry it out, but not their 5-month-old, mothers who use the "No Cry Sleep Solution", mothers of natural-born sleepers. Mothers who work in a job one day a week, mothers who are employed during night shifts, mothers who are employed 50% or 60%, mothers who run a business from home.

Mothers should support each other - there are so many tricky patches that all of us go through, so many problems nearly everybody faces, from sleepless nights to food fights. I'm lucky in that I know a couple of mothers in RL and through the web (Damsels, plan_survive, Ye Olde F-List) who are pretty chilled out and tolerant, and you know what - it makes all the difference. It's been worth more than 100 parenting books.

As awelkin rightly said in a recent entry, mothering comes from many sources, not just from people who are raising kids. It comes from teachers, aunts, youth group leaders, nursery nurses, grandmothers ... and fathers. These other sources of mothering are particularly crucial when the woman who is raising the child is struggling. To denigrate these sources of mothering, or to imply that they are incomplete because they lack children, just sets up another of these stupid, stupid boundaries. For example, the wife of my younger BIL, who has a lovely three-year-old girl, constantly talks about my older BIL and his wife, who've chosen to stay childfree. She keeps dropping heavy hints that my BIL would make a good father, and tut-tutting about the lack of kids in that marriage. Yet she wonders why my BIL and his wife never visit. Said SIL also took a swipe at me when I was 22 weeks pregnant for daring to plan to put DD into nursery, after the long wait we had - she was only mollified when I reassured her that we weren't going to place her full time. (My childfree SIL is lovely, by the way - our DD has got some gorgeous clothes courtesy of her!). For my part, I'm extremely pleased to have childfree BIL and SIL in our lives, because I'm sure they'll be able to give DD lots of love and be far more relaxed with her than we. Infertility, childfree-ness, childlessness has been with us as long as humankind, and for the most part, these men and women were integrated into their extended families, where they were important and valued carers.

It takes a village to raise a child - nobody gains by alienating 99% of the village!

Comments

[queenriley.livejournal.com]

Here, here! I second this entire entry... well said, perceval.

I'm also quite happy that ALL my children's aunts have basically choosen to remain childfree. Leaves them more energy, time, resources, and willingness to spoil my kids. :P

[actionreplay.livejournal.com]

Everyone has an opinion on mothers because most people had a mum. Also, you'll notice that railing about "bad" parenting is a specialty of the Daily Mail. Mysoginists seek to control women at all costs because they are afraid of them - and childbearing is the one thing that only women do, and so they seek to control them by proxy by having a go. Ever notice that the majority of idiots on tv pontificating about waht parents should and shouldn't do are nearly always blokes?

Most people turn out ok, if their folks make even a half-arsed attempt at bringing them up well, so I woudn't worry, given that you and Thomas are devoted parents anyway.

[awelkin.livejournal.com]

Very wise and insightful, this post.

Catherine

[h311ybean]

As someone who comes from a large, fairly close family with aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, I heartily agree with this post - and even if the parents can't rely on or don't have familial support, I'm sure they would have good friends who could step in and lend a hand, too. You don't need to be bound by blood to care about someone and want to help them. As a bunch of pretty good musicians once said, all you need is love. :)

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

To skip rather shallowly all the way to the end -- I can't understand, other than for even shallower political reasons -- why people seem to mock that concept. Considering how much influence popular culture, for instance, has on kids unless they're quite unnaturally isolated, it really does take a village; and it takes consciousness of the fact that one might be contributing without even being specifically aware of it to make a responsible... well, citizen.

I think I had more to ramble on about here, but I'm falling asleep over my k/b.

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Everybody thinks they know best. What falls off the map in that line of thinking is that really, most of the time, the child's mother and father know best. It's not the brother- or sister-in-law, whether parents or child-free. It's not the guy in the checkout line at the store who wants to tell you to take it easy on your kid for crying. It's not the teachers or other parents or grandparents. Each family is its own unit. Each family raises their children their own way.

When my daughter was little, I used to really not like it much when strangers (or people who might not have been strangers) would give me helpful hints and advice. "Oh, if you do this, she'll be happier." Well, excuse me, but what do you know? It's the same type of blanket statement as someone else deciding that child care or daycare is not the right thing for your kid.

I don't mean to go on a rant in your journal after a) such a thoughtful post and b) all this time, but what I learned when my daughter was a baby was that it was the support that counted, not the opinions.

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

This world is full of opinions categories and peope who have thigns to sa ybout everyone else.
I thkn I aid somewher else, you're you ,wehtehr you hav kids ,or live iancabi nor train dogs or ride the whoel of the uk on horseback. And personal yI woudlnt' care .As log nas yo udont harm an ybeing or thing.