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Here's a person who goes through the effort of carrying around a life inside the womb, painfully gives birth, changes diapers, feeds, and raises a child. Such a person must be a nurturer; and after all of that turns on the child. Not saying that I'm so ignorant as to believe that such people don't exist; it's just that they exist in far greater numbers than I realized.
There are some really damaged, disturbed people out there.
Ain't that the truth! All too many people have children who are psychologically and/or financially just not equipped to do so. The mentally ill are the least likely to have the lucidity to be self aware and to say to themselves, "Hey, it would not be fair to the child for me to have one."
Location: Finally the house is done and we are in Port St. Lucie!
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I think it is more of the "psychologically" rather than the financial. I was not financially equipped to have kids but I did a damn fine job raising them. They may not have had all the 'stuff' that other kids had but they had food and LOVE.
People are expected to procreate and add kids to the family unit. Some are looking for that unconditional love that having a child brings. They are not all able to deal with the reality of actually having to take care of that child.
Then you have those that feel like the child is their property rather than a human being. More of a status symbol like trying to be like the 'normal' family.
God help the child that is born to a parent that didn't really want to be a parent but bowed to the pressure of a spouse or society.
My bio mom should never have had kids. But if she hadn't, I wouldn't have had my kids or grandkids. We have to make the conscious decision to break the cycle of abuse though. It Can Be Done.
OP, some of this phenom is multi-generational; a mom is abusive to her kid, and that kid grows up to repeat the abuse upon becoming a parent. But some mothers aren't nurturing from the get-go; they don't have the psychological wherewithal for that, so they neglect their babies. Also, the culture used to kind of reinforce that. Don't assume that parents start out nurturing, then for some mysterious reason "turn" on their kids.
The custom used to be to isolate the baby in its own room, and to let it cry. In fact, in the Victorian era, the "conventional wisdom" was you were supposed to ignore the baby's cries to some extent, because to respond immediately to a cry was considered "spoiling" the child. Babies were fed on an adult schedule, or something approximating that, not a newborn's schedule. This belief that babies shouldn't be fed when they needed to be fed (or diaper-changed) was passed down through generations through much of the 20th Century.
When baby-care expert Dr. Spock published a book in the 50's saying that parents should feed the baby according to the baby's schedule, as the baby demanded, it was considered to be radical, and was rejected by many parents. Later, the Vietnam War protests and the hippie movement were blamed on Dr. Spock's "permissive" child care philosophy. Feeding a baby when it cried was considered "permissive" and overly-indulgent. Western culture went through a very long phase when nurturance was not encouraged.
Barbaric, no? And people wonder why our society is so full of personality disorders and other psych issues.
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 03-04-2017 at 10:04 AM..
Just because a woman can get pregnant or man has viable sperm does not mean that they are qualified to be a parent. There are a lot of pregnancies out there that were not planned for. They happened because sex happens and sometimes people are not as careful as they should be.
So, you end up with a child who was never wanted, who has parents that weren't qualified to raise a child.
It's not like only good parents are allowed to reproduce.
I suspect that planned for pregnancies are actually in the minority in this country. There are all the out of wedlock births and very often married couples have a surprise pregnancy. Some of those unplaned kids are going to be stuck with unqualified or missing parents.
Here's a person who goes through the effort of carrying around a life inside the womb, painfully gives birth, changes diapers, feeds, and raises a child. Such a person must be a nurturer; and after all of that turns on the child. Not saying that I'm so ignorant as to believe that such people don't exist; it's just that they exist in far greater numbers than I realized.
Color me disillusioned.
Wrong, that person does not need to be a nurturer. It's never just the mother if the father is in the house too. It is a family system that ef's people up. Unless, of course, the mother is the only care giver. And if she is screwy, chances are you will be too. Not always but a fair percentage.
There are a lot of people who should not be having or had children.
You must have had a good mother Calvert (?) I was raised by not one, but two dysfunctional alcoholics. There was no love, only survival. They were just a sperm and an egg donor to me. Why they were irresponsible enough to reproduce is beyond me. Neither one was equipped to be a parent. This happens more often then you think.
Here's a person who goes through the effort of carrying around a life inside the womb, painfully gives birth, changes diapers, feeds, and raises a child. Such a person must be a nurturer; and after all of that turns on the child. Not saying that I'm so ignorant as to believe that such people don't exist; it's just that they exist in far greater numbers than I realized.
Color me disillusioned.
As sad as it is at least I know I wasn't alone in having a dysfunctional family. I'm still a little surprised when I read some of these threads about their horrible mothers. Mine wasn't horrible, she just wasn't there from when I was 5 till I was in my late teens. Very unheard of back when I was growing up in the 60's.
Here's a person who goes through the effort of carrying around a life inside the womb, painfully gives birth, changes diapers, feeds, and raises a child. Such a person must be a nurturer; and after all of that turns on the child. Not saying that I'm so ignorant as to believe that such people don't exist; it's just that they exist in far greater numbers than I realized.
Color me disillusioned.
I wouldn't say they upset me, they annoy me, and I read them with a large grain of salt. You don't have to spend that much time on C-D to conclude vast numbers of mothers are narcissistic, bi-polar, depressed, or cold, despite the rates of mental illness between the sexes is fairly even, and men have much higher rates of true narcissism.
Mothers are apparently expected to nurture from cradle to grave. When they conclude they have done their job and it's time for the adult child to handle their own affairs, they are deemed one or more of the above. When they want to pursue their own interests, they are selfish and narcissistic. When they begin to show signs of aging, they are needy and demented. Be kind to them.
And while true childhood abuse certainly occurs, I don't think those that have survived it are the ones posting here. Victims are far likelier to suffer from homelessness, be poorly educated, and unemployed. They're struggling to survive, not complaining that their mother is a pain in the butt.
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