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How did you support yourself and three children making model castles, painting and playing with puzzles? Please share your secret then maybe more mom's who are working just for the money and health insurance will be able to learn from you and stay home also.
This I would like to know as well.
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Originally Posted by lkb0714
What matters is that people parents in a way that balances the needs of the child and the needs of the family. It is a mistake to take an all or nothing approach with the needs of the infant. That type of thinking is what leads to shaming of women for not parenting the "right way" and leads to far worse problems than those that come from spending time in daycare. Problems like mothers not being able to leave abusive relationships, not seeking treatment for PPD due to feeling guilty, and on and on. All of the self-righteous crying out "but the poor babies" is part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Because the reality is the best parents are those who are also happy, healthy, and taking care of there own needs in addition to those of their children. Besides, how hypocritical are we as a society where we worship taking care of the needs of infants at the expense of the needs of the mother, and then bemoan the entitlement attitude of children. Does no one see the connection? ugh.
Can't rep you again.
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Originally Posted by MissTerri
Do you have any evidence that mom builds up a tolerance to the oxytocin her body produces when she breastfeeds? This is the first I've ever heard of this and don't believe it's true. The oxytocin that mom produces is a hormone, not a chemical. Like I said, not all moms can or wish to breastfeed and that's ok but if they do, staying at home makes it a lot easier.
Hormones are chemicals. Everything we experience is chemical. However it goes, whether a decrease in production or reduction in receptor sensitivity, it wanes over time. Otherwise we would continue to contract and experience all of the effects of oxytocin, but we don't.
Another point to be made here is about adoptive parents. Do you think adoptive mothers love their kids less, don't bond as well, etc?
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It's a rare for a family to be able to have both parents stay home full time. Just because mom stays home does not mean that dad is uninvolved and vice versa for the babies with stay at home dads. Same goes for kids who are in daycare.
That's not my point. My point is that it does the children no justice to perpetuate the likely myth that fathers are innately inferior in child rearing.
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I do think mom is the ideal for the reasons I stated when all circumstances are ideal. It would be awesome if both parents could stay home but in what world is that possible? I don't know any families where both parents are stay at home parents or who could even make that kind of choice. That doesn't mean that both parents wouldn't be involved.
I don't think any set of parents have their kids planted up their rear ends where they are together 24/7. My point is that it's equally important for children to have as much exposure to their fathers as their mothers, as much 1:1 time.
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You're calling bull**** on science and you're calling bull**** on the notion that men and women have biological differences. If it's bull**** then show me evidence men get pregnant, carry a babies in their nonexistent uterus, breastfeed and have a hormonal reaction to their milk letting down that causes them to be more responsive to their babies. Again, I'm not saying that men can't be nurturing involved, caring, loving parents but there are differences rooted in biology between moms and dads, men and women. Pretending that men and women are the same is not helping anyone.
I'm not calling bull on science nor am I claiming that there are not physiological differences between men and women. What I am calling bull on is the assertion that behavior, specifically parenting behavior, is dictated by innate, genetically rooted, gender differences. This is the gamut of evo-psych, of which I'm a bit familiar, and it's a load of horse manure.
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Good for you. Do what you feel is best. The great thing about feminism is that we have choices.
Too bad people cannot just respect those facts and stop the barking melodrama.
Hormones are chemicals. Everything we experience is chemical. However it goes, whether a decrease in production or reduction in receptor sensitivity, it wanes over time. Otherwise we would continue to contract and experience all of the effects of oxytocin, but we don't.
Another point to be made here is about adoptive parents. Do you think adoptive mothers love their kids less, don't bond as well, etc?
That's not my point. My point is that it does the children no justice to perpetuate the likely myth that fathers are innately inferior in child rearing.
I don't think any set of parents have their kids planted up their rear ends where they are together 24/7. My point is that it's equally important for children to have as much exposure to their fathers as their mothers, as much 1:1 time.
I'm not calling bull on science nor am I claiming that there are not physiological differences between men and women. What I am calling bull on is the assertion that behavior, specifically parenting behavior, is dictated by innate, genetically rooted, gender differences. This is the gamut of evo-psych, of which I'm a bit familiar, and it's a load of horse manure.
Too bad people cannot just respect those facts and stop the barking melodrama.
Someone did try to make that point early in the thread.
And planning to have a child so that one can make arrangements to actually raise that child during the first few years of its life? A point that keeps getting ignored, for obvious reasons.
I can tell you firsthand that sometimes life doesn't go as we plan. Nice for you that it did. Don't break your arm trying so hard to pat yourself on the back, there, because life may still turn around and teach you a lesson.
When people speak in absolutes it is obvious they have no idea what they are talking about.
The reality is experts talk about data. Quality child care, in the amounts we actually see in this country, is not going to cause developmental issues for children AND there are a subset of real, measurable BENEFITS in terms of development seen when children attend quality programs regardless of whether or not mothers work.
This is why all of those stamping there feet demanding it be acknowledged that only mothers are ideal, are just plain wrong. A loving father is just as good a parent as a loving mother (and anyone who needs to pull out the breast feeding card here is ignoring what the word parents means). A quality day care, whether for 5 hours a week or the 20 hours a week are not going to negatively change the outcome for children, because they are still being parented by their actual parents for most of the time.
This is even more true for infants, who do not work on a typical sleep schedule. Many infants sleep for the majority of time they are in daycare. My best friend would go to the day care on her lunch hour, feed her daughter who would then sleep most of the afternoon she was in the day care. She may have been in the daycare for 5 hours a day, but almost all of them she was asleep. And before everyone loses there mind that her situation isn't "typical" neither is the hypothetical of infants in daycare for 50 hours a week. And yet there are multiple people on this forum who are so quick to say she is a bad parent, or question why she would even have a child "just" to turn her over to daycare, or whatever.
Everyone talks about what "ideal" is for strangers without actually knowing what their situations are, and then apply that to groups they know nothing about like working vs stay at home mothers.
What matters is that people parents in a way that balances the needs of the child and the needs of the family. It is a mistake to take an all or nothing approach with the needs of the infant. That type of thinking is what leads to shaming of women for not parenting the "right way" and leads to far worse problems than those that come from spending time in daycare. Problems like mothers not being able to leave abusive relationships, not seeking treatment for PPD due to feeling guilty, and on and on. All of the self-righteous crying out "but the poor babies" is part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Because the reality is the best parents are those who are also happy, healthy, and taking care of there own needs in addition to those of their children. Besides, how hypocritical are we as a society where we worship taking care of the needs of infants at the expense of the needs of the mother, and then bemoan the entitlement attitude of children. Does no one see the connection? ugh.
I don't think I've ever seen such an effort to work around the obvious. I never said a father wasn't as good a caregiver as a mother. And to fire back that people are being "shamed," as a defense against facing the truth that a child, in the first formative years, absolutely needs its own parent caring for it is simply avoiding what is a patently obvious truth, and has been since the beginning of time. The fact that we live in a society that makes it absolutely necessary for both parents to work--since we do not offer extended maternity or paternity leave--makes it crucial that people plan and save in anticipation of having a child. I also said that sometimes all the planning in the world can't protect one from unforeseen circumstances that would require a parent or both parents from returning to work earlier than planned, and in such cases, we can only do the best we can do.
If you came back as a baby/child...would you want to be taken care of by a daycare worker, a babysitter or your mother.??
Mae
Hmm. My mother was a SAHM. I was born in 1958.
I can remember being home sick in bed and thinking, "Mommy lies. She always says she works so hard all day taking care of the house, but she's on the phone all the time." She was home, but she was emotionally not equipped to raise seven kids and deal with a disabled husband who had PTSD. We walked on eggshells for fear of setting off one of her screaming/crying jags.
My mother is still living at 88 and is a different person than she was when was a child, and we are close now, but frankly, with the the difficulties my sibs and I carry to this day because of the way she was when we were children, I would have been better off with a babysitter. As a matter of fact, Alice Faye Cleese in her excellent book How To Manage Your Mother writes of the "other mothers" we all have in our lives--grandmas, aunts, teachers, other women from whom we learn the things we did not learn from our mothers.
Just the fact that she "stays home" does not automatically qualify a woman as a "good mother".
I can remember being home sick in bed and thinking, "Mommy lies. She always says she works so hard all day taking care of the house, but she's on the phone all the time." She was home, but she was emotionally not equipped to raise seven kids and deal with a disabled husband who had PTSD. We walked on eggshells for fear of setting off one of her screaming/crying jags.
My mother is still living at 88 and is a different person than she was when was a child, and we are close now, but frankly, with the the difficulties my sibs and I carry to this day because of the way she was when we were children, I would have been better off with a babysitter. As a matter of fact, Alice Faye Cleese in her excellent book How To Manage Your Mother writes of the "other mothers" we all have in our lives--grandmas, aunts, teachers, other women from whom we learn the things we did not learn from our mothers.
Just the fact that she "stays home" does not automatically qualify a woman as a "good mother".
I love that. I have an aunt who never had any children of her own and every year on mother's day my cousins and I will send her a card and/or flowers too. She was always our second mom and she's one of my best friends and one of my favorite people to be around.
Hormones are chemicals. Everything we experience is chemical. However it goes, whether a decrease in production or reduction in receptor sensitivity, it wanes over time. Otherwise we would continue to contract and experience all of the effects of oxytocin, but we don't.
We experience the flood of oxytocin in response to our infants suckling. It stops when they stop. We don't however, build up a tolerance that impacts oxytocin release when nursing subsequent babies. You have offered no proof that it wanes over time.
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Another point to be made here is about adoptive parents. Do you think adoptive mothers love their kids less, don't bond as well, etc?
I am sure adoptive moms love their kids tons and I'm sure that they bond with them. Anyone who goes through all of the adoptive steps surely is wanting to be a mom badly and will love their child, bond with them etc. And since adoptive moms are women they will have the benefits of being hardwired for motherhood whether they gave birth to their child or not.
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That's not my point. My point is that it does the children no justice to perpetuate the likely myth that fathers are innately inferior in child rearing.
Dads play an important role in parenting, I just think that based on biology and in an ideal situation, mom makes the best primary care provider. I've said repeatedly that a loving father can also be an excellent caregiver/parent. Obviously they can. I also think a nanny could be amazing or a grandma, etc.
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I don't think any set of parents have their kids planted up their rear ends where they are together 24/7. My point is that it's equally important for children to have as much exposure to their fathers as their mothers, as much 1:1 time.
If one parent has to work the time simply can't be equal time whether it's mom working or dad working. Life is not fair. All things can't be equal. Of course quality time is important and ideally an infant will get lots of it from both mom and dad, no matter what the other factors happen to be.
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I'm not calling bull on science nor am I claiming that there are not physiological differences between men and women. What I am calling bull on is the assertion that behavior, specifically parenting behavior, is dictated by innate, genetically rooted, gender differences. This is the gamut of evo-psych, of which I'm a bit familiar, and it's a load of horse manure.
Agree to disagree. If you admit that there are physiological and biological differences between men and women then it would be hard pressed to deny that women and men are better suited for different things. Not limited to parenting .
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Too bad people cannot just respect those facts and stop the barking melodrama.
My comment was sincere. I am glad that we have choices. I'm not judging you or anyone else here. I sincerely believe that we should all do what works best for our families and in the end, I think that kids who come from households who have parents who love them, nurture them, etc. no matter what their parents work or stay at home status are lucky kids.
I also said that sometimes all the planning in the world can't protect one from unforeseen circumstances that would require a parent or both parents from returning to work earlier than planned, and in such cases, we can only do the best we can do.
Where have you been the last 10 years with the great recession, record unemployment, retirement losses, home losses? People have been losing their shirts and you poo poo people for working because they can. And you have a criteria that the only people who should procreate are people like you. C'mon.
Report all you want. Such a statement, however, is an evasion, not a response. If people's finances are such that they cannot have a child and care for that child even for the first couple of years of life, then perhaps they should wait to have a child until they can. Not rocket science.
And really, who made you the arbiter who decides when people should start a family?
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