How to be a bad parent

[ailbhe]

It's very, very easy to be a bad parent. Especially if you're a woman. Especially if you're a mother. Especially if you're a birth mother. Because that's the kind of bad parent I'm being, and if I can, anyone can! I should know; I've read a lot of how-to books.

Do you breastfeed? Yes? You're creating a dependent child, a rod for your own back, a needy person. No? You're a neglectful mother, failing to give your baby the best start in life - after all, even adoptive mothers can lactate and breastfeed, if they only try hard enough.

Do you use a pacifier / soother / dummy? You're creating a dependent child (see above).

Does your child sleep in a cot? Abandonment! In your bed? Neediness and possibly even cot death.

Do you carry your child around during the day? Maybe even in a sling? Backache, neediness, dependence, and inhibiting development by not letting them learn to play on their own. Do you leave your child to play alone, possibly even in a playpen, while you go to the toilet or cook dinner? Abandonment, neglect, child abuse!

Cloth nappies and disposables both reliably cause more nappy rash than each other.

Your child is wearing too many or too few clothes.

Your child has too many or too few baths, and you're using too much soap and drying out the skin, or not enough and risking infection.

Your child is exposed to too many or too few other children, encouraging aggression either through too little socialisation, or through too much competition. Also, infections - too many or too few, depending on what the top theory is right now.

I refuse to cover vaccinations in this list. I am Not Going There.

Your child has too many or too few regular caregivers, either developing too many strong attachments or losing stability and continuity.

Your child is eating all the wrong things, and at all the wrong times. Trust me on this.

And if you breastfeed, you don't have enough milk unless your child is sleeping through the night at 8 weeks and going at least 4 hours between feeds during the day.

Hmph. Books.

Comments

[firecat]

One wonders how any humans survived past infancy what with all those bad mothers out there.

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

Just what I was thinking.

[charlosmum.livejournal.com]

And yet, most of us turn out all right, in spite of our parents' best efforts. It's a wonder, isn't it?

[feetnotes.livejournal.com]

what a wonderful load of bollocks about being a mother - i beg your pardon, what a truly astonishing commonwealth of advice and information concerning the one right and proper mode of motherhood - and of parenting in general, i suspect - is out there...

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Ah, but books are lovely things!

It's advice/self-help books that are to be avoided. Or, per the acerbic Mrs. Parker, hurled at great force ... perhaps in the direction of the author.

[ailbhe]

I'm not totally sure that I want to follow Dot's advice on childcare though.

Unless Gina Ford shows up...

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Well, there you have it: A perfect illustration of my point. (-:

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

You could always follow Ambrose Bierce's (although I suspect you won't want to) "Study Herod, madam, study Herod".

I was intrigued by a recent newspaper article on mothers who breastfeed "too long". Funny, it's exactly contradictory to all the other stuff I've heard about breastfeed - only two years ago, IIRC, the same newspaper was talking about how you *must* breastfeed at least a year.

[suzylou.livejournal.com]

Another reason why I'm too scared to become a mother - I would be so scared of failure, of judgement, of somehow fucking it up.

However - you clearly love Linnea more than anything, and you're doing what seems right to you to make her into a good, healthy, moral person. If more parents did that the world would be a much better place.

[ailbhe]

I am not touching moral issues with a bargepole. (a) I have no bargepole, and (b) "Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!"

[feetnotes.livejournal.com]

if you'd like one, i could probably get hold of one and bring it along to ccde. it mightn't be a fourteen foot one, though.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I cherish my father's only piece of advice on the subject in the entire fifteen months since I became a parent:

"She's healthy, happy, learning and loves you. You're four for four. Nothing else matters. Relax."

[hypatia.livejournal.com]

You are forgetting your place.

There is only one lesson you actually need to know about motherhood, a little rule which holds irrespective of whether you are at home, in the Arctic, breastfeeding, beerfeeding, vaccinating, bedsharing, smacking, not smacking. Its independent of class, education, race, creed, money, age or era -

"A mother's place is in the wrong"

Say it like a mantra because if you always keep that in mind you will never be taken by surprise, disappointed or shocked, just calmly grateful that there are so very, many people able to guide you to the path of righteousness all of whom are so amazingly willing.

Now if they could just agree on *which* path I'd be in Nirvana.

[lovingboth]

Ah, yes. Extendable to "A parent's place..." too, even if I didn't get nearly as many "you're doing this wrong" comments during the six months of full-time parenting.

[sarajoyo.livejournal.com]

Cloth nappies and disposables both reliably cause more nappy rash than each other.

This made me giggle more than any of the others, but all of it is well said. (As are your other writings.)