Mother

It’s worth ques­tion­ing your own ideas about par­ent­hood, and whether what you think of as a mother’s role isn’t just as applic­a­ble to fathers.

Atti­tudes to fathering

Tra­di­tion­ally, fathers came home from work expect­ing the home to be clean, the chil­dren ready for bed, and a meal on the table. Today, it’s hard to believe that many mod­ern moth­ers would stand for this.

Some women still expect their part­ners to han­dle all the fam­ily finances, some times to their dis­ad­van­tage. It’s a good idea if cou­ples can find a fair way to share their finan­cial burdens.

It’s often assumed that men do all the heavy work. How­ever, while a man must do this when his part­ner is preg­nant and the baby is young, women are big­ger and stronger than they used to be, and these tasks can be shared.

Women still tend to take on the chores while their part­ners play with the baby, even when both par­ents work. It’s much bet­ter, though, if both of you play with your baby care, and share the house work equally.

Some women leave dis­ci­pline to their part­ners, but this is both out dated and a cop out. Try to agree on atti­tudes to dis­ci­pline and apply them consistently.

You may never do any­thing more impor­tant than bring­ing up a child. How­ever sat­is­fy­ing your career, what­ever sports or leisure goals you’ve achieved, you’ll find par­ent­hood is a role that is reward­ing in a way that is unlike any­thing else.

Fol­low­ing Your Instincts

The instinct to bear chil­dren is a strong one, and luck­ily the joy and ful­fill­ment felt by most par­ents far out weigh some of the incon­ve­niences and com­pro­mises that they may have to accept. Although this isn’t always so, mak­ing the deci­sion to have a child usu­ally comes from with in a close, lov­ing rela­tion­ship between two peo­ple who decide that they would like to express their mutual affec­tion in hav­ing a baby. This is just as well ­ you’re unlikely to make the deci­sion because you’re attracted by the idea of reduced free time, never being able to put your self first, sleep­less­ness, and fork­ing out for designer infant clothes! lf you think care­fully about the changes brought about by par­ent­hood, you’ll real­ize that it’s your genes that are push­ing you relent­lessly toward recre­at­ing your selves in the form of chil­dren. Now a days, peo­ple don’t like to admit that they might be at the beck and call of basic urges and tend to dress them up as some­thing more refined. That’s fine, so long as we remem­ber that we can also push back and say no to par­ent­hood. For some, that can be the best deci­sion, because hav­ing a baby is a com­mit­ment like no other.

More Than Just Nature

A.side from bio­log­i­cal rea­sons, peo­ple also want to have a baby for ful­fill­ment and per­sonal achieve­ment. Human beings arc social ani­mals, and the way they think and act always has a social clement. This is shown most clearly in human par­ent­hood in thc case of adop­tion, where (usu­ally) two peo­ple vol­un­tar­ily make a com­mit­ment to assume all the rights and duties of nat­ural par­ents, while being genet­i­cally unre­lated to the child. Adop­tion also illus­trates the depth of the emo­tional need that peo­ple feel to nur­ture, edu­cate and above all, love a child. What you give to your chil­dren in time, love, under­stand­ing, and teach­ing will con­stantly be repaid as you watch them grow and develop over the years. Every child is genet­i­cally a blend of his par­ents, but he is also a unique per­son­al­ity in his own right, and know­ing that you have been the pri­mary influ­ences and edu­ca­tors in allow­ing that per­son­al­ity to take shape and mature is deeply enrich­ing as well as being a major achievement.

Social And Eco­nomic Pressures

In a soci­ety where every­one goes to school, every­one expects to go to school. Sim­i­larly, when every one except a small minor­ity has chil­dren, peo­ple expect to have chil­dren. It’s as though a per­son has to have a rea­son for remain­ing child­less, rather than the oppo­site. In the past, when fam­i­lies tended to live close together, in the same street or vil­lage if not actu­ally in the same house, there were quite impor­tant eco­nomic rea­sons for hav­ing chil­dren. As soon as they were old enough to work, chil­dren made a vital con­tri­bu­tion to the family’s eco­nomic wel­fare, and par­ent­hood was also a guar­an­tee of being cared for in old age.

Chang­ing Demands

In the much more frag­mented soci­ety in which we live today, chil­dren aren’t expected to con­tribute to the fam­ily income (at least not until they have fin­ished their edu­ca­tion), and the state has taken over some of the basic respon­si­bil­i­ties for the elderly, or peo­ple make their own pro­vi­sion for old age. As a result, the eco­nomic demands of the fam­ily are now directed down­ward, from par­ents to chil­dren, instead of the other way around. Bring­ing up chil­dren today can be a costly busi­ness, and not just finan­cially. For the first time in his­tory, large num­bers of women can achieve a whole range of sat­is­fac­tions out side par­ent­hood and the home; and with safe meth­ods of con­tra­cep­tion, they can also choose when and whether they want to have chil­dren. This doesn’t mean that large num­bers of women are opt­ing out of moth­er­hood, though some are; but what they are doing is fit­ting hav­ing and bring­ing up chil­dren in to lives where work and a career are also seen as theirs by right.

A Ques­tion Of Upbringing

Hav­ing begun to con­sider par­ent­hood seri­ously, the first thing to real­ize before you go fur­ther is that hav­ing a baby is just the over­ture to bring­ing up a child. It isn’t too dif­fi­cult to imag­ine hav­ing a baby the excite­ment, the cel­e­bra­tions, the delighted grand­par­ents, the sup­port­ive friends and fam­ily. But it’s almost impos­si­ble to visu­al­ize bring­ing up a child if you haven’t done it. The demands in time, energy, and emo­tion are almost lim­it­less, unless of course the first thing you’re going to teach your tod­dler is how to use the remote con­trol for the TV and VCR. This isn’t an option for most peo­ple because, even before you become par­ents, you’ll have some idea of the kind of peo­ple you hope your chil­dren will grow up to be, and of the upbring­ing that will make this idea a reality.

A Firm Foundation

Upbring­ing begins from the moment of birth. For a baby care or young child, every­thing is a learn­ing expe­ri­ence, so how you care for your baby is influ­en­tial from day one. It’s worth look­ing at the back­ground of some one you know who is inde­pen­dent but has a large capac­ity to love and inter­re­late with oth­ers, who is effec­tive and con­fi­dent, who rec­og­nizes that there is such a thing as the gen­eral good, and wants to con­tribute to it. You’ll prob­a­bly find that per­son found the world an accept­ing, lov­ing, encour­ag­ing, rea­son­able, and respect­ful place from birth. His par­ents made him feel that way, and the foun­da­tion for every­thing he has become was pro­vided by them in his first year of life.

Father

It’s a good idea to be clear about your own atti­tude to par­ent­ing to make sure it doesn’t rein­force tra­di­tional stereo types about moth­ers and fathers. What you may think of as a mother’s role can be just as applic­a­ble to fathers.

Atti­tudes to mothering

While it’s still true that it’s mostly women who stay at home, many are now return­ing to work within months of the birth. Also, more and more men are becom­ing stay at home dads.

Recent sur­veys show that women, even full time work­ing moth­ers, still do most of the chores in the home. Ask your self if this is fair there’s no rea­son why cook­ing and clean­ing can’t be shared.

Tasks such as deal­ing with care givers and teach­ers and tak­ing the kids to school used to be seen as a mother’s respon­si­bil­ity. But more fathers are fit­ting daily activ­i­ties like tak­ing their child to the doc­tor into their work­ing day.

It used to be thought that moth­ers put chil­dren to bed, but most fathers enjoy the bed time rou­tine, espe­cially if they’ve been away from their chil­dren all day.

The idea preva­lent not so long ago that it was some­how demean­ing for a man to push a stroller is now laugh­able. Men are pleased to be seen doing this and are also more than happy to take their chil­dren out with out their partners.