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Get that Dander Up, Up, Up
Bossa Nova in the Morning
Indian Summer
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Yes, Katrina
Soap Box Interlude
I Want to be Evil
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Is It Possible?
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Inner Child vs. Voice of Reason
Syndicated advice columnist Carolyn Hax writes an interesting advice column, and the Washington Post hosts a weekly live chat with her and archives the transcripts.
Last week, a plaintive so-and-so wrote in about what she felt was the only problem in her marriage, and that was her husband's unwillingness to let them leave their child with a babysitter once in a while:
"What do you do when your spouse doesn't believe in me-time, at ALL? Our child is TWO and my husband and I have yet to have an evening out by ourselves. I've taken a very few blocks of a few hours of me-time (we're talking half a dozen in two years), always offering (pretty much insisting) that my husband take an equal or greater amount of time, but he never has. He says he doesn't need me-time, and that I shouldn't have decided to have a kid if I wanted any. I've pretty much resigned myself to not having any personal time or adults-only/couples time, but I really think that just a few hours once a MONTH would keep stress at bay and help me feel recharged. When I've pressed the issue, he's told me that if I'm going to be an absentee parent, he might as well just divorce me and get full custody and have me pay child support (this is for suggesting a once-a-month break). I definitely don't want a divorce, and we don't have any other problems in our marriage aside from this issue. Should I just let it go?"
Ms. Hax responded sensibly, expressing shock at the man's excessive, hurtful behavior and recommended counseling. (The link provides a transcript of the entire chat session.)
Fair enough, but Yikes- this husband was not alone in his zero to 60 jump to hysteria. A bunch of shrill voices rose up to agree with him, self-righteously proclaiming that it is immoral and neglectful to spend time away from one's child. Untold emotional damage could be done to your baby if you left him or her with a babysitter and selfishly took in a movie. These folks would have the social workers at Child Protective Services working double shifts during holiday time when people commit repeated bits of savagery by going to parties.
I don't think we're floating in a sea of new reactionary ideas. Publishing companies have been cranking out parenting manuals hand over fist for ages, and they've gone through various fashions. There is, though, something that happens- whether it comes from a book or is spun out of the whole cloth of the mind- when rules about being a parent get pronounced: they become religion on earth.
How is kicking up your heels for an evening while your kid snoozes (under the care of a sitter, natch) tantamount to neglect? It isn't, so why internalize the lie? Why force oneself to feel trapped and guilty for even having the urge to get away? Where is the reward? And why is it necessary to compose such extreme and unforgiving standards that deny pleasure if it is connected to anything apart from the family?
Of course being a parent is something, once begun, that never stops. But it is also something that simply is and the privileges won't be terminated (one hopes) because a babysitter comes once in a while. Object permanence is something that infants learn as part of their larger cognitive development. When they're about eight months old, they start to realize that people (and things) can come and go. (And this can lead to problems with separation anxiety, which is another set of problems, but those are generated by the child, not the parents.) It seems as if the adults who refuse to go out on principal are in some way questioning baby permanence. The baby will, of course, persist without them.
This is sacrifice with no point, self-denial with no reward, except the possible possibility that such rigor will bring on such a superior obnoxious attitude that no one will want to invite you to dinner any more after all.
posted by Elise at 8:55 AM
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