While reading “Thinking About the
Baby” by Walzer, I couldn’t help but think about how it compares to my
parents. Beginning with the
section of the article about worrying, I knew that this all too well applied to
my parents. My mom is constantly
worrying about me when I am home, but I do not feel that she worries as much
when I am at school. I believe
this is her ability to control when I am at home and knowing what I am doing. When Walzer states that mothers feel
that worrying is part of being a good mother I wonder if that is due to the
fact that they have the ability to control. For example, if my mom tells me to brush my teeth every
night when I am younger, it shows that she always thinks about me doing that
and worries about the health of my mouth.
Regardless of my own decision to brush my teeth every night, she would
still tell me too. So this leads
me to believe that the ability to control and tell your child what to do
reinforces the need to worry.
Aside from my own mother, this part of the article reminded me perfectly
of my friend’s mom and dad. I was
in Barcelona with them two summers ago and one night before my buddy and I went
out, his mom broke down crying.
She was crying because she was worried about letting us go out. Meanwhile my friends dad was sitting in
a chair just watching this all go on and looked completely un-phased with us
going out.
The second part Walzer explains is about “Managing the
Divisions of Labor”. I was most intrigued
by this section. From what Walzer
shows, it sounds like the Mothers do most of the work, and the only times
fathers do the work is when their partner asks them too. Not saying the fathers do no work or do
not want to do the work, they just simply do not do it until they are
asked. This is very surprising to
me. All of the quotes Walzer used
shed a lot of light on this area.
The one quote that stood out to me was: “I do diapers. Joel can't handle
it well. You know, he does diapers too, but not if there's poop in them.” This seems funny to me. Aren’t men supposed to be the ones that
can handle the nasty stuff and not women?
Certainly it seems that way when society looks at it. So when it comes
to changing poopy diapers why are the roles reversed?
Josephine Bingler
ReplyDeleteI completely agree and relate to how your mom constantly worries about you while you're home, but not as much when you're at school. It definitely is in their ability to control our actions more when we are in their presence. My father was incredibly laid-back and pretty uninvolved in my life growing up. But what also played an interesting role in my childhood was having a brother who was 9 years older than I was. My brother almost took on a role of an overprotective and overbearing father. He was incredibly involved in who my friends were and where I was going. It was very interesting to see those different levels (my mother, father, and brother) of involvement in my life growing up. I understand that my father was the breadwinner but it makes me wonder if that can really be an excuse for father's to be unattached and uninvolved in their children's lives?
I liked how you talked about the diapers. Men don't usually have the responsibility of changing diapers and I think that is ridiculous! In movies and TV shows, men are always seen with their noses pinched and using various tools like tongs to change a babies diaper. I ask the same question, how do the roles become reversed? Why it the woman's job to do everything "baby" like changing the diapers or getting the child dressed? Men just seem to accept that their role is not to buy the child clothes or meet with the child's teachers. My mom ALWAYS attended the teacher-parent conferences which automatically made her so much more involved in my life growing up. I believe men need to shed the idea of just being responsible for providing income and need to become just as involved in their children's lives. Raising a child is too much of a responsibility for just a mother to have.
I agree with the notion that mother's worry constantly while father's do not express as much concern over a child's whereabouts and safety. Like your friend's mother who was concerned about you having a night out while his dad remained stoic about the entire situation, my father is constantly telling my mother to relax or he removes himself from a situation when her worrying becomes too profuse. Whenever I would go out late at night, my mother would say that she would not sleep (and usually didn't) until I came home and was safely in my bed, whereas my father's lack of extreme worry did not disturb his sleep. I actually think that the extreme worry that mother's must endure may take away from the leisure time that they spend with their child doing more fun, less worry-provoking activities. My mom was the "all-business" parent who scheduled our doctors appointments and was involved in our academics, while my father who, as the man, did not feel pressured to constantly worry, was the "all-fun-all-the-time" parent, who could allow himself to engage in fun activities with us since he did not have to allocate as much time to planning or worrying. It seems rather unfair that women have to shoulder the burdens of care taking, yet have less relaxed, leisure time to spend with their children than the fathers, whose relationship with the children is much more lax. Unlike fathers, a lack of worry does not "reflect on them as parents" like it does on a mother, whose job title is supposed to be a "professional worrier." If a mother is not constantly worrying than she may feel like she is doing an inadequate job as a parent even if her worries seem rather irrational. By worrying, a mother is trying to mentally monitor what and how her child is doing. My mother would always make assumptions as to what my brother could be up to when he was out late at night and, like most mothers, she feared that he would do something that would be a poor reflection on her as a mother.
ReplyDeleteI definitely had similar experiences with my Mom always being the one to worry more about me and my brother. More often than not, my Dad was telling my Mom to relax, or would accuse her of being too overprotective of us. I feel like this is the experience that many people have with their parents. When I was younger, I would always go to my Dad if I wanted something because I knew that he would be more likely to say yes than my Mom. I feel like many Dads feel that it is their job to be the "fun parent." This could be in part because many Dads spend less time with their children than their mothers do, so they feel they shouldn't be disciplining their children during the limited time they spend with them. Thinking back on all my friends' parents when I was younger, it was always their mothers who would text them when it was getting late, or like Alexa's Mom, would be unable to sleep before they got home. While on the other hand, sometimes their Dads, like my Dad, wouldn't even realize that they had left.
ReplyDeleteI sympathize and have had similar experiences with my mother worrying about me. Whenever I am home and go out to see any of my friends, my mother always asks me a bunch of questions and gives me a worried look but tells me to be safe and sends me on my way. My father, since he does not live with us because my parents are divorced, does not have this luxury, although I do believe he still worries about me. He worries more about long term things, like the future, and constantly suggests that I should study computers even though I tell him I am not interested. "There is a lot of money in computing" he always tells me, but I definitely don't see myself as the type of person to sit in front of a computer all day. I want to have a more hands on job, although I am unsure of what yet. This is the only thing that concerns him; he has never been one to censor anything in our lives like our media intake, whereas my mother has. My father does not worry about my friends or the choices that I am making, but he seems to instinctively know that I am a good kid, and therefore believes he doesn't have to worry about me.
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