No Ladies' Weekend, more thoughts

(Scroll up for the results of the early riser question.)

This is a response to this post.

Sarah said, "What a thought provoking question. I love how the way we see this letter provides a little view into our own heads. A mini personality test."

That really seems to hit this one on the head! I think we all brought our own assumptions to this situation. (And I was hoping to avoid more hurt feelings about my comments about attachment parenting gone to extremes. I wish I'd been able to express it the way Another Reader did: "We practice Attachment Parenting, not Attachment Mothering." And of course AP doesn't cause any more identity problems in mothers than other parenting styles do. I thought that would be obvious in what I wrote, but I guess it wasn't.)

One thing I didn't mention in my original response, but which informed everything I wrote, was the part in the initial question about how S and her husband are always fighting and how even when A and Nikki were in her town for a visit S still only wanted to stay home and watch her daughter play.

S and her husband are constantly fighting and since she never wants to leave her daughter we end up spending the whole weekend sitting around her living room or doing only toddler-friendly activities.

I don't think this is healthy. First of all, if S and her husband fight so much and so constantly that they can't even control it and be civil for a weekend in front of other people, that's not a good sign for her marriage. And it also sounds like she really doesn't trust her husband for even a few hours with her daughter (even just to play with the daughter while S and the friends are drinking coffee and talking in the kitchen). Why?

My hope, and what I based my answer on, was that she's lost herself in the mothering thing. Because the other scenarios--that the father is abusive, that S is having mood problems or other problems that are causing her to misjudge her husband--are not good at all.

Many commenters said, and I completely agree, that S just doesn't seem to want to spend a weekend with her friends. Now that Nikki's reported back that S made an excuse not to come even when they asked her to bring her daughter along, it's pretty clear that she doesn't want to hang out with them anymore. She could be so consumed by motherhood that she doesn't feel like they have anything in common now. She could be having such problems in her marriage that she's feeling like all her emotional resources are going to that and she just can't make the effort. She could feel like A and Nikki hurt her feelings in some way and she doesn't want to make the effort to see them. She could be feeling too poor to keep up with Nikki and A. Who knows? But this is a separate issue from what's going on with S and her daughter and husband.

A couple of people brought up cultural issues about leaving your child. I definitely think this should be taken into account. I was raised in the midwest and (in my family, at least) the idea that anyone would leave a baby is preposterous and that anyone would leave a toddler for anything that wasn't a medical emergency is rare. (And yes, Elizabeth, I think things are different on the East Coast, from what I've observed. And here in NYC all bets are off. There are people who leave 8-week-olds with a nanny to go off on a vacation cruise, and there are people who wouldn't ever separate overnight from a 10-year-old.) But it also seems like such a normal assumption to me that people would just say outright, "I don't feel comfortable leaving her" instead of offering up excuses about the father not being able to handle the child, etc.

NumNum and a few other commenters brought up the fact that it's no one's business but the parents if and when they leave their child overnight. Very true. It just seems like there's something going on with this story that just doesn't add up. I was emailing with a commenter about this, and we both agreed that there was something about this story that's staying with us, and that it just doesn't make sense.

That's what sticks with me. A sense that there's something not right about S's situation. Not that she doesn't want to leave her daughter, or that she doesn't want to leave her daughter with the grandparents. And not even that she doesn't really want to spend the weekend with her friends (as the update from Nikki tells us). It just makes me worry about her relationship with her husband, her self-image, and her mental state that she's making excuses instead of saying "I just don't feel like I can take this time right now" or something else more direct.

I hope that this is one of those situations that turned into a game of Telephone and got twisted in the retelling. Otherwise, the daughter could be in the middle of a bad situation with S and her husband.

Comments

[Jody]

Yeah, something doesn't quite feel right (especially the whole "we sit around watching the toddler play" thing -- in fact mostly that thing) but I'm not sure how we figure out what the not-right issue is.

I'm tempted to say that the only thing we know for certain is that S doesn't feel comfortable telling these two friends what's going on. Also that she's choosing to watch her toddler play rather than go out with these two friends. And that a woman with a young toddler is fighting a lot with her husband while these two friends are around.

Do we have enough information to assume that she's talking to no one? That this is her behavior with every friend? That she fights with her husband when these friends aren't around? I don't know -- maybe Nikki can tell us more, and is more certain that these are global problems.

And it's certainly NOT Nikki's fault that her friend is treating her this way. I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm just saying: no one can know that a particular behavior is consistent or universal, especially if they're out-of-town friends.

To give the most telling example from my life of how limited our views are of other people's lives: my mother's impressions of my marriage and family life are deeply, profoundly skewed by the fact that her very presence RADICALLY alters how we all behave. And I get very tired of her sweeping pronouncements of "what needs fixing," when she's completely oblivious that what often needs fixing is that she needs to leave.

Now, Nikki is not S's mother, so it wouldn't necessarily be a great endorsement for S's life if Nikki's presence had such a disorienting effect on S's life.

I'm just thinking that there's a difference between using a story to talk about some of the very real dangers of early childhood mothering and assuming that those dangers are actually operational in this story. How much do we really know here?

[Elizabeth]

Moxie, I re-read your original answer and also my comment, and I feel that I expressed myself clumsily in regards to the cultural thing - I was trying to say that as an AP parent it must be tough not to doubt oneself in NYC where the culture seems so un-AP. I think you actually understood what I meant but I commented right after I woke up and was not really very clear at all, and my response sounds (to me) very critical of your response to the questioner - which wasn't my intention at all, I was just trying to give my point of view which I felt was a bit different from yours.
It does sound like S. just doesn't want to get together, for whatever reason. I think this question hit a small nerve for me because there is a part of me that wonders, will I ever want to be apart from my daughter? She is only 1 now and so it seems normal not to want to separate from her for any length of time, but what if I still feel this way ten years from now? What if I don't, what if I want to send her to grandma's all the time? When I contemplate it, it kind of breaks my heart that I will ever want to spend long periods of time away from her, and I can't decide what that says about me - whether it's a healthy sign or not. (As usual I am projecting into the future, which will take care of itself - so many things I worried about when she was a newborn already look so silly.) Maybe there is some part of me that is also jealous of people who have girlfriends they go away with on weekend trips? I never really considered that possibility until now, but, maybe I am. Anyway, it was a thought-provoking exchange - thanks! (And I am posting again shortly after I wake up so apologies if I have not expressed myself well. Major sleep deprivation going on here, due to insomnia, not that it's an excuse for incomprehensible commentary.)

[Num Num]

I have great faith in Moxie's intuition and advise Nikki to have that as well.

As to what I said, I didn't mean it's no one's business in a dismissive way, and I'm sorry if people took it that way. I'm very sensitive right now to giving advice when necessary (baby needs to drink more when it's hot out) and really leaving it up to the parents when it's not. To me, it's one way parents develop confidence. As much as I adore my granddaughter, I need always to defer to her parents, unless of course they become insane, in which case, I'll be back to askmoxie what to do.

[Krapsnart]

Thanks for the summary, and for such a sensitive and thoughtful answer to the question in the first place. My first baby still has another 18 weeks or so in the oven, and I'm glad to have some time now to read up on the issues that face new parents. I'm impressed by the quality of discussion here, too.

Also, many thanks for commenting on my blog post about home birth. That comment is how I found you.