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The problem of Susan
(file.garden)
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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
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Kids generate a lot of anxiety and no small amount of trauma (particularly for the person carrying the pregnancy to term). Even before the child arrives, there's also the real possibility of failed pregnancies. I have dozens of friends with kids, but I can count the number of women who have never experienced a miscarriage on one hand. Then there's the first six months of caring for a newborn, which is intense. There are childhood injuries and illnesses that you feel as fiercely as if they'd happened to you. And there's the general process of watching a child mature into an adult, and the emotional turbulence of that process.
There's also the experience of watching an elder loved one - a grandparent or parent or beloved aunt/uncle - grow infirm and die. It weighs on you, both directly as a caregiver and indirectly as a reminder of the mortality of younger loved ones.
Grief has a huge impact on personality.
Becoming a parent is not necessarily about trauma and anxiety - not everyone reacts this way, some people genuinely enjoy becoming parents, including women. What I think is kind of almost universal though, is the new responsibility. That can force you to mature too.
I fully agree on the losing loved ones part.
No. There's a great deal of joy in being a parent, too. But a big part of caring for a child - particularly a toddler or per-adolecent - is having one eye open to the child's safety, constantly. Kids be doing crazy shit. Its normal and healthy, from a development perspective. But terrifying for a caretaker, whenever the kid behaves recklessly (or in any way the caretaker perceives as reckless).
Its an inherent trade-off. Watching a kid walk for the first time or ride a bike for the first time inevitably means watching them fall or crash. The agony and the ecstasy.
I know very well what you're talking about and I feel pretty competent to say that not everyone reacts with anxiety or even traumato a reckles child. Not everyone's feelings are on the same level in the same situation.