Parenthood, particularly in some communities is like entering some kind of twilight zone.
In particular I’ve been shocked at how many fathers do almost nothing in terms of childcare. It’s a shame that there isn’t a more general expectation on fathers to look after their kids at least to some extent, and that not looking after your kids isn’t considered socially unacceptable.
I don’t believe this is just the fault of “men”, but I think it comes from a surprising lack on understanding in terms of how much work looking after kids is. It’s pretty much a 16 hour a day job for the first few years. If you don’t have someone to help it’s almost unbearable.
It's unfortunately understandable that this behavior would evolve, culturally if not biologically. Because of our reproductive systems, men are incentivized to play the numbers game and women to invest in created offspring.
That said, I agree it's a shame when it actually plays out that way and our society as a whole (and even fathers in modern society) lose out.
> It's unfortunately understandable that this behavior would evolve, culturally if not biologically. Because of our reproductive systems, men are incentivized to play the numbers game and women to invest in created offspring.
Fathers have multiple physical adaptations for fatherhood that are very important. The idea that fathers experience no hormonal or physical changes is not scientific.
Much like mothers, though, if they remove themselves from the proximity of their children these effects cease.
I'm not talking about physical adaptations. It's the numbers game. Fathers can spread their genes with little effort, so biologically and reproductively they are "incentivized" to generate multiple offspring and devote less time raising them. Mothers (at least for mammals) have a lot of skin in the game for each offspring (9 months worth for humans). Have you ever been pregnant? You don't want to go through that any more times than you have to.
In summary, men are more likely than women to be reproductively successful with a low effort child rearing strategy. Is it the best strategy overall in modern society? I don't think so, but you can see how we'd evolve that way.
This is such reddit-jargon laden prose I feel like my browser must lying to me. Am I on Reddit?
1. Neither the premise of spreading genes with "little effort" nor the bit about incentivization is actually true unless you have a very odd definition "less time". While lifelong monogamy may not be an obvious strategy, communal child rearing that involves fathers has been the norm for most of recorded history in all civilizations, with poor and absent fathering nearly always being villified unless needs of the community outweighed it.
2. Lots of women have multiple children, no problem. Many elect to go back through it again. This idea that pregnancy wracks every woman is just ridiculous.
It's not even clear we evolved that way. Looking at our near genetic relatives, they don't actually do things the way you're describing and communal living isn't "a group of females desperately trying to avoid pregnancy as males raid and ravage them."
Ugh, I feel like my nuanced point just got crushed by a steamroller piloted by a straw man. I'm not arguing a political agenda, if that's what your first line was getting at. Go back and read it again. Or don't. I guess I don't care anymore.
There’s an evolutionary underpinning driving a statistical difference in rearing behavior of males and females. You’d expect mothers to always commit more resources to their children because (1) eggs are expensive and spermm is cheap and the number or progeny is limited (2) high cuckolding rates also imply that men will hedge by spending less resources on their family. (3) Males may take a different strategy that contributes to the family which involve risk taking and high mortality rates (there’s no free lunch).
It seems to be one of those double standards that a lot of people are still okay with for some reason. The one that still gets me is "women having it all" (children and a career). Why can't this be "parents" instead? We're not all living in the 1950s anymore.
I can't produce milk but I can do everything else. So in the middle of the night when the breast is done if baby is unsettled I can take care of this, which can take ages.
Sharing this exhausting and sometimes excruciating workload is a big part of parenthood here. It is also ultimately highly rewarding; editing this as she's just about fallen asleep in my arms, gorgeous thing.
I am all for a 50/50 split if both parents want to work or even a stay at home dad. But, it's more than just breastfeeding.
Giving birth is hard from a few weeks and arguably months before to a few weeks and or months after. That naturally tends to taking a few months off and hey infant needs a lot of care so when not extend that a little. Add a second pregnancy at 1-3 years after the fist and it's easy to end up with a stay at home mom.
Now, this is far from the only pattern, but it is common for real biological reasons.
I'm not even saying it's a 50/50 split because unless you're exceedingly well off, or perhaps consulting from home, it is not going to be that initially - if you want baby to be breastfed, which is ideal whenever possible, someone's got to bring in the income.
I merely took objection to the exclusionary term that is motherhood, because in this context I deal with screaming babies a lot - as a father. That is not "motherhood", it is "parenthood".
Unless it's all about single women bringing their babies up alone? I saw no reference to that in TFA.
It's a bit like craftsman vs craftsperson, not that I really wanted to go there. But there are real reasons for using more inclusionary terms even when the traditional "feel more natural" (to the speaker / author) or whatever.
The AAP and WHO both endorse this position, and I can't find a reputable leading health org that argues otherwise.
The more I read about the basis of the claim though the more confused I get.
Parenting advice sites all point out that it helps child immunity. But the underlying studies are based on the ingestion of immunoglobulin, which doesn't even survive digestion. So essentially it protects the esophagus against waterborne illnesses, ie, mainly those no longer common in the developed world. That definitely makes sense in terms of evolutionarily-relevant child mortality threats, but that context is always omitted.
Or you get claims of improved cognition, then find meta-analysis that can't reproduce any results after five years.
Parenting guidance seems full of replication crisis issues, even in the medical literature. That's been the most eye opening thing about becoming a parent... people's strong interest in parenting makes it hard to explain the poor state of the data on the topic.
That's not the whole story (re: immunoglobulin). You're right in broad-brush strokes. The abstract at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12850343 has some quick notes on the broader context. For immunoglobulin in particular, when you say "doesn't survive digestion," you're missing the substantial amounts of IgA (ok, milk sIgA) in the intestine. There it will bind with lots of bad stuff, preventing said bad stuff from causing an immune response. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3257684/ is one place to read about this.)
You also must consider all the leukocytes in breast milk. Both maternal and infant infections cause huge increases in leukocyte production. There is a theory (hard to test) that babies like to stick their hands in mom's mouth while breastfeeding so that mom gets baby germs, and then mom will make appropriate leukocytes. Bizarrely, baby backwash (into the breast! while feeding!) also leads to maternal immunological response. Fun fact: breast milk from the same mom can vary in color dramatically (from blue to white to yellow) and a lot of that has to do with the contents, with yellow in particular generally having a high leukocyte content.
I'm a little biased. We got a lot of information pushing us not to supplement from health professionals and organizations, and nothing on the risks of failure to thrive or the case for supplementation. We had a calorie deficit no one caught, because measuring breast milk consumption is opaque, and no one talks about low consumption with the same fervor. They should though, it's an issue that drove an entire industry of wet nurses before formula (who were in turn criticised as unnatural in their day). They say breast if possible, but never detail how to tell the difference between just doing the hard work, or just banging your head against an immovable wall.
This inconsistency in advice, even though calorie deficits are incredibly dangerous, and more clearly so,[0] worries me there's a bias against technological development that keeps us from giving advice about both risks (or really much at all about the more important risk here).
[0] insofar as there are conflicting metaanalyses on breastmilk, but the signal is far stronger here, no one is publishing research suggesting failure to thrive is no big deal.
That's actually a great example of what troubles me.
If you click through to read the underlying research you get a massive jumble of conflicted studies, including several meta-analyses that fail to find any significant results.
This gets reduced to "breastfeeding lowers the risk of breast cancer" in parenting lit without any context about how radically uncertain this area is.
Becoming a parent and actually reading the underlying lit has nearly destroyed my faith in medical research.
What's troubling is that there is no rational discussions, its always "breast is best" or "emotional impact statement here"
Of course we can all agree that in ideal circumstances, breast milk is the best thing for babies, its unique biologically adapted (even between feeds) formula is impossible to mass manufacture and biologicals like leukocytes are impossible to add in.
However, if the mother does not produce enough milk, then failure to thrive concerns take over, supplement.
If mother is post partum, dad can take over and supplement.
People just eat the tagline these days instead of doing a basic cost/benefit analysis and thinking a little bit for themselves.
Add to that the seeming acceptance of bad science and you end up with anti-vaxxers.
> The more I read about the basis of the claim though the more confused I get.
The “breast is best” narrative is partly an outgrowth of the Nestle boycott. In developed nations, the difference between breastfeeding and formula feeding is pretty minimal. Minor immune benefits for breastfeeding. Minor weight benefits for formula feeding (formula fed babies gain weight more rapidly as nutrition is always available). However, in developing nations, (powdered) formula is far less safe due to lack of sanitation and formula producers have gotten a lot of justified criticism over their marketing campaigns in developing nations.
In an ideal case, breastfeeding seems strictly superior in terms of the baby’s health even in developed nations. The benefits of breastfeeding vs sanitary formula are small but seem to exist. However, the ideal case is often not the actual situation.
My problem with the lactation advocacy is that many advocates ignore actual difficulties with breastfeeding. Low/insufficient milk supply, pain during feeding, inability to share the burden with a partner, sleep impact, isolation (for women uncomfortable with public breastfeeding or living in places where this is frowned on), career impact, etc. It’s often presented as if any issues are failings of the mother. “Pain? You’re definitely doing it wrong. Supply issues? Just keep breastfeeding exclusively and your underweight baby will be fine. The fact that your baby is in the 1st percentile for weight at 3 months and always hungry doesn’t mean you need to supplement.” Etc.
Of course, some people see that as an anti-breastfeeding movement.
The rhetoric around breastfeeding is insane. Trying to do legitimate research online about it is almost impossible.
My least favorite part of breastfeeding advocacy is when people say it's free. Yes, it's free, as long as you ignore the extra time it takes for the mother that can't be shared with other caregivers (unless you pump, which takes more time), extra food you have to eat, the pump and various accessories, and the time spent cleaning all the little pump parts. Yeah, other than that it's free.
> Add a second pregnancy at 1-3 years after the fist and it's easy to end up with a stay at home mom.
It's 2018, you have the power to control when you (or your female SO) get pregnant (you have had this for quite a while, actually). There's no logical reason to "oops, now I'm a stay at home <whatever>".
I'm not OP, so I can't read their mind, but I don't think they meant that the second baby happens on accident. Instead, what they're saying is that if you want to have kids and not have them spaced out too much, it ends up making a lot of sense for the woman to become a stay at home mom in situations where the family can afford it.
When giving birth at the hospital the nurses was all saying "See you in 1-3 years!". It's nothing uncommon indeed. After that ordeal our thought was more like "In your dreams!". No, it wasn't one of the fast, uncomplicated births, it was more like suddenly getting overrun by doctors and other white robes, whisked away into operation and then a very broken back for six months.
Not sure where you’re at now, but a common experience is that the memories of how difficult childbirth and newborns are start to recede and then you’re ready to have another go.
The brain is exceptionally good at repressing bad memories. The effects of lack of sleep on memory / brain function might play a big part of it. (Just speculating from personal experience, I have no formal knowledge).
Name one thing, apart from breastfeeding, that men can't do that women can, when it comes to taking care of a child. Why is it, then, that it's still "unmanly" to change diapers, or god forbid, even be a stay-at-home dad?
Take care of an infant while recovering from birth without taking extra time of. That's not a huge difference, but it is economically significant for many couples especially when they have physically demanding jobs.
Nonsense. My sister-in-law is a professor and my brother is the stay-at-home dad, for the sake of her career. They're on kid #2 now. He does all the nighttime stuff so she can sleep and be refreshed for work.
I think it's mostly because, in a very real sense, men have always been able to have it all. Men have always been able to have children and a career (because their wives stayed home to raise them!), so the quote isn't as poignant for them.
BUT -- I do think it's actually useful to talk about "parents having it all", because all those breadwinner men with stay-at-home wives missed out on a lot of quality bonding time with their kids. They may have thought they had it all, but they actually missed out on developing real, meaningful relationships with their kids.
It sounds like you've completely misunderstood the aphorism "raising kids and a having a career". It's not the state of being a biological parent that's sought after (which yes parents have automatically) but of _raising_ children.
You can't raise children in absentia. If you're concentrating on your career you simply can't dedicate yourself to raising children.
So, no fathers haven't always had it all because having it all is a practical impossibility in almost all walks of life.
I think you and I are saying exactly the same thing here. That's exactly what I meant by "they actually missed out on developing real, meaningful relationships with their kids."
The bulk of mainstream media. A quick google will show that, though interestingly it also shows some newer articles raising the same point as the GP there.
For some time already there are studies suggesting that infant colic is not actually a colic but the process of early brain development. In face of this, looks like there's not much we can do. As much as it is heartbreaking, most parents and babies just have to walk through it.
"Suggesting"? It's pretty obvious to everyone with half a brain that "colic" is just a label applied (specifically in the English-speaking world) to a baby that keeps crying despite all obvious causes of distress being taken care of, and has nothing whatsoever to do with digestion. I mean, the official definition is based exclusively on the amount of crying and nothing else, how could it possibly be a diagnosis of an underlying cause?
I find your grandmothers advice simplistic and somewhat unhelpful.
In particular, it makes it sound like there’s a simple algorithm you can follow to solve problems with children crying.
Unfortunately, sometimes children do cry for hours and it’s tough to figure out why. Suggesting that they don’t gives people without children an unrealistic impression of parenthood.
Our baby cried because of cow milk protein allergy. The milk protein came from the mother drinking cow milk and breastfeeding. When we figured that out it took a few weeks and then she got happier and quiet and could sleep again. Also the dry spots on the skin vanished.
There's a theory that almost all colic is either cow milk protein allergy and/or reflux. Our baby has both and treating both has made a huge difference in how happy he is.
We had to switch to a hydrolyzed formula do to supply issues buy mom is avoiding dairy as well which is helping a lot.
I remember reading a Dutch study where nearly all "child is allergic to milk" diagnosis by parents turned out to be false. Unfortunately, I can't find the study.
Here's a counter-example. We accidentally fed formula with cow milk protein in the middle of the night once after switching to a different formula (it was the middle of the night, we were sleep deprived, the bottles looked the same in the dark, and we hadn't purged all the old formula yet). His symptoms returned immediately for a couple days until it cleared his system.
I know this is anecdata but seeing the immediate change and having a very easy experiment to test it with if the child is eating formula makes me question the study.
We were told to try feeding her some milk formula to see if she just was hungry. Maybe not getting enough out of the breast. Her skin directly turned red with white dots. Since I'm allergic myself but for other things I know what that means. We also took her to hospital for a complete test and that was also positive. She has now outgrown it and can eat milk normally if she wants to but she finds most milk products taste awful.
I will always remember an older relative of mine's advice. He said, if the baby won't be calm down, add a bit of whiskey when you make his bottle. He was a doctor!
My sister tells me the Amish she's worked with use catnip tea. Catnip is a sedative in humans (as well as a digestive aid that may help with colic, apparently) and is probably safer than alcohol.
The ancients did not know this, but for some reason a trip in the car has always made my kids sleep. Once you have fed and changed them of course. Anecdotally formula milk from a bottle seems to help them fill up quicker than breast feeding, and stay quiet for longer. Although I seem to remember that may have the bad side effect of increasing the likelyhood of cot-death, presumably because they are sleeping more deeply and for longer
Wow, I like it. It seems like the approach is, "we have no clue what exactly is it about cars that works this way, so let's replicate as much of the experience as possible". Brute-forcing the problem, but sounds like it could work well.
A friend of mine (another crazy tinkerer, which is how we got to know each other) built something like that in the 90's for one of his children that could not sleep anywhere but in the car. It was a crazy contraption but it did work.
The noise is very important. Any kind of white noise is soothing for a baby... noise from water, car or even vacuum cleaner.. I used to generate a noise with:
You're using pink noise, right? I wish it would be less common to kind any kind of noise "white noise", as people might instinctively search for / generate actual white noise, dislike it, and abandon the concept. Pink noise is a particular kind of noise that's much nicer to listen to than white noise. I used it from time to time to block my cow-orkers off.
So it says:
"some pseudo-science which claimed that the stress of crying would prevent the proper development of the baby’s brain"
... But cortisol levels have been tested I believe, and the effects of cortisol are well known.
It has become more or less accepted (at least in Scandinavia) that small children crying is just a form of misbehavior that shouldn't be given any attention. Coming from South Europe, I found that very strange. But they've become as good at reading a child's cues as they themselves are at socializing.
No idea why this got posted here but I should point out that Mary Beard is well respected around these parts and is a mother. The TLS is not generally considered a rag either.
Now, the article itself does start off with a pretty confrontational style. I humbly suggest you get over it.
But hey, I'm used to looking at nappies where "mothers know best" (I will pick different brand), so this is still well entrenched.