AA Gifts & Baskets Idea & Advice Blog

The function of the mother remains almost the same under the various cultural patterns. If the natural closeness between mother and child is disturbed, the individual mother is responsible and not an external cultural or economic condition. For, normally, the mother is the first person concerned with and occupied with a newborn child: she nurtures it carefully and spends the first few weeks close to the child, gratifying his imperative needs. Whatever the child does is of utmost importance to her.

Their early training, through play (dolls, house) and indoctrination, provides women in general with an attitude, the so-called maternal instinct, which stimulates women to assume, wherever possible, a motherly role. If she fully utilizes her natural opportunities and is not in opposition to her feminine role, the mother should always find it easy to establish an intimate contact with the child. Every child has a tendency to lean a little more toward the mother as long as the mother does not disturb this natural development. Even if the mother has only limited time for the child, she can maintain this relationship. It is far less the amount of time which counts than how constructively it is used. Nothing can interfere with her influence if she is capable of being a good friend to her child, if she is willing to understand him, if she stands at his side as a staunch and loyal comrade. A child has a high regard for his mother if she has shown her ability to love him through all circumstances and despite all disappointments.

This ideal of a mother, praised and sung with so much enthusiasm by poets and artists, contrasts sharply with the experiences that psychiatrists and educators have with mothers today. In appalling numbers we find mothers the source of the child’s maladjustment and misery. The exercise of mother love under our present culture seems to be a task demanding almost superhuman qualities. Mother love, far from being the blessed thing pictured in old poems, turns too often rather into a weapon of evil. Under the name and pretense of mother love, a discouraged and rebellious, frustrated and antagonistic woman may demand praise for what is actually selfishness, fear, and domineeringness.

Yet there is no sense in blaming our mothers, because they are themselves victims. Women today face a struggle for their rights. They fear being the inferior sex. They are deeply disappointed in their relationships to men, in their marital experiences. For women have yet to win a place in our culture compatible with their talents and abilities. It is simply not true that women as a whole are not “mature,” are emotionally unstable, are mentally or morally infantile or underdeveloped in comparison with men. What is sometimes described as feminine inability to think in abstract terms is actually a predilection for the functional; women have a particular sense for usefulness, acquired from generations spent under conditions which limited their activities as the inferior sex and demanded usefulness from them in the service of men. As a consequence, women as a whole (as far as generalities are permitted at all) are more inclined to sense real values, and fall less easily prey to imaginative and frequently dangerous fictions which often victimize the best masculine minds. Why then do so many women fail as mothers so much more frequently today than a few generations ago?

In a disturbed relationship between mother and child, the corruption of all human relationships becomes visible. Human beings today make very little preparation for harmonious cooperation. We need not be surprised to find that increasingly fewer women are prepared for the role of motherhood, which demands fully developed social interest.

A mother who is more interested in herself than in her child can never be a good mother. The deep love and affection which such a mother feels for the child is actually less concerned with the welfare and the development of the child than with her own satisfaction which she expects and demands. A child can give meaning to a marriage, which involves the relationship of several persons, but it can never be asked to provide meaning to one person’s life. Yet just that is what some women, disappointed with life and somewhat estranged from their husbands, expect of their children. They want their children to belong to them and to be the purpose and meaning of their otherwise empty lives. Is this attitude love? Not at all. It is a compensation for uselessness. It is a demand for service.

Such a woman has not yet found her own place in the community. She may believe that she lives only for the child, but actually the child has to replace all other obligations which she would have to meet. Social contact, work and the opposite sex become meaningless through this peculiar kind of “love.” How many women regard their children as an increase to their glory-an additional rung in the ladder of their prestige! Some try to attract with their children the attention and admiration which other women receive for their legs. In more serious cases, the child has to provide an object for domination. He must fit, and often enough is brought up to fit into the personal life style of the mother. He is impressed with the danger of life, against which only mother love can give protection. By instilling fears and exercising domination under the pretext of an emotion which the mother, without any justification, calls “love,” she begins a process of pampering and spoiling to bring the child under complete control and make him utterly dependent on her. In her own insecurity and distrust, she wants to be the only person trusted.

For a period of time, the child may find this overprotection agreeable, but sooner or later, the conflict begins. It may start, for example, when the second child is born and the mother becomes preoccupied with the baby. The first child feels deprived of the attention which previously had been showered on him. If the tragedy does not start then, the conflict is unavoidable when the child must go to school, when he must meet children of his own age. Fortunately, our present school system offers much help for pampered children in adjusting them to the social atmosphere and developing courage, independence, and social feeling. But all that does not solve the conflict with the mother. She either succeeds in keeping him close to her-then he never becomes adjusted to the group-or the child gains independence, and the fear and dominance of the mother expresses itself in open hostilities.

As the children get beyond the baby stage, new difficulties can appear.

“I think one problem for the older mother is that you hit your real mid-life crisis at the same time as motherhood, and this tends to intensify everything. If you are 25 when you have a baby, you can think you’ll get into a career when they start school and so on; you have all your life before you. When you have your children, as I did, at 39 and 4I, they start school when you’re 45. What have you done with your life? Can you stand the strain of motherhood and work? Are you too old to get back into your career? In a few years you’re coping with menopause, with a host of emotional reactions, and you’ve still got to be a mother meeting the demands of very young children.”

“Having a baby late-and an older husband-meant I had to cope with a lot of problems all at once. I had to cope with finding the right school for my 5-year-old child, toddler tantrums, go to the hospital with my husband for investigations into his heart problem, and deal with the heavy bleeding that seemed to be a precursor of menopause.”

Looking ahead to when children are older, the majority of mothers did not seem to anticipate any particular problems in being in their fifties when their children were teenagers. “I think talk about the ‘generation gap’ is a lot of nonsense,” says Karen, who was 39 and 4I when her two sons were born; now she is in her fifties. “When I compare myself to my son’s friends’ parents who are younger, I don’t see any difference in the children’s attitudes toward us. It’s normal for all children to think their parents are old, fuddy-duddy, out of touch. They love to say, ‘Oh Mom, surely you’ve heard of x or y?’ In fact, I think there’s less of a generation gap than there was between my parents’ generation and us. There seemed to be such a gulf between our parents, who were young during the war, and us, who were young during the sixties. That’s not the case now. Today’s kids are just as likely to be listening to sixties music as to nineties and we share some of the same heroes. That certainly wasn’t true of my parents!”

Older mothers who have teenagers and young babies in the house may find the generation gap has another angle. “My teenage son wants to play his music, have friends over and be generally noisy just when the baby’s finally settled and I need peace and quiet. And then there are times when he wants help with his homework and the baby is screaming and needs attention. So it’s a complex juggling act. On the other hand, Joey can be wonderfully kind and attentive to the baby and sometimes he’s a great help. He’ll baby-sit for a little while or make me a cup of coffee when I’m dead on my feet.”

Teenagers with young half-brothers and sisters often oscillate between rapt attention and delight, and disgust and utter boredom, depending on their mood. “I think the important thing is to divide attention fairly equally, to give the older ones their time and the young ones theirs, and not expect the whole family to revolve around the baby,” says Sarah, with two teenagers from her first marriage and a toddler and baby from her second.

The Final Word: Love

The overwhelming majority of older mothers do not regret what they’ve done. “Most people don’t regret being born, and most people don’t regret being a mother either,” says one older mother with two young children. “Once they are there, you love them, and that’s it. You sacrifice yourself, you do things you would never believe you were capable of for them, and you would die for them. And you love them with a kind of love that’s completely different from anything else you’ve ever known. On the other hand, if any of us knew what lay ahead, who among us would ever be a mother?”

Twins occur once in eighty-eight births; and quadruplets once in about 680,000 births. Other denominations of multiple births occur quite rarely. Multiple births occur more commonly in older women; women who had at least one pregnancy; women who have a family history of multiple pregnancy an the mother’s side of the family; and women who have taken fertility drugs to stimulate ovulation [the expulsion of an egg from the ovary]

Types

There are two types of twins. One type starts from a single egg, which divides in two very early after fertilization. Because a single egg is fertilized by a single sperm before this division, the two offspring will be of the same sex and alike in skin, hair, and eye color and in general appearance. They are called identical twins.

An extremely rare form of twinning is called conjoined or Siamese twinning. In these unfortunate cases. The twins are attached to each other at the head, chest, abdomen, or back. Surgical separation of Siamese twins may be successful, but often results in the death of one or both babies.

The other type of twinning is the fertilization of two eggs by two different sperm. Twins of this type- called fraternal twins-may be of the same sex or opposite sexes and will bear no greater resemblance to each other than any other brothers or sisters. Most twins that result from fertility drugs are of this type.

Approximately one third of twins are identical, and two thirds are fraternal.

One or more eggs may involved in other forms of multiple pregnancy. For example, quadruplets may result from one, two, three, or four eggs.

Causes

In most cases of multiple births, the cause is unknown. Why certain families have many sets of twins is also not understood. Fertility drugs used to stimulate ovulation are often associated with multiple births-sometimes up to seven or eight fetuses.

Diagnosis

Doctor and patient alike will often suspect multiple pregnancy when the woman’s uterus grows more rapidly then would be expected with one pregnancy. This suspicion is confirmed if the doctor hears two separate fetal heartbeats, or if an ultrasound scan shows two or more fetuses.

Complications

The major complication of multiple pregnancy is premature labor, with the delivery of small, premature babies that are not yet ready to live outside the mother’s body. In general. The more fetuses the woman is carrying, the earlier she is more likely to go into labor. Other complications that may affect the mother are anemia and pre-eclampsia.

The parents of this wonderful new human being will never again return to their old relationship, even when the child has grown and left home and they are alone again as they were at the beginning of their marriage. They will move on to a new relationship-a broader, more satisfying one. They are no longer a couple; they have become a family. The baby has added a new dimension to their marriage and a new reason for each of them to exist. Even if they have initial problems  in adjusting to the changes, even if they feel out of touch with each other for a short time, their common love for and enchantment with their child will bring them together again. No one in the world cares as much about their baby as they do; no one else can share their particular, unique experience of parenthood.

New Responsibilities of Parents

Perhaps the most difficult part of the responsibility of caring for a new baby is being on call constantly, twenty-four a day, 168 hours a week, with never a moment off. No other job requires such dedication as that of parenting. Babies don’t eat, sleep, or cry on schedule. You will be called upon to feed or comfort your infant at any  and every hour of the day or night, whether you are asleep, or ill, or occupied with a project of the utmost importance. In short, you will be required to adjust your lifestyle to accommodate the total dependency of your baby. This shift in the focus of your life may be traumatic at first, especially if you have been particularly independent and unencumbered.

Supplying the Basics

The primary responsibilities of parents are to provide their children with food, clothing, and shelter-the basic requirements of human life. In principle, all the most poverty-stricken of new parents can accept those responsibilities with few qualms, because they are the ones they fulfill for themselves. It’s the day to day details of supplying them that may make you feel insecure and far from confident in caring for your infant. You may feel, as some parents do, that while your childbirth education classes have prepared you very well for actually producing a baby, you’ve not had adequate preparation for caring for your child. The all important questions of what, how, when, how often, and why have not been answered to your complete satisfaction. In truth, they cannot be, because every baby and every set of parents is unique. Every family is different from every other, and every individual in every family is different from all the others. Some routines and procedures simply have to be tried out and perhaps discarded before you are comfortable in handling even the most ordinary of your responsibilities to your infant. You may wonder if the trial and error method of mastering a skill is a suitable approach for the serious work of rearing a human being.

In searching for knowledge about how to care for their babies, many parents are apt to be intimidated by “experts,” who may include the baby’s grandparents and next door neighbors as well as pediatricians and psychologists, and to accept as truth any scrap of advice they are given whether or not it “feel” right to them or has been substantiated in their experience. Of course there are times when nothing can be substituted for the knowledgeable orders and advice of experts in the professional fields of medicine, nutrition, and child psychology. But it is important for you, as a new parent, to learn to trust yourself. Remember, there is no right way to do most things involved in child care. You can read, you can take classes, you can question your doctor closely, you can listen to your friends and relatives, but ultimately you must make your own decisions about what is best for your own unique child. And because you know that child better than anyone else in the world, you are far more likely than others to make the best decisions.

Remember, as you make these decisions, to enjoy your baby as you learn to care for him. Try to look at parenting, not as a series of problems to be overcome or even, in the positive language of public relations, as challenges to be met. For a little while at least, let the rest of the world go by as you give yourself up to this new life you have created; appreciate the miracle of every day.

Ok – we aren’t overly stupid adults… we do know how conception occurs but some of the finer points might just surprise you.

Human conception is a miraculous and complex event. It is perhaps more surprising that pregnancy occurs so often than that it fails sometimes. A human egg is released every month from a woman’s ovary under the influence of a complex cycle of hormones. The hormones are released by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus, located in the brain. The egg is swept into the fallopian tubes by delicate projections (called the fimbria) at the end of the tubes, where it is normally fertilized by the man’s sperm. The fertilized egg then moves down the tube and, helped along by the tiny hair-like cilia that line the tube, enters the uterus, or womb. The embryo must implant into the lining of the uterus (the endometrium). There it starts to produce hormones that will stimulate its growth. The site in the ovary, called the corpus luteum, from which the egg was released, must produce enough of the hormone progesterone to sustain the pregnancy for the first three months. After that the placenta takes over that job.

The woman’s uterus must be structurally sound and capable of expanding to contain the growing fetus. The cervix, the opening of the uterus, must be strong enough to hold in the baby until it is ready to be born.

It is estimated that it takes a fertile couple having regular sexual intercourse an average of six months to conceive. At any point, something can go wrong and pregnancy will not result:

• Sometimes an egg is not released.
• The egg and sperm may fail to meet and fertilize.
• Many early embryos fail to implant, and sometimes an implanted embryo fails to develop or is rejected by the mother’s body.
• An abnormality in the fetus or a lack of sufficient levels of the hormone progesterone may make it impossible for the embryo to survive, resulting in a miscarriage.

Roughly one-third of infertility is caused by a problem in the woman, one-third by a problem in the man. Of the last one-third of cases, infertility is caused by a combination of problems in both partners or, in about 20% of these cases, is unexplained (American Society for Reproductive Medicine, “Frequently Asked Questions about Infertility,” I996). The statistics for unexplained infertility have tended to fall with better diagnosis and an improved understanding of what causes infertility, but it is still more common than many doctors like to admit.

The most common cause of female infertility is failure to ovulate, and this condition is the easiest to treat. A course of fertility drugs can be given to see if these will activate the ovaries. There are several fertility drugs, and while the doctor may know which is the best to try, often he simply has to go through each in turn, trying different doses, to see what is or is not successful. This can make the woman feel like a human guinea pig. Tests into other areas of infertility can be long, complicated and invasive. Male infertility is the hardest to treat.

Exhaustion is one of the main complaints of older parents, who simply do not have the resilience of a young person. Linda, 40, a former magazine editor, said, “I do not think women in their forties realize the physical toll. I felt absolutely exhausted.” One woman, who had sons at the age of 42 and 45, said, “I can’t pretend there haven’t been times when I’ve cried from one end of the weekend to the other out of sheer exhaustion.”

Some recent research has shown that older men and women are less able to cope with sleep deprivation and disruption than younger people. After the age of 40 in particular, the amount of time spent in deep sleep decreases. There are more awakenings at night and sleep itself becomes lighter. As people get older they tend to lose the ability to fall asleep quickly, to sleep during the day or to sleep late to make up for a late or broken night.

As people age, it may be that sleep rhythms get more fixed and it becomes more difficult to adjust the pattern. After years of regularly waking and getting up at six, it may be harder for people to “sleep in.” A new baby’s pattern of sleeping for short periods may create havoc for the older mother’s sleep patterns.

Finding Help

Some older mothers, anxious to avoid the double burden of loneliness and exhaustion, use a mother’s helper in the early weeks. Some hire a nanny or maternity nurse to help with the baby. This can be a good idea. It can give the mother help and companionship at a difficult time, but not always. Betsy found the maternity nurse undermined her own confidence and wanted to do things her way:

“It was my first baby and about the fiftieth she’d looked after.

I felt helpless in comparison. Also, she didn’t understand that I wanted to breast-feed the baby on demand. She kept saying he was feeding too frequently. She kept asking if she could give him a bottle so I could rest. She was obviously frustrated that she couldn’t feed him. She fussed around and I couldn’t relax. The only helpful thing was when she took the baby for a walk. In the end I let her go and hired a cleaning lady instead; that was much more useful.”

To understand a child one needs full knowledge of the reasons for his development. Many of his traits are due to his trying to find his position in the family group, or seeking methods which bring recognition and which prove to be effective in the particular setting of his environment. Without encouragement and guidance, the child fails time and again in finding socially accepted methods of dealing with others. Misbehavior and disturbance result.

Four main objectives can be discerned as motivating a child to misbehave. We must understand these goals before we can hope to change the child’s behavior.

Most frequently, the child wants to attract attention.

This particular desire prevails in younger children. In the family situation of today, children have little opportunity to be useful, to gain social recognition by contributing to the common goal. They, therefore, come to believe in the importance of receiving-gifts, affection, or at least attention. The toy which father brings home is less desirable as a tool of enjoyment than as a token of father’s love. Devoid of attention, the child feels neglected. If he cannot obtain attention in a pleasant way, he turns to disagreeable ways and deliberately provokes scolding and punishment. That at least is attention; remaining unnoticed is worse. Not even to be punished is complete rejection; worst of all is to be ignored. Children who strive for attention must be taught that they can be useful-that social recognition means not receiving, but contributing.

The second possible objective of any disturbance is to demonstrate superiority and power. Children exposed to force learn to counteract with resistance. The more one demands of them, the less they conform. Children are very ingenious in frustrating the most forceful scheming of their parents, and gain easy victories while their adversaries are bewildered and dumbfounded.

This hostility leads finally to the third objective, namely, to punish, to get even. Convinced that nobody likes him, the child gives up any attempt to please. The only compensation for his humiliation is his ability to hurt others as he is hurt. No sense of social responsibility impedes his desire to take for himself whatever seems gratifying. This aggressive behavior expresses complete social discouragement.

The fourth objective is evidenced in complete passivity.

It expresses a belief in personal inadequacy. It is an attempt to avoid situations where the anticipated personal deficiency would become obvious.

To comprehend malfunctions we must know which one of these four goals is behind them. Many believe they understand a certain behavior if they find a word adequate to describe it. But words don’t explain qualities, they only describe them. The word laziness, for instance, does not explain a definite behavior; psychologically each example of laziness differs from others. One child is lazy in order to get attention-mother must sit near by to remind and help; otherwise, the homework won’t be done. But laziness can mean superiority and power; against all threats and punishments of parent or teacher, the child flatly refuses to work. Sometimes laziness is the worst revenge of mishandled child-punishing vain and over-ambitious parents. In many cases laziness means just the discouraged attitude of giving up. What is the sense of trying if one cannot hope to make the grade anyhow?

Parents must learn to understand such tendencies-they must know why the child behaves as he does; against whom and what he directs his aggression or shortcomings. They should know more-although they rarely do. Parents should gather information about the general line of the child’s thoughts and desires, about his conception of life and of himself, about his attempts and the conclusions he draws from his experiences.

Can a marriage be complete without children? The answer to this question depends greatly on social conditions. Until recently, marriage without children was regarded as purposeless, as it still is among certain national and cultural groups. A marriage that remained childless lost its meaning and for that reason frequently could be dissolved. Mankind has, however, developed beyond this “naturalistic” view, for with the decrease in mortality of children and with the prolongation of human life, fertility has become less important for the preservation of mankind, nations, and races. General cultural and political conceptions determine the desire for children more than do economic necessities.

The relationship between economic conditions and the number of children is complex. Families who can afford many children generally have fewer than those who cannot afford them. Some couples plan parenthood in accordance with their ability to support children. Wanting children is natural, but social forces around us influence our thinking so that we either procreate without restraint, or control our fertility even to the point of having no children.

Planned Parenthood

The ability to conquer natural forces in the outside world and within himself enables man today to make a deliberate decision. We must recognize the antagonistic social tendencies which affect the individual and complicate the marital problems. On one side are certain religious and political demands to rear as many children as possible. The sociological background of the political encouragement of birth is obvious. Groups striving for national or racial superiority demand a large number of offspring to claim more rights and to supply armies to fight for them. It is more difficult to trace the social meaning of religious prescripts. The idea of Divine Providence excludes man’s right to decide about life, which is given and taken by the Lord. A third factor responsible for large families today is quite different. It is indifference and ignorance which often prevent deliberate planning of parenthood.

On the other side we are confronted also by divergent forces coinciding in the demand for limited parenthood. A certain sense of responsibility prevents some married couples from having children, because they cannot offer what they feel children require-economic security, pleasant surroundings, a balanced and happy life, and reasonable prospects for the future. They question the right of anyone to produce children in times as distressing as the present. This argument in itself may be based on a real sense of responsibility and be part of an outlook on life following ideas of Malthus, or it may express only personal cowardice and timidity. A more courageous person may see chances for progeny where a timid soul cannot envisage even his own survival. Selfish tendencies are frequently hidden behind a pretense of responsibility. Women may be more interested in “girlish figures” than in womanhood; men may consider the accumulation of money more important than spending it on children. Caring for a child may involve sacrifice of leisure time and freedom of movement.

The nature of the theses offered as reasons for or against procreation makes it difficult to decide in anyone instance what influence the existence or nonexistence of children may have on the fate of the marriage. The outcome will depend very much on the moral forces involved. Couples having many children because they are inspired by deep religious feelings or by feelings of national and racial pride face different problems than a couple whose numerous offspring are the undesired products of carelessness or drunkenness. On the other side, a childless union as a result of selfishness and fear is different from the companionship of two people devoted exclusively to each other. Whether childbirth is avoided because of sincere consideration for the child or for consideration for the parents has practical consequences upon the marriage.

Since man has learned to regulate reproduction, there has been a definite tendency to reduce the number of offspring sharply. Moreover, the whole meaning of marriage has changed with the emancipation of women. Companionship has to a large degree replaced motherhood. Love has become meaningful even without “natural” consequences. Sexuality is no longer merely a scheming device of nature to force reproduction. Human sex proves thereby its independence of natural compulsion; it has changed its function from the animalistic drive as part of the reproduction process to a human practice for personal gratification. Love unites two human beings for common endeavor, and having children is only one part of their marital functions. Husband and wife have significance for each other apart from their potential parenthood.

Just as your body goes through a tremendous adjustment after the birth of a baby, so does your emotional state. There is the impact of a huge role change on your lifestyle. Suddenly you are a parent, with twenty-four hors a day responsibilities to a dependant helpless baby. The role is a new one. It is tiring and a bit puzzling at times. Combine that with the fact you are already tired and undergoing sudden changes in hormonal production, and you have a situation of emotional stress. To top it all off, there is the tremendous commitment you feel for your tiny baby. Intense emotions, sometimes highs, and sometimes lows, are to be expected at this time. You may find that you cry easily, both from happiness and from sadness and frustration.

Your time is not your own now. Your baby’s needs often do not come at convenient times. It is not possible to make plans and expect to stick to them. The women who  cope best at this time  are those that can accept the realities of the early postpartum period. They place high priority on caring for the baby and getting rest. They also are supported in this by their husbands and other loved ones. Getting help and avoiding heavy demands on yourself are two of the most important gifts you can give your baby and yourself.

The postpartum period represents a gradual return to a normal lifestyle. Your body recovers from childbirth and adjusts to the new demands of parenthood, including interrupted sleep, feeding schedules, and a constant awareness of the needs of the baby. Thus begins a new phase in the growth and development in all family members.