Parents Are Human : Parents have needs, too. Books about child care, including this one, put so much emphasis on the child’s needs—for love, for understanding, for patience, for consistency, for firmness, for protection, for comradeship—that parents sometimes feel physically and emotionally exhausted just from reading about what is expected of them. They get the impression that they are meant to have no life of their own apart from their children. They can’t help feeling that any book that seems to be standing up for children all the time is going to be critical of parents when anything goes wrong.
Parents Are Human | The Common Sense Guide to Baby and Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock
To really be fair, this book should have an equal number of pages about the genuine needs of parents: their frustrations (both inside and outside the home), how tired they get, and their need to hear once in a while that they are doing a good job.
An enormous amount of hard work goes along with child care: preparing food, washing clothes, changing diapers, cleaning up messes, stopping fights and drying tears, listening to stories that are hard to understand, joining in games and reading books that aren’t very exciting to an adult, trudging around zoos and museums, responding to pleas for help with homework, being slowed down in housework and yard work by eager helpers, going to parent-teacher association meetings on evenings when you are tired, and so on.
The fact is that child rearing is a long, hard job, the rewards are not always obvious, the work is often undervalued, and parents are just as human and almost as vulnerable as their children.
Of course, parents don’t have children because they want to be martyrs. They have them because they love children and want to raise their very own, especially when they remember being loved so much when they were little. Taking care of their children, seeing them grow and develop, gives most parents —despite the hard work—their greatest satisfaction in life. It is a creative and generative act on every level. Pride in other accomplishments usually pales in comparison.
Needless self-sacrifice and excessive preoccupation. Many people facing the new responsibility of parenthood feel that they are being called on to give up all their freedom and all their former pleasures, not as a matter of practicality but almost as a matter of principle. Others simply become obsessed with parenting, forgetting all their other interests. Even if they do occasionally sneak off to have some fun, they feel too guilty to get full enjoyment. They come to bore their friends and each other. In the long run, they chafe at the imprisonment and can’t help unconsciously resenting their babies.
Total absorption in a new baby is normal. But after a while, usually by two to four months, your focus needs to broaden again. In particular, pay attention to sustaining a loving intimate relationship with your partner. Carve out some quality time with your husband, wife, or significant other. Remember to look at each other, smile at each other, and express the love you feel.
Make an effort to find enough privacy and energy to continue your sexual relationship. Remember that a close, loving relationship between parents is the best way children learn about how to be loving with others. One of the best things you can do for your child, as well as for yourself, is to let your children deepen, not inhibit, your relationship with your partner.