‘Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.‘ Bill Cosby
Both times after I have given birth, I have been simply overwhelmed by the love I feel for my babies. It’s a deep-seated, primal kind of love, accompanied by a fierce desire to protect. Sometimes we forget that we are basically animals too.
I can’t really fathom the mind of a parent who would deliberately harm their child, or stand idly by while another person harmed their child. This was brought to my mind by Skepticlawyer’s post on the cases of Shannon Matthews and Baby P.
One of the hardest things about being a parent is that you can’t protect your child from every bad thing that might happen. There are those things which you can try to control, such as telling your child not to stick that fork in the power point, or to always look before she crosses the road. And I will try to bring my children up to be decent, polite human beings. However, many things can’t be controlled by a parent, from Acts of God to choices made my children when I am not there to guide them. I suspect the hardest task for me as a mother will be accepting that.
The recent death of 15-year-old Tyler Cassidy at the hands of the police shows that a child can sometimes make terrible choices. I understand why the police shot the boy – he had threatened nearby workers at Kmart, and attacked a police officer with a knife, refusing to stop even when sprayed with capsicum spray. If I saw my colleague being charged by a knife-wielding teenager and I had to make a split second decision whether to shoot, I probably would have chosen to shoot. Better that than to allow him to kill or seriously injure an innocent bystander.
On the other hand, I can also understand the terrible pain suffered by the boy’s mother, and her anger. Understandably, she thinks of her son as her scared little boy. And she called the police after her son fled the family home, expecting them to protect him, but they did not. Perhaps she regrets telling the police where her son was. But in the end, they had to choose between protecting the boy and protecting themselves and innocent others.
I will always see my children as my babies on some level. Since the arrival of my son, my daughter has been concerned, asking me, “Am I still your baby too?” My answer has been that, for better or for worse, she will always be my baby. Even when she doesn’t want to be my baby any more (ie, by the age of 12 at the latest).
One of our family friends is estranged from one of her children. I can think of nothing harder. She has to sit by and watch her child self-destruct, and she cannot put a hand out to help or stop it happening, because the child will not talk to her mother or father. The pain must be immense.
Although I have always been very close to my family, I went through periods as a teenager when I did some stupid, self-destructive things. I realise how hard this must have been for my parents to witness. For a time in my twenties, I was determined never to have children in case they did the same awful things to me that I did to my parents as a teenager.
I have a lot more sympathy and understanding for my own parents now that I am a parent. I know that they don’t give out an instruction booklet which tells you how to be a parent, and that my parents did their best. Now that I have two kids, I also know why the eldest has to be responsible and grown up (because Mummy is relying on her to be sensible) and why the younger child has to be patient (he has to wait because Mummy needs to deal with his sister’s problems first before he can get a nice uninterrupted feed).
Life is a gift. I am struck by the immense vitality and potential of my children. I hope they realise the depth of the love my husband and I bear for them. And I hope that I can give them the strength and wisdom to make their choices well. Yes, Bill Cosby is right, parenthood is a beautiful and irrational thing.
15 Comments
In discussing this primal love my brother in-law once remarked that he was struck by the feeling that he would die to protect his kids. I replied that I was more struck by the fact that I would kill to protect mine.
Terje, I agree – in certain circumstances, I can clearly see myself killing to protect my children, which is scary on a rational level.
My younger son has not communicated with me for ten years. We never fought; he just stopped communicating or replying to my messages, and refused to see me when I visited NZ. He fell out with his sister about eight years ago and has refused to see her or talk to her since. He lived with his father in NZ until about two years ago, when he went to London where his older brother lives. Within three months of arriving he had fallen out with him and now refuses to see or communicate with him either.
In July of this year his father was killed in an accident in NZ. The difficult of letting him know weighed heavily on us in the days before the funeral, until we thought of a solution – using a phone which he is not familiar with as he won’t answer any known numbers. That way his brother-in-law was able to tell him the terrible news – but too late for him to be able to come home for the funeral.
He has still not contacted anyone, but I live in hope that he might have learned from this experience. But sadly, I may never know. I have learned to live with the loss of the possibility of his presence, but it’s still a hole I would live to fill. We’re not an especially close family, being spread around the world and not especially wealthy, but it would be lovely to be able to keep up with him in the same casual way that I do with his siblings. I feel like loose strings connect us, and the ones that should connect him are flapping free. Which is how he, now a man of 30, wants it, and I must accept that. Sadly.
Bit of a roller-coaster isn’t it? The question remains for me: was I as good a son to my folks as they were parents to me? Probably unanswerable. So far, our three boys haven’t given us anywhere near the hassles I gave my mum and dad. I don’t know if that puts me in the black or the red!
Oh, how do I make my icon come up for me instead of a silhouette. Pardonnez-moi mon ignorance.
Lad Litter: when commenting here, make sure you input exactly the same information into the various fields that you used when registering your image at the gravatar website. If your image is generated other than via the gravatar site, alas you’ll need to go through their registration rigmarole — our image displays are tied to gravatars, and as far as I’m aware there are a few rival image banks out there.
M-H, that is harsh. Do you have any clue as to why he’s so uncommunicative? One of the things that lawyering has taught me is that some people are just not terribly friendly. They’re not bad people, just unfriendly. Trouble is, when you have to deal with someone who is fundamentally unsociable, there’s a tendency to think ‘what’s wrong with me?’, when in reality you’re dealing with someone who’s just not very interested in others, and it’s nothing to do with you.
M-H, I’m so sorry to hear about that. My husband’s ex-housemate refused to communicate with his family in a similar way – there was no fight or falling out that we could see. Then this guy cut off all his friends as well for no apparent reason. It leaves you feeling sort of hollow. And of course, because the person won’t communicate with you, you never know what the problem is – was it something you said? Some problem they had? You’re forever left wondering. Probably it’s nothing to do with you at all.
I really hope that your son comes around and realises what he’s missing out on. It’s a very lonely life if you keep cutting off everyone who is close to you. And it hurts your friends and family so much.
It’s a very lonely life if you keep cutting off everyone who is close to you.
It is also very common in depression. Only rarely are individuals true loners. I’m one of those rarities. In my younger days I used to find large social gatherings annoying. So much babble, so many casual conversations which I am not good at. I am a strong introvert that has enough going on in his head and hardly need any external stimulations to add the cognitive load.
It is not that I don’t like people and so keep away from them, it just so happens I live in a beautiful little valley, have moved away from all my previous friends, have very unusual hobbies and interests, and so practicalities make it hard to keep up with everyone. Loneliness does bite and it can bite deeply.
Learning to enjoy solitude gives one tremendous freedom in life but it can also scare people because you tend to lack dependency on them. I’ve had a lifelong reputation for walking away from people and I know many took offence at this or thought it was something they did. Not at all, that’s just the way I am.
We need each other, sustained isolation is not good, even for loners. Strikingly studies continually demonstrate that a good strategy to ward off dementia is to maintain an active social life.
As a general rule when people start cutting themselves off from others something is wrong. There is little point in speculating on what that something is, the reasons can be manifold and often hidden from view. If you do wish to advise people in this situation then ask them this: are you going to live your whole life like a hermit? That’ll scare ém.
Thanks SL and LE. I think I’ve come to terms with it mostly by accepting that he is basically an uncommunicative person, as you suggest SL. Other family members are really angry and frustrated with him; I’m more sad. And John, yes, I think there is a depressive illness behind it, but no-one can do anything about that. Perhaps his father might have done something about it in the eight or so years they lived together. I try not to be too judgemental about that. Or, he may be perfectly happy, with a strong friendship support group and he just doesn’t like any of us. We don’t know.
Okay, thanks for the tip, SkepticLawyer.
I think depression is probably responsible for the social withdrawal of my husband’s former housemate, along with cannabis-induced psychosis (he became very strange and neurotic). I never met him before all of this, which is a pity, because apparently he was a great guy. Unfortunately, you can’t fix other people’s problems for them – they have to realise that they are depressed and if they won’t face up to that, you can’t do much to help. Very frustrating when it is a relative or close friend.
And a very fine blog gravvy it is too, ladlitter!
I think depression is probably responsible for the social withdrawal of my husband’s former housemate, along with cannabis-induced psychosis (he became very strange and neurotic).
Cannabis and social withdrawal, very dangerous. Cannabis is often used to self-medicate depression but it creates a host of problems and can easily deepen the depression. Psychosis from cannabis? Maybe, depends on age, post 21 years of age I’m not sure there is a risk and usage must be heavy. Severe sustained depression though can induce psychosis.
Sometimes I think it can be very hard to help such people because they have been in that psychological state for so long they no longer remember what being consistently content is like. I know someone like that, chronic dysthymic(low level persistent depression), it has blighted his whole life and crippled his substantial skills. I also know there is no way I can ever make him see that. We do seem to have a propensity for tying ourselves up in psychological gordian knots.
This guy was a smoker from his late teens to late twenties, and smoked very heavily indeed. He may still be smoking, we don’t know. The psychosis could have been the cannabis, or, as you say, it could have been as a result of the depression. I had a uni friend who developed psychosis as a result of severe depression.
One of our friends saw this guy on the train about a year ago, and he seemed to have forgotten who she was. He didn’t recognise her. This girl seriously hasn’t changed a whisker in 15 years, and he’d known her for 10 or so years before breaking off contact. Really weird. I’d say he’s done himself some permanent brain damage, one way or another.
One of our friends saw this guy on the train about a year ago, and he seemed to have forgotten who she was.
Oh that’s no biggie, I forget people from long ago all the time. It’s healthy and believe it or not one of the findings re cannabinoids is that these play a role in suppressing unwanted memories. So perhaps for him people are unwanted memories. Poor sod.
As for brain damage, there is actually no conclusive evidence that marijuana causes brain damage but abundant evidence that exogenous cannabinoids have remarkable neuroprotective properties. In fact one recent research report claimed that THC may prevent age related memory decline and latter dementia. This makes lots of molecular, cellular, and physiological sense. Of course, the poison is in the dose and as cannabinoids are lipid soluble, and the dry weight of the brain is 60% fat, cannabinoids can build up to very high levels. This can induce processes which may initiate cell death, particularly as exogenous cannabinoids have slow wash out times.
That is where the mystery starts for in schizophrenia generally there is strong evidence for cerebral atrophy and this tends to increase with age. This is why many refer to marijuana and psychosis, not marijuana and schizophrenia. It would be very interesting to see long term studies on marijuana induced psychosis and subsequent cerebral atrophy or lack thereof.