This past week I spent some time with my friends at a beach house.... at least, they used to be my friends, now they seem more like parents to their children, and their identities intricately weaved with that of their children so that their first names are forever associated with "Luke's dad" or "Henry's mom." It was a giant shift in my friendship with them, as moving forward I will not just be friends with them, but with their children. I was the only one at the beach house without a child, so I tried my best to help as best as I could when a child left shattered glass on the ground by dropping a cup during breakfast, or keeping a kid pre-occupied while his parents had to be somewhere else for a minute (back to my camp counselor days), but I realized how all-consuming parents' responsibilities are.
I can't imagine raising a child without at least 2 parents/ responsible people. Well, I can imagine it, but I can't imagine how incredibly difficult that must be for a single mother. The parents' job involves changing diapers, waking up the baby, packing the baby's bags, preparing breakfast, lunch, and dinner, feeding the baby milk, putting on the babys' clothes, giving the baby a bath, putting the baby down for a nap, getting the stroller ready for baby to go for a walk, reading a book for the baby, getting the baby to take mediciation......and that's not even including any unexpected emergencies (like the glass shattering, baby crying for unidentified reasons, baby getting sick....) it's all such a departure from the normal life of a childless adult. The parents have to be the poles that keeps the fence upright, and it's a permanent job; the fence needs to be upright for at least 18 years, and who knows after 18 if the fence can stay upright on his or her own. It requires a lot of patience by the parents, a lot of problem solving, and working together to make sure they are supporting each other and tagging out when each needs a break. It also seems like it's easy to get upset at each other with communication and dealing with stressful situations, and there were definitely times my friends seemed like they were on the breaking point. On the flip side, though, the common problem of childcare seemed like a challenge that the parents were working together to solve and to be united in their common goal, almost so that they became closer by going through those tough times together. And amidst all the "chaos" (an actual term one of the parents used for all the kids running around), there were definitely times they sat back and enjoyed having a live baby in their arms, smiling and happy to be alive (seemingly, and only until the next thing they cried about like not getting to eat a whole muffin or diaper felt uncomfortable, depending on the age).
Being the helping hand I like to think I am, I tried to lend a hand wherever needed, like washing dishes, emptying the garbage can, but parents with multiple kids really have it tough: they divide and conquer, agreeing to take one kid outside while the other did an independent task with the other child. I really felt bad for some of my friends in how busy they became without time for a break (only mid-day when the kids went to bed and at night when the kids had been put to bed) and wondered how they managed without help. In this analogy, the parents are the ones who are a fence (maybe literally keeping the kids in the home) and the heroes who need 3 helpers in the neverending journey of parenthood. No matter how well-behaved and docile the child, there will always come a time when the child has a breakdown (MJ and I have both have breakdowns all the time even well into our 30's)... it's just what babies do. It's that complete dependence from age 0 to about age 3.5 (somewhere between 3 and 4 the kids start to understand language and commands and to do what they're told) that is daunting, needing the parent to give everything financially, mentally, and physically (some of these kids weigh a lot, and I may have underestimated how easy it is seeing other parents carrying them around- more than one parent this week told me that they were having back problems), but I imagine that's also the heroic part of it and the way to develop emotional attachment: that kid will not survive without you, so you're like the savior and provider of life itself, more than just the mom bringing the baby into the world (which is not to be taken for granted, another hard thing to do). Shoutout to my new friend I met this week whose family has a 3-year-old (very active and running around, but listens to directions and smiles a lot, making it all worth it), with twin newborns. That mom is really something, delivering all these kids and having to breastfeed, prepare food, get up in the middle of the night multiple times to attend to TWO crying babies, who are sometimes crying together in sympathy ("sympathy crying") while somehow trying to enjoy motherhood. (I still wake up moody and irritable if I get woken up just a little early from a good night's sleep, so lack of sleep would be a killer). That's tough.
Don't hold me to this, but I might only want one child now; no telling how difficult that child will be, and how many poles or helpers that fence/hero will need. At least now I know what I'm "signing up for" as a parent.
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