Psychobabbling

There are so many things to contemplate in the face of bring a girl into the world.  I don’t even know where to start.  I tend to think that gender differences are greatly exaggerated by culture, and I’m curious to see how this little girl will be different from her big brother; these differences may or may not conform to gender stereotypes, and may be a function of nature or nurture, it’s impossible to tell.  We start to gender our kids even before they are born, even those of us who tend to be more gender-neutral in our thinking have unconscious biases and expectations about how a girl or boy is supposed to be.  And we tend to attribute gender-conforming behavior to gender while attributing gender-divergent behavior to individual differences.  For example, my little dude is very active (gender-congruent: “he’s such a boy!”) and very chatty (gender divergent: “he’s so verbal!”). 

Given these expectations, I’ve been wondering whether I’m going to be more protective of this little one because she is a girl.  I think that’s one of the ways that we start to shape kids into their gender roles, by encouraging boys to venture out more into the world and being more reticent about such things with girls.  That certainly seems to be true when they get to be teenagers; we have such a different take on boys’ and girls’ emerging sexuality, and seem to fear girls’ sexual maturity whereas we have more of a go get ‘em attitude with boys (if I write about this again I’ll see if there’s some data to back this up).  

So something I read a few years ago has been on my mind, which is a statistic that while girls and women are more likely to be victimized by someone they know, boys and men are more likely to be attacked by strangers.  Even though people seem to freak out if, as a woman, you chose to ride the subway home alone late at night, you are actually statistically safer than the lone man sitting across from you (thanks to this post on Freakonomics for reminding me of that fact).  But there is still this belief that girls and women are more fragile and in need of protection, which undoubtedly shapes their experience of their place in the world.  I’m trying to keep this in mind as the big day gets closer.

No Comments | In: gender, personal | | #

My little dude will become a big brother in a few short weeks, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how sibling order can be such a formative influence (not to mention gender, since little dude will be having a little sister, but that is a WHOLE other post).  There are so many ideas about being a first-born, middle, or last-born child, and there is actually some research to back up some of these differences.   

Some interesting findings:

• first-born children have been found to be more conscientiousand higher achievers, while later-born siblings have been found to be more rebellious, agreeable, and liberal (Paulhus et al., 1999, Psychological Science).
• higher-rank (born earlier in the family) children have also been found to attain professional positions with higher prestige, and tend to complete moreyears of school, leading to greater economic success (Herrera et al., 2003, Journal os Personality and Social Psychology).   
• earlier-born children have been found to have higher IQ scores than later-born siblings, explained by the fact that the earlier-born children have more exposure to adult conversation and the benefit of tutoring younger siblings to reinforce their learning (Zajonc, 1976, Science).
• people tend to gravitate toward long-term relationships, romantic or platonic, with others of similar birth order within their families (Hartshorne et al., 2009, Journal of Individual Psychology). 

No Comments | In: personal, research | | #

My little dude is turning 1 year old this month.  In some ways, the year has flown by, it seems like he was just born and now he’s an almost-walking, chatty (in his own language) little man.  And yet, when I look back at all of the things that happened between then and now, all of the things I didn’t know and how much I’ve learned, it’s hard to remember life without him and last July seems like a very long time ago.  Some things I’ve learned:

• It’s hard not to rely on cliche, when so many of them are true, like that parenthood is the hardest, most exhausting, and most wonderful thing ever. 
• Parenthood didn’t fundamentally change who I am, but it did make my life feel more meaningful (again with the cliches).  I was worried that I might be unrecognizable or that my identity would be lost in the transition, but besides an earlier bedtime and a stagnant passport I haven’t become a different person.  What have shifted are my priorities, which I guess makes the bedtime and passport things less important anyway.
• When calling in sick to work, don’t cancel the babysitter.
• Baby poop isn’t that gross when it’s your own baby.  But it’s still kind of gross. 
• I have a new appreciation for sweet potatoes and any food that can be easily smashed and served. 
• T.V. is even more hypnotic to babies than it is for adults; sometimes it’s just too easy.
• My relationship with my parents hasn’t changed as much as I’d heard it might, but I think they see me in a whole new light and I certainly enjoy trying to imagine them going through similar things with me that I am experiencing now with my dude. 
• It is really hard to find even somewhat gender neutral clothing for babies.  But I’m less squeamish about my dude wearing blue than I though I would be, it’s a nice color and makes his eyes sparkle. 
• The faint possibility that great harm will come to my child from a plane crashing into our apartment building, falling off a boat, or being stung by a West Nile virus-carrying mosquitto feels upsettingly possible when trying to fall asleep.

No Comments | In: personal | | #

I was thinking about how I haven’t been super compelled to post anything here in a while, and it seems that I have been spending less time thinking about being a parent, and more time just kind of being one.  Maybe it’s gotten more normal, or there’s a new normal, or at least a routine.  The parent- and kid-related articles I come across haven’t been jumping out at me as much as they have in previous months, and I feel like my identity has shifted from “mother” to “mother and some other stuff too.”  Maybe this is sort of the normal course of things, that the dude and my relationship with him has been incorporated into me and my life and it’s not something I think about in any sort of meta way because it just is what it is, everyday awesomeness and craziness with my guy.  That’s not to say that this won’t shift again, who knows.  But right now, I’m just loving his 5 teeth and his giggles and his fat feet.

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I enjoyed my first Mother’s Day as a mother a lot more than I thought I would.  In the past, I was caught up in the notion that Mother’s Day is a holiday created by card companies to guilt people into buying their products (which isn’t exactly the history of the holiday, just what it has become in some ways - Bust magazine had a great article on the history of Mother’s Day this month, but it’s not online or else I would share it with the group).    But it was nice to have strangers wish me a Happy Mother’s Day when I was walking down the street with my little dude, and to feel a part of something bigger that is motherhood and a day to recognize all that that means.  I didn’t mind the fancy brunch or mini cupcakes either. 

In that spirit, here’s a nice little piece from Livescience about why moms deserve Mother’s Day (as if you weren’t sure - thanks to Rational Moms for the link).  It presents a few stats about how hard moms work, and how difficult life can be for them, though I’m left thinking that instead of celebrating the sacrifice once a year, maybe dads could kick it up a notch?  But you knew I was going to say that.

No Comments | In: personal, work/family balance | | #

Among the heap of unsolicited advice and declarations I received while pregnant, I found the predictions of my child’s gender based on belly shape and heartburn the most hilarious.  This feature from Scientific American has undertaken the task of dispelling these and several other myths using, if you can imagine, actual scientific research.  Thanks to Rational Moms for the link.  By the by, I had major heartburn when I was pregnant, and the dude was born with hardly any hair on his little head.   So there goes that one.

No Comments | In: articles, personal, research | | #

Since shortly after my little dude was born, I have periodically had this odd and disturbing experience of fearfulness that he will drown.  Specifically, I get flooded with anxiety when an image of him falling off a boat comes into my mind.  He has never been on a boat, and has no plans to do so any time soon, but I still have an intense fear that he’s going to drown.   His helplessness and vulnerability, coupled with my overwhelming sense of protecting him from any danger that could befall him, is a powerful force that exceeds any rationality I can muster.  At this point, I can’t even go on boats, and will be enrolling the dude in swimming lessons as soon as he is old enough. 

This seemed to come out of left field, and I couldn’t figure out where this image came from, until a few months ago during the season premiere of LOST when it all came back to me.  At the end of the last season, when I was 5 months pregnant or so, several of the characters are in a helicopter crash into the ocean, and one of them was holding a baby.  They all survived (spoiler alert), but I remember thinking, “how and the heck are you supposed to swim with a baby in your arms?”  During the recap at the beginning of this season, I had a serious a-ha moment and my fear made a bit more sense.  And then, when a plane landed in a river very close to my home, I think it kind of kicked everything up a notch.  There was a woman with a 6-month-old baby on the plane, and there were reports that she had difficulty handing her child over when she was being rescued, she was holding on to her baby for dear life.   

A psychoanalyst might say that this fear stems from my own aggressive impulses and hatred toward my dude, and I think it’s important to acknowledge that maternal feelings do not always entirely consist of rainbows and sunshine.  He can be frustrating and make me feel totally inept at times, to be sure, but I think it’s more helpful to think of this as part of a process ratcheting up my protective instincts and the anticipation of any possible danger to those ends.

It turns out, I’m not alone in this.  I found this study of 100 new mothers assessing the presence of such fears, “New mothers’ thoughts of harm related to the newborn” (Fairbrother & Woody 2008; Archives of Women’s Mental Health).  From the abstract:

“Participants were assessed prenatally and at 4 and 12 weeks postpartum using questionnaires and a semi-structured interview about unwanted thoughts of harm related to the newborn. Postpartum intrusive thoughts of accidental harm to the infant were universal, and close to half of the sample reported unwanted thoughts of intentionally harming their infant. Compared with intentional harm thoughts, accidental harm thoughts were more frequent and more time consuming, but less distressing. High parenting stress and low social support predicted the occurrence of thoughts of intentional harm. Little evidence of an association between these thoughts and aggressive parenting was found. Unwanted intrusive thoughts of harming one’s infant are a relatively normative experience during the early postpartum period, particularly in association with greater parenting stress and low social support.”

Thanks to Rand for the awesome pic.

1 Comment | In: personal, research, theory | | #

My little dude has a new habit: waking up at 4:30am.  After weeks, nay months, of gloriously silent nights, he is up after last call and ready to party.  He has also concurrently developed separation anxiety, and for the first time gets markedly upset when his loved ones leave his sight.  I can’t help but think that these two things are related.  This is cool because it means that he is developing a sense of himself as separate from us, and is beginning to understand object permanency, that objects continue to exist even when they are not in sight.  He doesn’t understand yet that we’ll be coming back after we leave, so he freaks out.  But while his new found joy in peek-a-boo is hilarious, his early morning attempts to engage us, and his upset when we are not in his room with him indefinitely, is getting to be a real drag.  And it’s a fine line between reassuring him that we’re not abandoning him and joining the party at his crib.  Some suggestions I’ve found include giving him a security or transitional object for comfort (done - he’s not that into it), and putting him to bed earlier because he may be overtired (so far he’s not down with this, but we’ll keep trying).  I must say, I’ve never been so excited for daylight savings time to begin - 4 days and counting.

No Comments | In: personal, psychonerd, sleep | | #

As someone who was formerly obsessed (see exhibits one, two, and three) with everything baby sleep, I thought it might be useful to write a bit about what I found to be helpful and the most useful resources I came across in my (somewhat limited) research. 

When the little dude first came home, we found that having him sleep with us was really helpful and best for those frequent late-night feedings (which I wrote about here and here).  For naps, we would have him sleep in a bassinet in our room, then eventually his room so he got used to it.  After a few months, we started having a bedtime ritual with him, at the suggestion of his pediatrician and Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child; read a story, turn out the lights, rocking until drowsy, maybe feeding, then putting him to bed drowsy but not asleep.  This whole thing of putting him down drowsy but not asleep took some time and was not easy.  The point of it is that he is learning to sooth himself to sleep so that he is not dependent on us to get him to sleep.  We also swaddled him for the first few months, which really helped a lot to reduce that startle reflex from waking himself up, but around 3 months he was not having it anymore and so we stopped.  It was around this time that he found his thumb, and started sucking on it to sooth himself to sleep.  Babies and adults wake up many times during the night, and the goal is to help him learn how to put himself back to sleep himself.  The thumb did the trick.

At about 4 months, the dude’s pediatrician suggested that we try to have him sleep in his crib at night.  At that time he was sleeping sometimes in bed with us, sometimes in a bassinet next to the bed.  Her thought was that we were actually waking him up during the night when we toss and turn, and he might sleep better if he were in another room.  This was tough to swallow, he was only waking up 2 or 3 times a night at this point, but we gave it a shot.  And in fact, he did sleep for longer periods in his crib.  When he would wake up, I would go and feed him, but eventually, again at the pediatrician’s suggestion, the dude’s psychopapa would go to sooth him to sleep again, to break the association of nighttime with feeding.  This was when he was around 5 months.  The dude is 6 months now, and he sleeps 10-12 hours a night, usually without waking.  I’m not philosophically opposed to Cry-It-Out methods, but I’m really glad we haven’t had to use them so far.  I know we’re really lucky and got a kid who’s a good sleeper, but I think some of these interventions probably helped to some degree as well. 

Interestingly, the dude is much more inconsistent in terms of daytime sleep.  We found it really helpful at times to, as the book suggested, put him to sleep within 1 1/2 to 2 hours of being awake during the first few months, as to not let him become over tired.  But this doesn’t always happen, he doesn’t always go to sleep during the day when we want tim to, even with the rocking, soft music, dim lights, etc.  Some days he sleeps like a champ, some days he only takes a few 20 minute naps.  But contrary to expert opinion, this fortunately hasn’t affected his nighttime sleep.  At this point, according to the book, the goal is to get him to consolidate his naps into 2 to 3 a day, and this does happen, sometimes.    This variability also may be related to who is with him during the day, as he is sometimes cared for by me, his papa, or his babysitter, and we each have our own styles.  It hasn’t been too much of an issue so far, except when we’re trying to get stuff done around the house on a day that he doesn’t nap much.  I’ve heard of families having the opposite issue, with kids who are great daytime nappers but don’t sleep well at night, and since I have to go out into the big mean world to work 4 days a week, I appreciate that the former is the dilemna we have. 

Every kid and family is different, but I liked the balanced and relative approach of HSHHC.  There’s a lot of research in the book, which can be useful or burdensome depending on your interests and level of sleep deprivation, but I really appreciated that the only agenda the author seems to have it to get everyone in the family to have more sleep.  Also a good read was Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler and Preschooler.  And the journey isn’t over yet, so I’m sure we’ll be referring back to these gems as the dude grows and there are more bumps in the road with his sleep.  So far, so good, though.

No Comments | In: personal, sleep | | #

My new favorite television show.  Now you know what I’ve been doing with all of my time. 

And I realize that I’m a bit late to the game on this one, but I hadn’t had much occasion to watch children’s shows in the past few years.  I dig the great music, the acknowledgment that “listening and dancing to music is awesome,” and the lovely life lessons.  Also, my little dude squeals every time it’s on, so that’s a thumbs up as far as I’m concerned.

1 Comment | In: media, personal | | #