I wrote this Monday night but didn’t know if I should publish it.  But, well, why not?  Maybe it will help some new parents.  Maybe it will help people around new parents to chill the hell out.  Maybe it will help me after a year of being frustrated by people.  Maybe it’s just entertaining?

You might remember, around this time last year and last summer, that I was astounded by how people could still expect the same X/whatever from you after you become a parent as they did before. (I was even ashamed and guilty at my reactions to it all.) This ranged from passive-aggressive people being pissed that we weren’t in the mood for visitors the day we got home from the hospital, to a co-worker of mine who liked to bitch to me about not being happy with the salary she was being offered from the university I was exiting. This is annoying enough and, in some cases, infuriating. While some of the bile this instilled in me spilled over into my blog, too many people I know (and too many involved, frankly, at work and at home) read this damned thing for any fruitful venting. (Plus, I’m painfully unable to just let people be mad at me, especially if they’re only mad because they are being unreasonable.) If venting can be fruitful? I don’t know. Maybe it can be fruitful to you, to prospective/future/new parents, to know that, Nope, you are not crazy.

Becoming a parent changes people. It will change you. Unfortunately, it doesn’t change everyone around you. This is a cause for/of conflict.

1) People will demand the same time, attention and consideration that you gave them before you became a parent and were responsible for another human being. People who like you to listen to them bitch about the same boat you’re in yourself will still want their hour a day at work for you to listen to them. Your boss will still get you to come in two weeks after your child is born, when you’re on leave, to do something it’s not your job to do. Groups to which you belong will chide you for your absence. People will demand that their feelings come not only before your feelings, but before you child altogether. No one seems to realize that you’re a finite person, with limited time, attention and energy – and that you’re sleeping for 2-4 hours a night to boot.

2) People will demand your child. I can’t count the number of times that someone has gotten mad at me, or mad at Mama, for not handing our kid over quickly enough; for being too tired for company; for taking our child back too quickly (whatever that means); for correcting people or saying, “No.” We all only have our children as children for a limited time, and the time wherein they like to spend time with their parents and to be held by them is even shorter. Still, people will demand it. Trust me.

3) The number of children people have or the recency of their childbearing seem to have, in my experience, absolutely no affect on how ridiculous they are going to be toward you. We have friends with a child not much older than Charlotte, which is to say, friends who are very recent parents. One of them came over to meet Charlotte while he/she was sick, when Charlotte was nine days old, got her sick and taken to the ER when she was less than two weeks old.  I’m not even making this up.  I was so furious that I shredded their Christmas card (not my proudest moment).

4) Barely anyone is going to cut you any slack.  I can’t say that enough.  Not your co-workers or boss[es]; not your friends; not your family; not your parents; not your grandparents. Hardly anyone. People have gotten mad at us for: not coming to X event because Charlotte was sick or fussy; reading too much; saying (even yelling, when we have to) that Charlotte can’t have something they want to give them because it’s dangerous; someone got insanely mad at me last summer for not remembering to do her/him a favor that I regularly performed. (Really?) Sure, some people might say that they understand that Mama had a difficult delivery and a lot of…strife with her side of the family and that post-baby depression was no stranger in this residence. Some people say that they understand that you worry, that you make mistakes. But there aren’t many people who are going to act like they understand and cut you any slack.

I certainly don’t mean to say or to imply that having a kid makes you immune to guilt or responsibility. I remember other people who were flat-out jerks when they had kids, and we have both tried to avoid this kind of behavior as much as possible. (This post is negative enough without elaborating on all of that.) But sometimes we make mistakes. Slack-cutting or not, we make mistakes. We do.

Still. You’d think other parents would know this and cut you slack, when they remember their own mistakes. Still. One would hope? Rather, it seems like people with kids assume that the sleeplessness, the frustration and the anxiety that they [likely] encountered as new parents were all specific to their own experience. That is, almost everyone with kids seems to forget what it’s like to be new parents. They forget that you make mistakes, that you’re not sleeping, that you worry. And then they don’t forgive you for any of it.

5) No one’s going to give you credit for the things that you do manage to do for them. If you help someone at work while running on an hour and a half of sleep; spend your evening helping someone hunt something down; or remember something everyone else forgot, all people are going to recognize is the unreasonable demands you didn’t meet. I’d suspect that statement of being dramatically pessimistic, if it weren’t very dramatically proven to be true consistently and constantly. I missed one event last summer and was called “scum” [literally] for “blaming” my kid for why I wasn’t there. Not that one time.  One fucking time.

6) People love to forget that you are your child’s parents, that you are the boss. Oodles of people are going to do things without asking you (food/drink, obvious choking hazards, dangerous situations, etc.) that you will have to correct. You wind up not just watching your child; you have to watch everyone else, too. That doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable. It’s not the world’s job to watch your kid. But when people get mad at you for it, that’s more than unreasonable.

7) People are going to expect things that you don’t owe them, and they’re going to get mad when they don’t get them.  They’re going to expect you to be super polite when you’re exhausted.  They’re going to expect that you consult them before you do something, or they’re going to expect you to leave them alone.  They’re going to expect your child whenever they want, for as long as they want. They’re going to expect that you tell them that, yes, in fact, your child likes them better because she reached for them.  It’s not that she’s social or likes new people.  She hates her parents.  In short, there are going to be people in your life who are going to have expectations of you which they are not going to share with you, and they are going to hold it against you when they don’t get what they want.  Maybe you’re already in this kind of situation.  In that case, it’s going to get worse.

Sure, you could say.  So what?  Ignore them.  That’s easier said than done, when people who are close to you keep getting mad at you for not meeting expectations that are not only unreasonable, but also secret for some reason.  Expecting people to read your mind and then getting mad when they don’t is ridiculous. Everyone knows this.  But everyone does it.  It’s very hard to be good parents when people get mad at you for little (and usually silly) things constantly, never tell you before or after you didn’t meet their requirements and then have the nerve to get mad about it. That’s putting one’s feelings not only ahead of yours as parents.  That’s putting one’s feelings before the baby.  I have done a bad job of dealing with it by giving in all the time.  I keep putting other people’s feelings on par with Charlotte because I don’t want to make the same mistakes I have seen other people make, regarding getting people mad at your kid because they’re mad at you.  But that’s it.  Not anymore.

8) People are going to get offended if you don’t share their values and opinions, no matter how half-assed or incorrect they are. If I had a dollar for every time that some “ignorant” Hampdenite got in Charlotte’s face with a cigarette to demand, “How ole?” I’d be a rich man. “How ole [sic] what? Me? The baby? How old do I think you’ll be when you die, from the looks of you?” DON’T SMOKE AROUND MY FUCKING KID! You don’t drive your kid around in a car (which is, statistically, way more dangerous than walking around with a carrier or a stroller)? People are going to get offended that you don’t share their drivemyassaroundeverywhere values. I think this is even worse if you’re hyper-educated. It’s common already for people, in my experience, to get downright hostile in their opinions about my opinions, values and practices. They seem to view my choices as judgments on their own decisions and to feel obligated to defend themselves against some bogyman value-estimates about their choices. I think (and I hope I’m not sounding too stuck up here) that some people get triple-threatened when others who are very well-educated value something very different that said person does. People have, even recently, gotten nasty with me about the type of food I eat, the amount of TV I don’t watch, my lack of a car and a house. This is almost always not just friendly joking around. This is bullshit, is what it is.

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Of course, I’d be guilty of being as blind and mean and ridiculous myself if I didn’t recognize the good things people do to/for new parents. But, well, that’s another post. This is long enough already. I’ll get on the other, lest I be accused of being too negative.  The other post will self-publish in a few hours.

Do not send them dozens of emails.  Do not ask questions over and over.  Do not keep changing the details and plans without telling anybody.  Do not, when asked a question about a huge favor someone is doing for you, begin a sentence with, “You need to….”  Seriously.  If you suck at details and know it and then get willing people to take care of it, let them do it.  It’s actually pretty insulting to keep checking.

And it wastes everyone’s time and might even build ill-will. Think of all the time you waste bitching and moaning.  I mean, did I miss something?  Do bitching and moaning suddenly and magically get ‘er done?

And if you change things until the day before, we all might have saved some energy and sanity by waiting until that day to do anything, huh?

There you go.  Management advice from a student of [academic] philosophy.

Also: Invest in coffee for your staff.  Good coffee.  If I ever worked for something who did that, I might still work there!