Tag Archives: fathering

Childrearing v. Parenting

There are two ways of talking about the work of caring for a child. One is childrearing: the daily acts of keeping the child alive, keeping them and their environment relatively clean and whole, getting them to bed and school or the fields or what-have-you. The individual tasks of childrearing can, for the most part, be done by anyone willing (or perhaps anyone the child is willing to allow). This is the work that is discussed, and disparaged, as unworthy of an educated woman’s time, and really, it doesn’t take a lot to know how to wipe up yet another cup of spilled water-broccoli-and-half-chewed-food-bits.

And then there is parenting. Parenting is the work of doing childrearing without killing the child, yourself, or random judgmental strangers (or not so random judgmental relatives). Parenting is the internal, invisible work it takes to show up to the overtired screaming baby, the trying-to-kill-hirself cruiser, the tantruming toddler, the never-stops-chattering preschooler. Parenting is handing a self-centric, swiss-cheese-brained, immature primate every single one of your triggers, most of which you’ve managed to not realize you even have, and then trying, trying, to deactivate the ones the monkey is stomping all over — before they grow just a little more and find a whole new set. Parenting is the work that is never discussed except in hyperbolic terms — effusive praise for those of us who do it, horror at the thought of it, demonization of those whose failures are made public. Parenting also can and is done by anyone willing, but is a commitment of years, not moments; it is built of moments over years, and once commenced, is only interchangeable from one set to another with wrenching consequence.

Childrearing can be tedious, or easy, or challenging — usually each or all in turns. But the kicker is, the key and secret that those who denigrate childrearing never acknowledge, is that what children most need, more than organized playrooms or clean tables or even getting to schools, is to have adults who love them so deeply and broadly and fiercely that we’ll do the reflexive work of parenting. They need us not merely to be centered, but to center ourselves: they need to see how we wobble and return and be broken and yet thrive and be triggered and move on. They need us, us, whole and human and damaged and glorious, they need us bodies and breasts and arms and laps and minds and souls and they will eat us down and leave us drained and that is what they are supposed to do. It is what we did, what I did, what you did, and we can see this as a horror, or we can see it as a gift, or we can see it, we can know it, as life. Life. Just life.

Choose it, or decline it, make it your vocation, or something you do on the side. But don’t ever, ever deride it. Not around me.

11 Comments | Posted on 2 June 2012 by Arwyn | Category: Parenting | Tags: "mommy wars", attachment parenting, breastfeeding, fathering, Mental Health, mother blame, motherhood

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He is the very model of a modern multitasking man

The Man works from home on Wednesdays, a fact both I and Vulva Baby adore (he’s pretty happy about it most weeks, too). Here he is giving my back a break, bonding with his baby, keeping Vulva Baby happy (and vestibularly stimulated), participating in a group interview for a new potential hire, and chatting in the back channels about said interview:

He wears a baby now. Babies are cool.

This picture brings many thoughts to mind, none of which I have time to explore fully (because she’s back on my chest now):

I know not everyone has jobs that can be done from home, but so many do who aren’t being allowed to (even The Man is only able to once a week). This is a part of the strict separation of “work” and “life” in most current societies — a ridiculous division which fails both at honoring and valuing home-work and at acknowledging that most of us want to work¹ and want to have it be part of our lives.
Similarly, though many people don’t have work that is baby-friendly, many of us do who aren’t being allowed to. Even The Man’s work-from-home guidelines include a ban on performing any form of child care during paid work hours. It is true that having sole care of an infant while working would be exceedingly difficult for most², but again, the expectation that any parent have sole care is a result of the work-life separation mentioned above. There could be so many creative approaches that make far more sense, if we were willing to consider them.
This is life in a “social media” world: communicating in multiple channels at once, often with the same people. Pundits who deride the “current generation” (usually teens or young 20s) for their “technology addiction” are utterly missing the point that communication technology³, is changing how we work and live. But the fundament remains the same: humans communicating and connecting, as we always have and will. Only the particulars differ.
I have a damn adorable baby.⁴

Your thoughts?

That is, to engage in activity that is meaningful, part of something more-than-us, and connects us with others, whether our family or our tribe. Sometimes, in capitalism, we are paid for this work, and sometimes we do not, but we nearly all seek it in one form or another. ↩
It is not coincidence that the days I have been able to write have been when The Man is also working from home, and we are able to trade off. ↩
As it always has and will, from the start of spoken language through writing, printing presses, telegraphs and telephones, and whatever is developed in the future. ↩
C’mon, like that wasn’t one of your first thoughts looking at this picture! ↩

19 Comments | Posted on 6 November 2011 by Arwyn | Category: Kyriarchy, Parenting | Tags: babywearing, fathering, fathers

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No, less-than-threes do not need their moms 24/7/365

“A mother shouldn’t leave her child until about the age of three”, declares a father.

Oh, I do not think so.

What infants and toddlers and preschoolers need is attachment — loving, responsive care from people they know and trust, preferably have known for most or all of their lives but at least with whom they have built a relationship. They need to have older people — adults, yes, but also teens, older children — who know them and love them and who they know and love, accessible to them when needed. The placement of that responsibility exclusively on the mother makes it not a joy, a task of life easily fulfilled, but a burden, under which so many of us are breaking.

Something is wrong with a culture that expects a six week old to sleep through the night, that tells a four month old her hunger is inconvenient and needs to be scheduled, that is surprised when a one year old doesn’t want to be left with a stranger. Some of us recognize this, and some have decided the problem must be because women are employed outside the home, have chosen to have lives that do not revolve around our children.

Not that we have moved away from our families of origin.

Not that we have built fences real and psychological between us and our neighbours.

Not that we have tiny families and a dearth of siblings and cousins.

Not that we have segregated adults and children, and alternately marginalize people with fewer years as second class citizens and exalt them as angels on earth (but never simply honor them as perfectly imperfect persons).

Not that we hold ideal a single family home, and define family as up to two parents and 2.5 children.

Not that we have taught half the population to deny and repress any nurturing potential, for fear of being “unmanly”.

No, it is, as always, entirely the fault of women. Of mothers, for daring to stand up for our humanity and our autonomy, for daring to do the work that earns power and prestige and some amount of protection, for daring to say we have needs and wants and goals too, for daring to take even an hour away to nurture ourselves so we have something to give to our children.

How dare we?

What some misguided whistleblowers (on the problem that is our parenting culture) have deemed is the solution — a mother, subsuming her own desires entirely to her offspring for a full three years each, minimum, accessible at all times of day, all days of the week, all weeks of the year — is just as unnatural and damaging as the model it rebels against.

We are not supposed to do this gig — which risks becoming labor and work and mind-breaking, body-destroying toil the less it is shared with loved ones — all by ourselves. We are not. That some can do it and survive, even enjoy it and would pick it first over any other idealized options, speaks far more to the diversity and flexibility of humanity than it does to the failure or unnaturalness of any woman who doesn’t choose or wouldn’t enjoy (possibly wouldn’t survive) 24/7/365 sole caregiving.

Kids don’t need one person, if that person is going to break if she has to clean up one more fecal-smeared surface.

Kids don’t need one person, if that person is snapping and yelling and cannot catch her breath alone.

Kids don’t need one person, if that person’s back is breaking from twelve hour shifts of bending and lifting and carrying and holding.

Kids don’t need one person, if that person has lost herself and her center and has no core around which her child can revolve, no life from which her child can learn.

Kids need people, people they know and love and trust, people who are with them and responsive to them day after day, who know their rhythms and their personalities and their needs and their wants, who have done the work of endless toiletings and feedings, who have assisted nap times and play times, who have tickled and carried, who have been there through laugh fests and crying jags. Kids need as many of those people as possible. Blood relation entirely optional.

One? Is a bare minimum. The kid might survive, even thrive (because humans are fantastically adaptable); and the parent might as well (ditto): but it comes at a high risk of burning out the carer, torching the relationship, scorching the child. And if that happens, there is no one for the child to turn to.

Two is better.

Three or four are better still.

Half a dozen is getting closer to ideal.

Half a dozen? Sure: a parent or two, a grandparent or two, a parent’s sibling or two, a couple teens or older kids: it’s not a big family, as primate evolution (or human tribal history) goes. But good luck growing it in this society.

(My infant only wants me. She’ll have nothing to do with her dad!

Has her dad been there? Does he know her? Does she know him? Did she hear his voice in the womb? Did she breathe in his smell within hours of birth? Did he carry or wear her her first day out of the womb? And the second? And the third? Does she sleep with his breath on her face, his heat keeping her warm, his body keeping her safe? Does he respond to her attempts at communication about her hunger and elimination? Does he help keep her clean? Does she know him?)

Kids — the younger they are the truer this is — need to be with people they know, and trust, and love (who among us doesn’t, really?). They need attachment; this is immutable biological fact. They’ll make do with almost whatever we give them, but the more the better. It is only our messed up society — or the very rare, very exacting child — that says that this means all-mom all-the-time.

(Oh, the breasts. The sweet, sweet breasts. Yes, infants need near-immediate access to milk at basically all times; known and trusted lactating breasts are biologically expected to be on call 24/7. Only humans — and only some humans — would translate this as mother’s-breasts-only, and even fewer as mother-as-primary-minder-at-every-moment. But a ten, a twenty, a thirty month old gets ever less in need of such omnipresent access, even as their need for it sometimes, and their need for constant nearby presence of trusted caregiver(s), might remain unabated.)

Do you, caring mother, have to leave your less-than-three? Of course not. (If there’s no one around we trust our children to trust, why would we want to? If we have enough people to share the load with that it is still a joy and not a toil — however many that is for us, zero or a dozen — why would we want to?) But you could. If you wanted. If your child wanted. If there are other people your child knows will care for them.

And I promise — it wouldn’t destroy them.

68 Comments | Posted on 18 July 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Kyriarchy, Parenting | Tags: alloparents, attachment parenting, attachment theory, breastfeeding, fathering, Gender, misogyny

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Moments in time: a love letter

Welcome to the February Carnival of Natural Parenting: Love and partners!

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month we’re writing about how a co-parent has or has not supported us in our dedication to natural parenting. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

******

Moments in time: a love letter

I am not blessed with a partner who supports my parenting, but blessed by watching him parent you. These are some of the moments I have been witness to:

~~~~~~

We are in separate states, murmuring those words of endearment and infatuation so long familiar but with new depth now, new breadth as my belly expands, as the baby inside me grows. I hold the phone low on the lump that my torso has become, as he speaks from hundreds of miles away, over air waves and through the layers of my flesh and the precious sphere of fluid it contains. He speaks words I never hear, words that are not for me, words that the listener’s ear recognize only as that voice — known — love but are so essential to say, to have said; words that pass through me, beloved and welcomed by me, but are not for me. I will always remember these words I never heard, from him to you.

~~~~~~

We have danced together, you and I and he, for hours ephemeral and eternal, and you are almost here, your body in mine and out of mine, in this space between contractions, between bearing down, between born and not. He is behind me, behind us, (but before you as well), and he cradles your head, waiting, all of us waiting. Later he writes:

The first time I touched you only your head was out. I was cupping the back of your head and I felt an ear. It was so amazing.

It was.

~~~~~~

This image I could never forget, if only because I have studied it now so often. You are eighteen hours old, and already asleep on his chest. You will spend so much of the first weeks of your life this way, and it will be a familiar comfort to you for years.

~~~~~~

It is he who suggests the hold that allows us to nurse in comfort at last. This time is ours, this aspect of parenting you for me alone (except a time or two when your need to suckle is greater than my ability to stand it, and he latches you on, you confused, the two of us giggling — but I have the respite I need, you have the comfort you sought, and he and I have a new shared vocabulary for this experience, that we draw on for so many months to come), and he respects that, protects that, and steps up everywhere else to support that: but here, too, he is essential, not extraneous, and his suggestion saves my back, soothes your hunger, and we are content, thanks to him.

~~~~~~

So many more moments I could tell you of, my little love, my child. The times he knew why you fussed when I despaired; the times he walked the halls with you when neither of us knew; the moment when you laughed, laughed for the first time ever and it was for him, because of him; the moment you pushed a book to him to read to you, and all the moments of all the books he read with you in his lap, in his arms, in his heart. Of a million such moments, mundane and miraculous, does a relationship grow. Yours flourishes before my eyes.

~~~~~~

I hear you now, in the bedroom, reading, laughing, talking. I am sitting up to write, as I do almost every night now, because you do not nap and it is my only chance. I can just hear his voice, calm and low and slow, lulling and loving, and sometimes louder to speak over you, to answer your persistent questions. Yours dances over his, bubbly and bright, not willing to yet relinquish consciousness. Bedtimes are your time now, yours and his: my job is to fetch you more books if needed, to hug and to kiss and to slip away quietly, to stay away until I am sure you slumber. He has always been there for you at night, reading to me, walking with you, a warm body to turn toward when you were done with mine.

You are done with mine now, and I cherish the memories from when it was my body, my presence and my breast and my milk, that you needed — but no more than I will cherish the memories I etch in my mind on nights like these, when I steal into bed hours after you both crossed into sleep, and I see you, my family, my hearts, lying together: him with an arm curled above your head, you pressed to his side, stretched out so impossibly long, one leg claiming the space I’ll push you aside to slip into, momentarily. But first I give myself this, this time when I am the intruder on something intimate. I am a part of it, yes, but apart from it as well. You two are two, complete, whole on your own: add me, three, and we are something different, not better, just bigger.

Dear child, know this: I love you with all that I am; I am your mother, from my body were you born — but I am not the only one who loves you completely, unreservedly. You will grow up knowing this, of course, grow up having so many moments in which I am on the outside, and you two are two, together. This will be old news to you, because love is built daily, and he is there for you, loves you in actions and words and presence, every day. But indulge me, and allow me these moments when I see your love and it explodes me, when I write it down so I do not forget.

There is quiet now: my two hearts slumber in another room, while I toil, alone. I would have it no other way; and neither, I think, would you.

******

Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

(This list will be updated Feb. 9 with all the carnival links, and all links should be active by noon EST. Go to Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama for the most recently updated list.)

A Thank You to my Husband — Lactating Girl at The Adventures of Lactating Girl thanks her husband for keeping her grounded and giving her unwavering support in the face of discouragement from within and without. (@lactatinggirl)
My Reverse Traditional Husband In the Wild — Paige at Baby Dust Diaries gives us a lesson on how dads in the wild parent their young. Can you guess which male animal actually nurses its young? (@babydust)
February Carnival of Natural Parenting — TopHat at The Bee in Your Bonnet tells us how the patience of a partner can make a difficult breastfeeding relationship succeed. (@TopHat8855)
Parenting Together — For Alison at BluebirdMama and her husband, parenting is simply an extension of the way they live. (@childbearing)
If We Had A Million Dollars — Melodie at Breastfeeding Moms Unite! and her husband would both agree to be crunchier parents if they had a million dollars to ease the way. (@bfmom)
February Carnival of Natural Parenting: Co-Parents — Dionna at Code Name: Mama has written a letter to her husband, thanking him for his incredible support in every aspect of
their natural parenting journey. (@CodeNameMama)
Natural Parenting Fathers — Sarah at Natural Parenting is balancing being all there for her son with being present for her husband. (@considereden)
Just Wonderful: Love and Partners and Natural Parenting — Zoey at Good Goog let her husband lead her to babywearing and cosleeping. (@zoeyspeak)
All that stuff I don’t get comes so easy to him — The Grumbles is taking this opportunity to say thank you to her husband for his mad parenting skills. (@thegrumbles)
The Power of Having a Supportive Co-Parent — Chrystal at Happy Mothering and her husband started with vaccinations and moved on from there. (@HappyMothering)
February Carnival of Natural Parenting: Love and partners — Lauren at Hobo Mama makes do with babbling incoherently about how her husband practices natural parenting in such an effortless fashion, with bonus video. (@Hobo_Mama)
Love and Partners — Mrs Green at Little Green Blog shares her husband’s moving account of her birth story, and his testament to the power of a woman. (@myzerowaste)
labor support… — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children is thankful that her partner has provided her immeasurable labor support through each of their last three unassisted homebirths (and will again for their upcoming fourth!).
What co-parent? On prams, routines, ideals, sickness, and finding my way alone. — Ruth at Look Left of the Pleiades describes life without a present co-parent: making new choices and taking care of things herself. (@brightravenmum)
Parenting With Support — How many people can say that their husband talked them into cloth diapering? Darcel at The Mahogany Way can! (@MahoganyWayMama)
Co-Parenting Support — Summer at Mama2Mama Tips knows the importance of being supported in the face of criticism. (@mama2mamatips)
Natural Parenting Carnival: Love and Partners — pchanner at A Mom’s Fresh Start has been blessed with an incredibly involved partner. Her husband loves to take part in every aspect of parenting! (@pchanner)
Daddy’s Little Girls — Kate Wicker at Momopoly finds her husband right at home in a tangle of girls. (@Momopoly)
How do I love my parenting partner? Let me count the ways. — Sybil at Musings of a Milk Maker is thankful that she and her partner co-parent fluidly and gracefully. (@mamamilkers)
Interview with a Daddy — NavelgazingBajan brings us a highly amusing peek into her husband’s perspective.
Being Supported in Natural Parenting — Sarah at OneStarryNight has witnessed both ends of the parenting spectrum, and is grateful she found a father who is comfortable with natural parenting. (@starrymom)
Moments in time: a love letter — Arwyn at Raising My Boychick will make you cry with the beautiful way she describes the complete relationship between father and child. (@RaisingBoychick)
Natural parenting converts — Jen at Recovering Procrastinator brought her reluctant husband around to cloth diapers, bed sharing, and time-ins as a discipline method. (@jenwestpfahl)
Breastfeeding Father — Amber Strocel at Strocel.com describes how her husband helped her overcome the breastfeeding challenges she encountered with her premature daughter. (@AmberStrocel)
A Natural Parenting Village — Acacia from Art, Body & Soul, in a guest post for Jamie at Suddenly Stay at Home, broadens the term “coparents” to embrace supportive extended family on both sides. (@SuddnlyStyAtHme)
A Natural Dad — Shana at Tales of Minor Interest doesn’t have a husband who merely supports her — she has a husband just as dedicated to natural parenting as she is.
Love and Support From My (sometimes pantsless) Man — Joni Rae at Tales of a Kitchen Witch Momma describes life with the sometimes bumbling but always lovable Pantsless Man. (@kitchenwitch)
G-O-T-E-A-M! — Jessica at This Is Worthwhile made sure her future husband agreed with her parenting choices early in their dating. (@tisworthwhile)
how we come to parenthood — Michelle at womanseekingmother dances with her husband around the subject of cosleeping. (@seekingmother)

17 Comments | Posted on 9 February 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Parenting | Tags: attachment parenting, babywearing, birth, breastfeeding, Carnival of Natural Parenting, fathering, homebirth, pictures, sleep

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WFPP Guest Post: Can Mama Bear Let Go?

Welcome to the Womanist/Feminist Parenting Primer, PhD in Parenting-style. Annie brings to the WFPP her usual informative flair on the subject of leaving her children in the care of her partner while she leaves the house to work.

Annie wishes to include this disclaimer: This post gives the perspective of a male-partnered cis woman who carried and birthed her two children (“mama bear”). The biological facts and societal assumptions discussed in this article may not apply in adoptive or surrogate situations or in non-heterosexual relationships.

Can Mama Bear Let Go?

A baby develops a connection to its mother as it grows in the womb. That connection is reinforced as the mother holds the baby to her breast for the first time and then over and over again. Biology and society place the mom as the primary caregiver for new life. In her book, The Female Brain, Louann Brizendine, M.D. describes what happens after a woman gives birth to a baby:

For the human mother, the lovely smells of her newborn’s head, skin, poop, spit up breast milk, and other bodily fluids that have washed over her during the first few days will become chemically imprinted on her brain – and she will be able to pick ut her own baby’s smell above all others with about 90 percent accuracy. This goes for her baby’s cry and body movements, too. The touch of her baby’s skin, the look of its little fingers and toes, its short cries and grasps – all are now tattooed on her brain. Within hours to days, overwhelming protectiveness may seize her. Maternal aggression sets in. Her strength and resolve to care for and protect this little being completely grab the brain circuits. She feels she could stop a moving truck with her own body to protect her baby. Her brain has changed, and along with it her reality.

Brizendine goes on to explain that for a woman who does birth a baby, this is perhaps the biggest change she will experience in her life. But increasingly, people are realizing that despite this strong biological connection and despite society’s assumptions about a mother’s role, the birth mother does not have to take on the lion’s share of the nurturing and caregiving. Whether the parents choose equally shared parenting, whether the birth mother is the primary breadwinner, or whether the non-birth mother chooses to induce lactation to share in the primary care duties, there are many scenarios where mama bear…the one who carried and birthed that baby…may need to let go. If we want to achieve the goals of feminism, we need to not only ask for more options for mothers, but also ask their partners to step up and be more than a babysitter. But we need to give them the space to do that. We mama bears need to be willing to let go a bit.

Letting go, for me, had two parts. First, I had to be able to separate myself both physically and emotionally. Second, I had to be able to trust my partner to take over a significant portion of the nurturing. In this post, I’ll share some of my thoughts and experiences about letting go as a working mom whose partner is a stay at home dad.

Separating myself

Physically turning and walking out the door as your child tugs at your pant legs and screams “MAMAAAAAAA” is excruciating. Listening from the other room as your partner fumbles through a difficult parenting moment when you feel you have the answer requires patience. Being a slave to a breast pump instead of holding your baby snugly at your breast is tough. In her post Where’s the numbness?, Naomi from Mama’s Apple Cores wrote:

So, why on earth do I want to turn our world upside down so that I can be the one home? It seems so selfish, but I just can’t move beyond this strong feeling that I need to be home. I try to embrace what we have and focus on the richness of our life, and I do okay for a few days. And then one day I go crazy wanting to be home. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I scream. Drive and cry. Drive and scream. Panic attacks. Feel like I’m losing my mind. Maybe this is just my personal instability and being home would not solve that? Would I be happier if I was home? Would I be more stable? Or is this just a combination of me and lack of sleep?

For me, focusing on and getting the most out of the time I had with my kids was critical. When I was home, I babywore, breastfed, co-slept. That meant that even on the days when I did have to go to work, I could still physically be attached to my children for around 14 hours of the day. I never understood so-called “experts” who suggested a 6pm bedtime for a baby in a crib in a separate room. That would have devastated me. That would have meant seeing my child for 15 minutes in the evening and maybe an hour in the morning before work while trying to get ready and get out the door. Not an option.

Giving something to my baby while at work helped to. I pumped breast milk at work for my son until he was 12 months old and for my daughter until she was 18 months old. I would think of them constantly during the day and even get caught humming Elmo’s song over and over again as my brain connected with them despite our physical separation. The drive home was long, very long.

Having a routine helps. It is hard at first. But after a while you and the kids kids realize that each morning Mommy gets up and goes to work. She stays there for a while and she comes home not long after their afternoon nap. Once you realize that there are five days (or whatever it may be for you) where you have to plow through it, but you can then spend two days focusing on your kids, it gets easier. At least it did for me. But a big part of it getting easier was knowing that my kids were in great hands, which brings me to the next part…

Trusting my partner

To have peace of mind when I go out the door or even while I focus on a task in one room while my partner parents in another room, I need to trust him. For me, trust means knowing we agree about the big things and understanding that the little things don’t matter that much.

My partner and I share the same basic attachment-based parenting philosophy. We both agree that leaving our kids to cry it out is not an option. We both agree that breast is best and that our children were going to be given breastmilk exclusively as infants. We both treat our children with the respect that human beings deserve. Knowing that we are on the same page about the big things is what allows this mama bear to let go. I know of other couples where one of them believes in crying it out and the other doesn’t. Where one thinks it is fun to sneak an infant a McDonald’s sundae and the other one wants the baby exclusively breastfed. Where one regularly humiliates and spanks the children and the other believes in gentle discipline. When parents have such vastly different parenting philosophies, trust is difficult and I know a lot of moms who take it all upon themselves so that they do not have to leave their child with the irresponsible or abusive person they chose to raise children with. I am so thankful that I am not in that position.

But letting go also requires not freaking out about the little things. For me, much of how I parent is about the way that I want to relate to my kids. It is about the relationship that I want to build with them. It is about the way that I want them to see me. It is about what I want to teach them and the values that I want to pass on. But the reality is that every human being will have to deal with a large variety of different teachers, bosses, friends, partners, colleagues, and so on over the course of their life. They will not all relate to them in the same way and I think it does children good to learn different ways of relating with different people. Being exposed to different parenting styles will help prepare them for that. The little things are just not worth sweating. They will not make that big of a difference (if at all) in how your child turns out, but stressing over them will have a big impact on your anxiety levels and on your relationship. Your partner needs to know that you trust him or her to make good parenting choices when you are not there (or even when you are) and that even if he or she does have a bad parenting day, that that is okay too.

Finally, your kids need to see that you trust your partner. I like to remind my kids as I am leaving that they will have a fun time with Daddy. I ask them when I get home what fun things they did together. I try to show them that I am happy to see them develop that bond and to have that special time with their other parent.

Hibernating?

In my experience, yes…mama bear can let go. But maybe not forever. I go on dates with my kids to reconnect. I need extended vacations with my kids to deepen and strengthen our relationship after long periods of hard work and repeated separation. This summer, I’m looking forward to hibernating for a few months with my kids while papa bear ventures back out of the cave for a bit.

Annie is the mom of two kids, Emma (age almost 3) and Julian (age 5). She tries to stir up issues and spark discussion on the art and science of parenting at the PhD in Parenting blog.