Grandma, again

My daughter had another baby - her last. She's forty, so that's a good thing. We had a girl, Amelia Catherine. Her 104-year-old great-grandmother's name is Catherine, and Amelia is the ninth great-grandchild, and the first namesake. That's a wonderful thing. I've been a grandmother for two years now, so I probably have a handle on it, you might think. But with each new stage of development of my grandson, I have to learn new skills, so no, I don't. Besides, I'm a terrible pushover. I never was any good at boundaries and sticking to the rules. It's a wonder my kids survived me, and I'm probably worse with my grandson, and will be even worse with my granddaughter, no doubt. But this isn't about that (although maybe I should give all that some thought and write about it). It's about this:

Here’s what I perceive to be the difference between philosophy about child rearing today and yesterday: Formerly, doctors encouraged mothers to take care of themselves first over their newborns, believing that a rested, well-fed mother was the best mother. It mirrored the oxygen mask over your face first, THEN take care of others. It wasn’t that babies were ignored, it was just that their needs came second in the knowledge that babies will often get what they need, if not always what they want, because they are pretty demanding. And cute.

Today, so much science has gone into child development and so much is known about infants and their needs in order to provide the baby with the optimum experience in order to give it all the advantages it can have, keep it safe from any health hazards, and nurture it into an extraordinary being with superior brain power. In the meantime, Mom has been put on the back burner. She is supposed to do everything to give her baby every advantage. If she doesn’t she’s a bad mother.

There has to be a happy medium. We don’t know yet if these extremely well-cared for, 24/7 monitored, climate controlled, organically diapered, sufficiently stimulated infants and toddlers with just the right amount of play dates and educational toys are going to be happier, more well-adjusted people or if they are going to wonder what the hell happened when all the focus is no longer on them. Would a little benign neglect help them to get a glimpse of the real world and allow them to become a little more resourceful? But more to the point, would Mom taking some time for herself, maybe briefly ignoring the optimum experience for the baby/toddler, and settling for “good enough” help her to be a less-stressed person? How is all this anxiety caused by trying to do everything perfectly so as to not fail your baby helping either one of you? There's so much focus on the child now, I'm wondering about Mom. How is she doing? Maybe we need to ask.