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We’ve had some lovely guest writers this season at Stiff Upper Quip (see here, here and here). We’re always looking for new ones too.
To round out our guest contributions before next month’s summer break, has written us this splendid piece about how the arrival of a child affects family wounds.
Becoming a parent comes with many consequences, most of which will be obvious and need no explanation from me. I aim not to bore readers to tears too often. Something I did not expect, however, following months of lurking around the Mumsnet boards and a lifetime of hearing various horror stories from families, was just how much of a balm a baby could be to old family scars.
Allow me to clarify: This is not the case in every instance. You should not have a baby to try to fix a problem, unless that problem is that you want a baby. A balm can soothe, but it doesn’t necessarily heal the wound. Baby Balm Terms and Conditions Apply.
When you are newly pregnant in the UK, you attend a “booking in appointment” with a midwife. She takes a urine and blood sample, measures your height and weight, and asks 82,000 questions about you and the father’s medical history and domestic life. It is all too easy to grow bored during the questioning, which takes over an hour, but you really must listen carefully to the questions. Failure to do so may result in a slight embarrassment, such as when I accidentally answered “yes” to the question of whether the pregnancy was by a man other than my husband. Thankfully, the student midwife looked just shocked enough that I asked her to repeat the question and was able to confirm that I had not in fact been putting it about.
After this, I was on high alert. I correctly answered question after question, only pausing when she asked me: “Do you or the baby’s father have any childhood trauma?”
Well, bloody hell. How do you answer that?
“Oh, darling, who doesn’t? It’s why we’re so funny!”
*Canned laughter plays as we clink our non-alcoholic margaritas together*
I hovered over the question, wondering what exactly counted as “childhood trauma”, and what would make it relevant to this pregnancy. If an eight-year-old girl sees her pet cat get run over, does she need to tell a midwife as an adult? Thankfully, my cats lived to a ripe old age, but they did enjoy a spot of sunbathing on tarmac. I spent a good deal of time chasing the little sods out of the way of oncoming vehicles only to receive a mere sarcastic swish of the tail in response.
“No. No trauma.”
I decided to keep it simple. I really don’t know what would count. My sister would probably give a different answer completely, as we experienced the same childhood from our respective angles. Sometimes the same knife can leave two different cuts. I am reminded of this every time I am inspired to try to cut vegetables in my hand, instead of on, you know, a chopping board.
I imagine the question came from a concern that a child experiencing abuse or neglect may have severe and active physical and mental injuries as an adult; these injuries may affect how they parent and could possibly indicate the need for additional support. It made me wonder just how much my childhood hang-ups have negatively or positively influenced my own parenting of my son.
For example: Did I struggle to keep my patience in the first year because I had so much retained anger from my youth? Or was it just a normal experience for a highly-strung woman with a baby who refused to sleep for periods of longer than an hour at a time? I’ll never know. All I can do is regret my failings and try to improve on them. I do every day.
This is a large part of why I say that having a baby can help to patch over familial rifts. All of a sudden, we see our own mothers and fathers reflected in the mirror in a way we didn’t see before. This is not to say that those without children lack insight to their parents’ behaviour. It just shows us another angle we don’t necessarily expect.
I can forgive my parents’ foibles that bit more easily, in some cases at least. I can see times where their weaknesses showed through, but I find it easier too to see the strain that they were under as I become painfully aware of my own flaws.
Of course, it also works the other way.
When you deeply love a child and do your best to raise them well, it also becomes easier to see somebody else’s lack of effort or willing. I now despair even more deeply of my father’s apparent lack of interest in his children, but at the same time, a lot of my anger has dissipated. I can truly appreciate now that it was not my doing. I didn’t realise before becoming a mother that a small part of me blamed myself. I can see now that he, not me, lacked something in his character. I can see that he missed out on so much of fatherhood because he pitied himself for the stresses and strains of its duties; he undervalued the love and joy that came with them.
I maintain a cordial relationship with him now, made easier by his living in another country. This geographical distance also makes it easier to define a grandparental relationship for him. In this relationship he sends birthday and Christmas money for my son and coos delightedly over the photographs, cards, and updates I send him. He visited last year, the only time he has met his grandson, and he played beautifully with him.
It does not make up for the father-daughter relationship that I would have liked to have had. That ship has long since sailed. Still, it does give us a shared purpose and bond. It gives him the opportunity to be generous and adoring, all without responsibility.
When you see somebody treat your child well, it automatically allows you to feel more warmly towards that person. I dread to think how awkward and stifled my relationship with my in-laws would be without my son. That is not to say that they are bad people, or that I am, but we have little in common bar the ties of marriage. Their ways of socialising differ greatly to mine. I’m sure that in more than a decade of knowing them, they have asked me how I am only a handful of times. Despite my best efforts, conversations quickly stall.
The love they have for their grandson is clear. Conversations can now revolve smoothly and easily around him, and his antics keep the mood light and all of us too busy to worry about any feelings of awkwardness.
My husband and I have had three unsuccessful pregnancies. My mother-in-law did not express any sympathy when we last found out the bad news. I think she feels it, in her own way, but I’m long past trying to figure her out. I just appreciate that she took care of our son and kept him blissfully happy while we attended our scan and tried to pull ourselves together afterwards.
In this way, the youngest members of the family can provide an opportunity to make up, somewhat, for our mistakes and failings. I’m sure that no matter how hard I try, my son will end up in adulthood with some hang-ups of his own. I sincerely hope that they are minimal, and do not impact him too awfully. All being well, he will marry and have children of his own, and I can lavish them with love and attention in a doting, grandmotherly fashion. Perhaps this will be enough to smooth over the cracks I am certain to create.
Or to quote the poet Philip Larkin:
“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.”
This is taken from his poem “This Be the Verse”, in the collection “High Windows.” I’m rather fond of it. I disagree entirely, however, with its somewhat defeatist closing couplet:
“Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.”