I think it’s a rite of passage as a mom (or dad) blogger to write at least a couple of posts about how the realities of actually parenting a child have chipped away at whatever moral resolve you might have had when you were childless, leaving your previously lofty standards in a tarnished heap on the floor. You know the ones, where you started out believing that TV was the devil, and by the time the child was nine months old you had him propped up in front of Baby Einstein for three hours a day. Or the time you swore on your soul that you would NOT be that parent who catered her entire day to her daughter’s nap schedule — until you actually had a daughter. A daughter who turned into babyzilla when you messed with her sleep routine. Not to mention the fact that you now consider two Twinkies and a cup of orange Kool-Aid an acceptable breakfast. (Or, maybe that’s just me.)
What I haven’t written, though, is about the stuff that I didn’t think I’d care so much about, but I do. Here are four topics about which I was ambivalent when childless, but about which I have become surprisingly opinionated during my parenting experience.
1. Circumcision
Before I had boys of my own, I always imagined – in the abstract way I had previously considered such things – that they would be circumcised. It was just “what you did.” And while I had a few friends who had had baby boys and chosen not circumcise them, I remember thinking at the time, “Hmm, that’s kind of weird, but whatever.” But when I was pregnant with Tristan, I started reading up on it and really thinking about it, and the more I read, the more fiercely convinced I became that circumcision is nothing more than cosmetic surgery for babies – and the idea horrified me. (Insert the standard caveat about circumcision for religious reasons here. I’m not Jewish, so I won’t comment on that. I suspect if I were, I’d still have a hard time with the idea of circumcision, but to each his own foreskin.)
Circumcision for non-religious reasons is one of the few areas I allow myself to be just a little bit judgemental about other people’s parenting practices. Yes, there are occasional health-related reasons that may require a circumcision later in life — but we don’t automatically remove a baby’s appendix at birth, and I’m sure there are a lot more appendectomies done than adult circumcisions. And the whole “he should look like his daddy” or “what about in the locker room at school” argument? Bullshit, pure and simple. Has any guy really ever been traumatized by this specious argument? I honestly can’t imagine why anybody would subject their precious newborn to something that is not only traumatic (and, if I may hyperbolize, even barbaric) but completely unnecessary. But that’s just my humble opinion.
2. Spanking
My mom swatted us on the behind, and while it was a relatively effective deterrent, what was much more successful was the threat of a spanking. “Do not make me take you into the bathroom!” she would challenge us when we misbehaved in public. I’m not sure it was ever clear what consequence awaited us in the bathroom, but to my mother’s credit we never misbehaved enough to find out.
My father only spanked me once. I was maybe eight or nine years old, and had purposefully defied my parents – and put myself at considerable risk as well. I got sent to my room, and fifteen or twenty minutes later, my dad came in and put me over his knee in the only formal spanking I ever got in my life, and I remember it to this day.
All that to say, spanking was used judiciously and effectively as a punishment when I was growing up, and I always imagined it would be a part of my parenting arsenal as well – within reason. It is not. I haven’t ever spanked the boys, and don’t imagine at this point that I ever will. It’s not something I feel particularly judgemental about, and yet I feel a strange sort of satisfaction in never having had to resort to corporal punishment. And I can say to the boys with confidence every time the issue comes up between them that “We do not hit each other in this house. Hitting is not allowed.”
3. Surnames
When Beloved and I got married, I kept my maiden name. I’d felt terrible about changing it for the “practice marriage” and couldn’t wait to have it back again when we split, so couldn’t bear the idea of losing it again. When we talked about kids, I was always fine with the idea that any children would have Beloved’s surname, and my surname as a second middle name. Beloved even looked into officially taking on my surname as HIS second middle name, too.
But the more pregnant I got with Tristan, the more anxious I became about him not having my last name. It was so bad (bear with me, I know I’ve told this story before) that we could not leave the hospital after his birth until we filled out his health insurance application – which of course required a surname – and we couldn’t agree on what it would be. After a prolonged Mexican standoff, Beloved finally relented to a hypenated surname, and I’m sure that application was smudged with the tears of relief I cried as I filled it out. Beloved’s surname is common, and while mine is unusual enough that my folks and I are the only ones in our city, there are hundreds if not thousands of us out in the world. And yet, the boys delight in the fact that they are the only ones in the whole world who have their particular combination of names. Which almost makes up for the number of times I’ve sighed in frustration re-spelling it for the fourth time for a pharmacist or while registering the boys for camp.
4. Breastfeeding
I can be judgemental about circumcision. I am NOT, however, in any way judgemental about the bottle versus breast debate, and while I think that in an ideal world breastfeeding is the better choice, I don’t think it’s the only choice, and I would never dream of criticizing someone for choosing to bottlefeed. I wrote not that long ago about the arduous task that breastfeeding was when Tristan was born, and that it was through sheer stubbornness and force of will that I perservered at all — and it’s kind of funny that I did, because even as late as when I was pregnant with Tristan, I was more than a little leery on the idea of nursing.
In all honesty, I was pretty freaked out by the idea. I imagine a lot of that had to do with the fact that I didn’t have a lot of exposure to nursing mothers growing up – heck, I didn’t have a lot of exposure to babies, period – and I was nervous about the sensation and the leaking and the horror stories about cracked nipples. Even while I was pregnant, I figured I’d give the breastfeeding thing a try, but suspected I’d bottle feed in the long run.
And I remember, in those dark, dark nights of the first few weeks with Tristan, when he was not gaining weight and I was beside myself with sleep deprivation and hormones and the physical pain of breastfeeding and we had a can of formula sitting in the kitchen that had been ever-so-thoughtfully delivered to our door as a free sample, I absolutely refused to consider trying it because I had firmly decided that was going to breastfeed this baby, dammit! And I did.
A final caveat: please don’t read this as me passing judgement on how any parent chooses to handle these issues. They are immensely personal decisions, and with the exception of circumcision and perhaps spanking, I could easily argue for either side of these debates. I just found it intriguing to consider what started out as a moderate and even ambivalent stance in my pre-parenting years on these issues turned out to be something I felt passionately about — as opposed to the thousand other instances when parenting has knocked me rather resoundingly off my high horse and handed me my opinionated ass.
