Response to the arrival of George, Prince of Cambridge, must have been quite overwhelming for Kate and William.
At Care.com, we know all about the challenges of adjusting from being a couple to being a family. And we love this blog post by Liz Fraser, one of our parenting experts.
‘Oh, I’LL do it.’
Three things are almost guaranteed to ruin a perfectly good relationship between two people, once in love;
Getting married, travelling by budget airline to Rome, and having a baby.
And of these, the Crown Jewels in the sparkly relationship coffin is the baby.
According to Care.com’s recent survey of new parents, 43% said their relationship with their partner had changed after they had a baby.
To which I say, “Where are the 57% who are lying?? Show yourselves!” and “I assume when you say ‘changed’ you meant ‘changed beyond all recognition.”
Fairy stories, songs and baby-clothing manufacturers sell us the dream that ‘having a baby cements a relationship’.
And it does.
But the part they sneakily miss out is that when the cement dries you realise you’re 200 miles apart and facing in opposite directions, while trying to kill each other with cast-iron frying pans.
And if you’ve ever tried that you’ll know how hard it is. Many a chiropractor has made a fortune out of it.
No, the Relationship Grim Reaper wields its Scythe of Doom in a far more subtle way; millions of knowing parents around the world held their terrified breath as Kate Middleton handed her cherished new baby to her husband outside the hospital this week, and waited, in lip-bitten united tension, to see if she if she would slice their relationship in half with That Look.
The look that says, ‘Don’t. Screw. This. Up.’ Which is Universal Mother Code for, ‘Do This MY way, mister, or ELSE.’
Luckily for William he managed not to a) drop the baby b) make the baby cry by sticking his fingers into its eyeballs c) asphyxiate the baby with the blanket d) choke the baby by wrapping a previously unseen length of guy-rope around its neck six times and then tightening it e) fall into a 200-ft-deep man-hole filled with rattle-snakes while holding the baby or f) use the baby as a shield against an incoming meteor shower, before going to the pub.
The world breathed a sigh of relief. William did an internal air-punch.
The fact is that all new mothers are armed with an in-built warning system that triggers a deafening maternal klaxon every time a new father so much as looks as if he might be about to Go Near The Child.
This biological trip-wire tells her that a new father is highly likely to do any of the above, and worse, unless he is supervised constantly, offered constructive criticism at every turn accompanied heavy eye rolls, and helped along with calming phrases like, ‘No, not like that, like THIS’ and ‘Why are you holding the wipes like that?’ and ‘I don’t think you’re looking at him the right way.’
The final explosion comes when, after irritatingly doing everything quite correctly for several days, despite not possessing the crucial second X-chromosome which entitles the user to be Correct In All Matters of Parenting, the mother finally cannot stand any more of this male competence and childcare help, and steps in with the phrase that will hail the beginning of her life of put-upon misery, and his freedom to go out with his mates:
‘HERE,’ she will say, taking the bottle away from the perfectly content baby. ‘I’LL DO IT.’
It’s a shame. I wish more new mums would leave dads to get on with handling their own child their way; let them make their own mistakes, find out what works best for them, and bond with their baby properly, without the Mummy Helicopter whirring overhead.
True, I have seen many a new father offer no help whatsoever, as if still living somewhere between the 1strd and 20th Centuries, when
childcare was the preserve of The Women, and Real Men held babies like rugby balls, if at all.
I have also seen new dads attempting to get a baby into a car seat, while having to breathe and think at the same time, and failing utterly at the severity of this multi-tasking challenge.
But I’ve seen just as many dads as mums do a fantastic job with their new baby, and more fool us for assuming they can’t do it, just because they don’t have the stitches to prove their right to parenthood.
Parenting is a partnership. It takes working together, but leaving each other alone to do things differently to one another.
A lot of cast-iron frying pans would make it past the tenth anniversary if we learned to back off a little, and let our partners fall down a few man-holes once in a while.
Not all of them have rattle-snakes in them, after all.
A version of this blog post appeared in Liz’s very own blog, https://lizfraser.wordpress.com/2013/07/26/oh-ill-do-it/
