if you’re curious about people, and you can manage it, i feel like you should have at least 2 kids. of course there are all sorts of reasons why you might not be able to, but if you can, 2 kids will allow you to observe how they are similar, and how they are different. i remember having a version of this thought when i got my second cat, and i got to witness how my two cats are similar and different. they have different habits and interests and dispositions that have nothing to do with me. and it’s been interesting to see they react and how their relationship has evolved over time.
now i have a son, he’s almost 9 months old. he can sit up by himself, he can clap, laugh, imitate some of the sounds we make. i’m so curious to see what his interests will be. he seems to be extroverted and social, he likes it when i bring him out, he likes attention from strangers. he seems to be somewhat into music, but aren’t all babies somewhat into music? i can’t be sure. where does personality come from? when we thinking and talking about it in the abstract, we list out all the possibilities. something innate, something from early childhood, parents, siblings, peers, culture, media. although it’s notable i think that a group of kids exposed to the same media will nonetheless experience it differently, interpret it differently. sometimes you bring a group of kids to see a play, and most of them kinda like it, but a couple of them might experience a shockwave going through them that tells them, this, this is what you want to be doing with your life. and maybe that feeling isn’t necessarily “correct” in a precise sense. it’s a feeling. feelings can be very dramatic. they’re not typically very precise communicators. but they’re almost always on to something. the challenge for the thinking mind is to discern what the feeling is gesturing at, and not fall into the extremes of either dismissing it out of hand or going along entirely with whatever neotenous impulse arises.
this becomes quite obvious when you’re dealing with a baby, i’d say from around the 6 month mark. the earliest months are easier to romanticize in some sense because the infant has very minimal personhood. they just cry when something’s not right, until you fix it for them, and maybe for a while longer if they’re not sure. but you can see around 6 months or so, when they start sitting and reaching and grasping, even before they can use language, they have some semblance of Thoughts. they might be very primitive thoughts. well- it’s hard to distinguish. “I want” is primarily a feeling, isn’t it? I want this, I want that. Babies are very inconsiderate. They haven’t yet learned to be considerate of people. I’m not sure yet if this is something that has to be entirely socialized, or if there’s some innate amount of it that arises over time.
btw, idk where to say this thought so i’ll just put it here– when decent people lash out at their kids, I suspect that it may start out as retaliation that seems fair. I’ve felt the impulse a couple of times. why are you being so difficult and unreasonable? well it’s because you’re a baby! you are very small and powerless and you don’t really have any reason to try to be good yet. people often say “how could someone hurt a tiny child”, and I think part of it is that children are irreverent. it doesn’t feel in the moment like you’re yelling at a child, it feels like you’re meeting someone at their level, returning their energy back to them. which is not what parents are supposed to be doing, ideally. so there can be something sort of intrinsically a lil micro-dehumanizing about being a parent, in that you’re supposed to always be the bigger person. this is even more evident for an exhausted nursing mother whose child expects her breasts to always be available, will bite and gnaw at them, and screams and cries when mama wants to have some alone time. There was a funny tweet from 2018 that went “Why do bash “dead-beat” dads for not being there for their kids but we never question if the child has bad vibes? Or if they’re just unpleasant to be around?” everyone understandably dunked on it, but i do think there’s sort of a funny, somewhat dark truth about it. we’re supposed to tell children that they had nothing to do with their parents getting divorced, or neglecting them, etc. it can’t be their fault, they’re just babies. true!! the father(?) in the tweet is being very irresponsible, selfish, immature. you’re supposed to be there for your kids. your kids have no particular obligation to you in return. well– depends on what culture you’re raised in. in asian cultures we have a lot of stuff about ‘filial piety’, which at its ideal is something beautiful and prosocial, but at its worst becomes a cudgel for abusers to beat people with, judge people with. it’s the same with christianity, isn’t it? and with all moral systems, probably.
there’s a lot to dig into here, but i gotta wrap this up, funnily because it’s just about naptime for my kid, and his needs tak precedence over mine. i get to make decisions like this every day, and i generally prioritize my child. but i can’t actually be 100% self-sacrificial 24/7 because if i do that then the inner child within ME starts to feel neglected, and the thing about inner children is that they’re simultaneously “powerless” and have the “power”(?) to ruin the entire vibe in a person. abusive people, it would seem, almost always have neglected and abused inner children within themselves. they can justify treating other people terribly because they might have been treated terribly at some point and treat themselves terribly within themselves still. and pedestalizing oneself, an image of oneself, being an arrogant selfish narcissist, is a kind of self-abuse. it’s a self-ostracization, to put yourself above others.
it’s complicated. maybe i’ll elaborate on this stuff later