[LJI Exhibit A: Week 3] Angry Feminist Bitch Calls Shenanigans on Jerkface Young Man

[cheshire23]

[Warning: domestic violence]

I'm angry. Really angry.

This wasn't what I thought I was going to write about, and I wish I wasn't writing it.

But here it is:

A young woman who is very dear to me just walked out on her boyfriend of several years, with their baby in tow.

And, as is so often the case when this sort of thing happens, and has been

Comments

[mari4212]

My mother's biggest pet peeve is hearing a father say that he's babysitting the children. Because you'd never hear a mom say that she's babysitting her own child. Babysitting is when someone who does not normally have any responsibility to that child (beyond being a decent human being to other human beings) is asked to watch that child, normally while receiving compensation for said actions.

Her point is that a father watching his child is being a parent, always, not a babysitter. We demean fathers and fatherhood when we act like they do not have responsibility for their children, and when we praise them for doing the bare minimum of child-rearing. Your husband does a fantastic job being a loving parent to your children. It's just a shame that we think what he's doing is more than is expected.

[alien_writings]

Oh man, I hate the "babysitting" meme with the POWER OF A THOUSAND BURNING SUNS. I'm not a parent myself, but my dad has done it in reference to my much-younger half-sister, and I have called him out on it because...no, just, no.

[cheshire23]

I know, right? That's just...gross.

[cheshire23]

The "rockstar" part is really that he is my back-up brain ALL THE TIME and does a whole lot of background stuff - remembering to keep my electronics charged and in good repair, keeping the household calendar, dealing with random "business-type" phone calls that cause me ridiculous anxiety, picking up my meds for me (thankfully I'm not on any of the controlled-substance ADHD meds) - so I look like I have my shit together far more than I do. And also that he can laugh and be silly with the kids at points when I am all "brain overloaded, cannot cope with noise and bouncy people in my space, deal with plz????" (That this particular mental state is even A Thing Ever causes a lot of self-hate, too, but he's really awesome and reassuring about it. Hence, "rockstar" still stands.)

[stagger_lee77]

DAMN!!

[comedychick]

This makes me incredibly grateful that my husband helps with the kids. There's a lot I wouldn't have time for if I didn't have his support.

[cheshire23]

Well, he should be. They ARE his kids.

[momebie]

What a dick. I'm glad that she can leave him. I know that's hard even when it's warranted.

[myrna_bird]

I hear this a lot from friends and even relatives in my family. There is no commitment to a marriage or potential family in the beginning, then the baby comes and there is constant hard feeling over whose job it is to care for the baby. Lots of 'he said, she said'...and that's only when they are even talking. It is sad and makes me really believe that the olden days, when I was a kid, were so much more stable and conducive to real family values. Life was simpler and we were much more safe. Our society/culture is changing all the time. I don't know if all the technology and free rides is really a good thing, sometimes.

[halfshellvenus]

Yes, exactly. People stayed in really bad marriages longer than they should have, and things were sometimes really awful and unfair for women... but commitment to other people and your duty in life was much stronger overall. It's possible to have that last part without losing perspective on when flaws in the first part should negate it.

[cheshire23]

Which "we" was much more safe, though? That wasn't true in my family.

My grandparents were strongly committed to each other and to their kids. My grandfather was also intermittently severely mentally ill and occasionally violent towards his wife and kids - my mother told me that she used to pray that they would divorce.

Now, if they had been alive more recently, they might have gotten divorced - or there might have been appropriate treatment for the "schizophrenia" that clearly was actually severe depression combined with PTSD from the stories I know about the situation, and possibly NOT some of the worst of the trauma in the first place - being beaten by teachers for left-handedness did eventually go out of favor, after all, and influenza is slightly less likely to kill people than it was when my grandfather lost his sister, and he probably could have been a college graduate instead of a high school dropout with one semester to go because the Depression made it necessary that he work immediately.

[myrna_bird]

It was a bit of a generalization on my part. I was thinking more of the freedom we had to roam the neighborhood and no one locked their doors and cars. Very small town where everyone knew each other. I didn't mean to imply that there were no safety concerns at all. Sorry you had a rough go of it. We are certainly blessed today because of the advances in therapy and health care, of course.