Being a mother, perhaps a father, is a constant mourning process, no?

I mean if a mother/father really loves her baby/child, that baby/child only lives for a certain amount of time until he or she dies and becomes someone totally different, no? I don't think a father gets as attached to a baby as mother does, generally speaking. Although it could be true of father once child reaches certain age where he or she can actually do things. What an awful existence.

• One wishes, OP, that your parents had been spared such agony. One loves children as they develop into the people that they become. When I look into my kids' faces, I often see several of the previous versions of those faces looking back at me, as if superimposed upon each other. I have had the joy of knowing my kids at each of their earlier ages, and continue to have the thrill of seeing them progress and grow. I'd ask what you're talking about, but you plainly don't know.

• For me being a parent is about 85% hard work/ frustration and 15% reward. The reward is worth it. Its something I never understood until I experienced it. I haven't mourned any stage of development . The reward of increasing independence is worth giving up snuggles and time in the rocking chair.

• I've accomplished a lot but it doesn't compare to being a parent. When they are little you think you couldn't possibly love them more. But, watching them grow and become wonderful, independent adults is the most rewarding thing I have personally experienced. Being a mother is learning how to say goodbye. You want them to experience life and be independent as they grow, but sometimes living through it is emotionally devastating.

  anonymous

• it is very very hard. and emotionally draining, but r1-3 have actually offered up some great answers. the infant stage is great but the sadness doesn't come until they are a lot older. and no parent i know "mourns" for their child's infant stage.

• Don't even get me started!

  OP%27s%20Mother

• [quote]no parent i know "mourns" for their child's infant stage. Potty training and the end of diapers is cause for a celebration.

• Has there ever been a thread on the DL with greater fraustench than this one? PEW!

• r7 is an aggressive misogynist and needs therapy.

• The freaks who only like babies and lose interest when their infant attains the least maturity should have their tubes sewn up.

• R1 is typical of the violence which infests all breeder personalities (gay or straight) and which is always just below the surface. It is "worth it" in the same sense that staying up all night to finish that term paper for school is. You're glad to have done it, not to do it; and it's pointless and self-harming to pretend otherwise.

• F&F r10. Enough of this.

• have you seen the youth of today? or better yet the cesspool culture they grow up in. constant mourning would be an understatement.

• R1, what if that child develops into an obese heroin addict and steals your china to sustain his horrific habit? What if he sits on your couch with his stinking overweight body and barfs? Yet, this horrific mass of flesh used to be a beautiful and bright child that illuminated sunshine the moment he opened his eyes? Well?

• Oh, and as for the ignorant bastard proclaiming I'm a frau, think again, Sherlock. I have never had children nor do I ever plan to.

• You must be one of these types who think Mary Cassatt and her "painting" was something great. Show me a good-looking father and son(s) where the father is devoted to his son's development and maturity and that can include sports or hunting/fishing, etc.--an ass-slapping good time, not this drivvel that bespeaks Madonna with child, how nauseating!

  anon

• say what?

• OP, when your mother looks in your face, all she sees is an abortion that didn't take.

• Being a mother means never having to say your sorry

  Patsy%20Ramsey%2C%20%20formerly%20of%20Boulder

• When I hear about the grief some of my co-workers are going thru with their kids both biologic and adopted (drugs, arrests, etc) I don't know how anybody has the courage to take on breeding/adopting. I'd be terrified of it.

• You get a little pang when you hear a small voice call, "Mom!" or "Dad!" in tne grocery store and for a split second you think it's your 4 year old child, then you remember your child is 14 years old and he isn't speaking to you.

• R13, my partner's brother is schizophrenic. His life consists of coffee, cigarettes and stuffing the toilet with anything he can find to make it overflow. His parents spent their life savings trying to get him cured, ignoring their other children. Most schizophrenics are either seemingly normal or just a tetch odd as children, then they become completely different people. My partner's mom wouldn't let him go into a group home run by a rabbi who is also a social worker. It would have been the perfect environment for him, but his mother wouldn't let her little boy go. This was when he was about 35. He's now 60 and she's getting close to 90. Yeah, I guess she mourns the old version of him every day because she sacrificed everything for him. She will leave nothing behind for her other children or grandchildren. He's getting the decrepit house they own and that's all they've got.