People don't have to like babies; they just have to like sex.
Babies cannot survive on their own. They require every-two-hourly or so care for the first few weeks. They are disgusting, spewing vomit, poo, and pee at regularly intervals. They destroy the desire for sex in women, and may make sex painful. After six weeks of baby maintenance, you get...a smile. A year into the project, you get a baby who can reach more things. At two, they want to be useful, but mostly mess stuff up when they try. It's three before you can put them to work.
Maybe you could argue that only women need to like babies, but someone needs to like them. And if a man is living with a woman with a baby, he'd better like the baby. Even if he doesn't have to deal with the feeding or cleaning, the baby is going to interfere with his life substantially, and if he doesn't let it do so, then the baby will have a much higher chance of death.
It may be true that this time is more sentimental about babies than other times (and some cultures are clearly more so than others)--but to keep people from leaving their babies to be eaten by wild animals or dropped in the river, there has to be some sort of imperative that amounts to "care for the babies."
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Date: 2009-12-02 07:11 am (UTC)Babies cannot survive on their own. They require every-two-hourly or so care for the first few weeks. They are disgusting, spewing vomit, poo, and pee at regularly intervals. They destroy the desire for sex in women, and may make sex painful. After six weeks of baby maintenance, you get...a smile. A year into the project, you get a baby who can reach more things. At two, they want to be useful, but mostly mess stuff up when they try. It's three before you can put them to work.
Maybe you could argue that only women need to like babies, but someone needs to like them. And if a man is living with a woman with a baby, he'd better like the baby. Even if he doesn't have to deal with the feeding or cleaning, the baby is going to interfere with his life substantially, and if he doesn't let it do so, then the baby will have a much higher chance of death.
It may be true that this time is more sentimental about babies than other times (and some cultures are clearly more so than others)--but to keep people from leaving their babies to be eaten by wild animals or dropped in the river, there has to be some sort of imperative that amounts to "care for the babies."