The effect on mothers who had controlled crying as a baby

[Liviam]

yeah i don't 'enjoy' hearing a baby cry.. i just don't get upset and flustered by it. It's like saying every person gets anxious when another human being talks to them... crying is a baby's way to communicate. I'm not going to get anxious over completely normal communication.

:yeahthat:

[Willow]

Sorry guys, 'enjoy' was a stupid choice of word.

Don't mind me, not in a good head space today and not being very eloquent!

[Inanna]

Mmmm well I know my mother believed that babies were naughty when they cried & I was left to cry all the time.

I had a completley different philosophy in parenting my own babies.

It is known that a babies cry does a little trip on the mamas - that's what it is for. So that the child can be attended to... I got incredibly anxious when DD14 cried & I held her for most of her first 2 years of life!

I also felt agitated & compelled to attend to my other children when they cried. However I didn't feel anxious.

I reckon it's a fairly normal reaction for Mamas to feel agitated, anxious wanting to respond to their crying baby...

[Willow]

Thank you Inanna, as usual you have said beautifully what I was trying to say.

[Shanti]

I am more inclined to think the way that a mother reacts to her crying baby, depends on how well she knows her baby ie their bond with each other and perhaps the Mothers' personality also..... ?? Just a thought.

[Heaven]

The cry of a baby evokes feelings in most mothers to make them want to respond I would think.

[Winter]

I am more inclined to think the way that a mother reacts to her crying baby, depends on how well she knows her baby ie their bond with each other and perhaps the Mothers' personality also..... ?? Just a thought.

:yeahthat: I agree with Shanti. I think you can definitely pick how someone will react to their crying babies based on their personalities - well from Mothers Group experience I think so.

The only time I ever get anxious is when DD is crying & I can't pick her up ie driving in the car. Heart rate goes up, blood pressure through the roof, anxiety skyrockets. Its the only time I ever want to scream at DH & blame him that we're not already home!! If she's crying & I can hold her, then I find that the crying doesn't worry me.

[Smoke Jaguar]

Actually, a baby cries to 'communicate' when it's got no other forms of communication left - body language signals have been missed and vocalisation is the last form left to them. Relying on crying is not the ideal way to respond to a child's needs. That's a good way to teach children to scream for attention later in life!
My mum responded to me instinctually (one of the few things about parenting that Westernisation couldn't extinguish from her!) and I do the same with my kids. Turns out a lot of the things my grandmother did with my mum that she never used I am doing now - what would now be called 'continuum' parenting, but it's just stuff my abuelita did for all her 9 kids.
Anyhoo, I trust my babies' signals and when they're crying I know in myself that I missed a couple of steps and I get a bit anxious because I'm beating myself up about missing the earlier communications (for being 'too busy' or just blind to them).
Don't know where you'd find the research on that, but I'd be interested in finding out, myself!
My own hypothesis would be that mothers who were controlled parented themselves are more likely to feel anxious about baby crying because instinctually they want to respond, but their conditioning is that you ignore it - a cognitive dissonance occurs causing anxiety. Whereas a mother who was responded to on a needs basis is likely to replicate that with her own children, as modelled by her mother, unless something else occurred in the sensitive period or an abuse later in life interrupted the parenting 'blueprint'.
My mother responded to my needs but her parenting in my early childhood (beyond babyhood) was angry and punitive - reflecting her treatment at the hands of her father. Interesting that her trust in her baby-parenting remained, but how to raise a child suffered because of the abuse.
So many variables!!