If you have a baby, it is, quite literally, the most valuable and precious thing in the world to you. Babies are also very breakable. Especially when they're newborns, clumsiness could kill them.
This is why, if you think about it, it's surprising that parents let people hold their babies.
Not all parents let people hold their babies, of course, and not all babies tolerate being held by randoms. But if a friend or relative or immediate co-worker has a baby, it's certainly not unreasonable to think that they might let you hold the baby.
It almost seems to be part of the normal introduction process. If the parent expects you to be a long-term presence in the baby's life, they'll hand you the baby to hold so you can get to know each other. But I've also had people let me hold babies because I thought the baby was cute. I've had people let me hold babies because the baby keeps staring at me. I've had people hand me their baby because they know I'm childfree and want to see what happens when you make the CFer hold a baby (answer: baby holds onto my hair like a little monkey and/or starts crying, I babble like an idiot and/or stick out my tongue). There even a picture of me, not yet three years old, holding my newborn sister for the sole reason that my parents thought it would make a cute picture.
All of this works fantastically as a social lubricant, but, if you think about it, it's really rather high stakes. Is there any other social lubricant where you surrender your immediate ability to protect what is most valuable and precious to you?
6 comments:
I think babies are not as fragile as you write here, or parents wouldn't allow all this passing-off. Once you know to support the head, anyone can successfully hold a baby - as demonstrated by that picture of you and your sister, and all the pics like it in other families.
In my experience, the parent impresses on the baby-holder (if they are inexperienced) the importance of supporting the head, then the parents are usually hovering, ready to swoop in if needed.
Obviously a baby can be easily and horribly injured by abuse or neglect, but I think it's extremely unlikely that a baby will be injured by being held.
I also wonder if this serves another function besides social lubricant. Maybe it's part of the socialization of the baby? Helps the baby get used to being held by others? I don't know, just a possibility.
Do babies have to get used to being held by others? I honestly don't know. On one hand, the holding phase is a short period of time compared with life as a whole. If the kid never gets used to being held by others, I think it would be irrelevant by the time they're about 3 years old. But on the other hand, it's more logistically convenient if the baby will let anyone hold them.
And I'm not thinking that people would break a baby by holding them, but rather by dropping them or shaking them. If nothing serious goes wrong the baby's obviously safe (and even if something only mildly bad goes wrong the baby's probably safe), but if something goes very wrong the baby is dead. So many people want to drive their own cars because then they feel in control, so I figured the same pattern would hold even more strongly for holding your own baby.
I imagined the purpose of acclimating a baby to being held by others would be for the parents' sake, to give the caregiver a break, not for the baby's sake.
I figured you meant dropping. Shaking seems extremely unlikely to occur unless done purposely. But maybe there's much more dropping/shaking risk than I realize. Any neonatal nurses, or maybe a doula, reading this?
There's also the bouncing thing that some babies seem to need in order to calm down. I don't know where the threshold between bouncing and shaking is. I learned (under careful supervision) how to bounce My Favourite Little Person in the way that was just right for her, but I haven't the slightest idea what the distance is between that kind of bouncing and dangerous shaking. If I'd been less cautious when learning to bounce her, could I have shaken her by accident?
I seriously doubt it. You would be too concerned about hurting her to actually shake her.
Plus bouncing and shaking are completely different motions. You bounce a baby while cradling her in your arms, and supporting the head. People shake babies by holding them by the torso and not supporting the head - that's how the damage is done, from the head rattling around. (So horrible to think about.)
I'm going to show this post to one of my nieces, who is training to be a doula. Maybe she can shed some light.
When reading your description of different motions I tried to mime them to figure them out, and I realized I can't shake a baby. My instincts or hormones or whatever it is that causes me to go "Awww!" at babies would not permit me to make the motion that would cause a head to rattle around if I had a live baby in my hands. So maybe that answers the question of why people who don't know me super well still let me hold their babies - they see that I have the "Awww!", therefore I can't hurt their baby intentionally.
And a toddler sitting on the couch with her baby sister on her lap couldn't shake the baby either, because a toddler isn't big or strong enough to do that. The toddler could harm the baby deliberately by poking at her eyes or something, but if the toddler doesn't actively want to hurt the baby and can master head supporting, everyone's fine. So basically the fact that my toddler self wanted to be a good girl meant that it was safe for me to hold my newborn sister for long enough for the adults to objectify us.
Post a Comment