Wednesday, January 02, 2008

A Brief Rant

I was working on a post about my resentment of bureaucratic prying into my life in the form of endless questionnaires unrelated to actually given birth ("Has anyone hit you recently?" "No, but I did suffer a rather painful toe-smashing at the feet of a booted toddler."), bright little pamphlets advising me that babies do cry and that rocking and singing to them is more appropriate a response than shaking them to pieces, and chatty ladies from the insurance company with no discernible information calling up to see how I am doing.

I don't want strange ladies with unclear motives and no apparent intentions of dish-washing calling me up to chat about how I am doing and if I have enough help. I don't want (even at the lure of a $50,000 grand prize) to fill out a little card that says I now know that it is normal for babies to cry, as if to admit that before I was a nincompoop and potential child abuser but have been redirected by their pamphlets onto the straight and narrow path.

Surely elderly ladies at church (who after all have no unknown but potentially sinister powers behind them) are enough for a reasonably competent mother to endure. And while I do not deny the existence of incompetent mothers in the world, I somehow doubt their habits are changed greatly by little pamphlets and calls about their bad habits. They would probably do better with a few nosy elderly ladies in their lives, but it's hard to come up with a good corporate program for distributing those.

Well, I guess I just wrote it.

6 comments:

Steve said...

Bravo!

And thanks for telling us about the post instead of just writing it.

the Joneses said...

Ha, government distribution of nosy elderly ladies! I love the idea! I'll sign up for the program if I get any more grey hairs anytime soon.

-- SJ

Betty Canuck said...

lol, love the idea!

Anonymous said...

lol. Nosy old ladies. :D

I know my midwives are required to ask such questions, but it bothers me too. Like I would forget in the space of 24 months that shaking babies is bad.
Or the very idea that from one visit to the next my husband has become a violent abuser.
Ridiculous.

Wendy said...

Last pregnancy the nurse was asking me the smoking/drinking/drugs/partners questions and my OB stuck his head in the door and told her she could skip those questions with me. She looked horrified! I laughed and laughed! There's got to be some benefit to having a large number of babies with the same doctor. Personally I am campaigning that the 10th one should be free...

Rachelle said...

I really hate that our state government sends me reminders for vaccinations. I just feel like Big Brother is watching me. -rlr