Brende was beginning to feel the stress from all his extra responsibilities since the birth of his son. He was being pulled in all directions and didn’t seem to know what to do first. He compared two different versions of male- female relationships. Simone de Beauvoir portrayed the entire history of male-female relations as one long, willing submission on the woman’s part to a monopoly of male power. Whereas, G. K. Chesterton observed: “The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work, and he hasn’t obeyed.” Brende favored Chesterton’s account but I must say I don’t think I quite agree with that.
They were having a problem because the baby seemed to want to do all of his eating at night and they toyed with the idea of turning to a formula but decided to stay with breast feeding because it was more beneficial to the baby. They also made a big mistake of taking the baby in their bed to sleep with them because he moved around constantly. My parents said they had to lie down beside be every night and sing me songs to get me to go to sleep. To this day I still remember it.
The Brende now began to understand that their own needs were not as important as the needs of their newborn child. This is the most important thing to realize that giving of yourself to another human being is what life is all about.
2 comments:
I was recently having a conversation with a guy at work about how important it is for both husband and wife to equally participate in the care of a child. We went into how difficult it must be for the single mom to handle all the new responsibilities like feedings every 2 hours throughout the night. I think it's great that Brende is so helpful - this chapter was a little difficult for me to understand though. I'm not quite sure what he was trying to say with all that labor is womans work or not.
The most life changing event in any persons life. I think that like this project, Eric was under prepared for this new addition to his life. I personally think that he doesnt really know what he wants.
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