Growing Up

Seems it's getting more and more difficult for people to mature. To see responsibility beyond their own tepid little needs and wants.

A man and a woman fall in love, get married - or not - and have a child. Or several children. The difficulties inherent in raising children are never overstated. But they are stated. Trouble is, there are some events in life that are so utterly all-absorbing that they cannot be adequately, fulsomely, and accurately described.

Even so, people are incapable of grasping just what a monumental alteration their life will take with the introduction into it of a tiny, wholly-dependent human being.

People adjust. They always have. That over 6 billion human beings exist on this Globe is ample evidence of that. Of course, human beings are simply re-producing because they are meant to.

We have been exquisitely programmed by nature to bring new life into this world. And ever since nature so kindly introduced us into this world we have been enthusiastically engaged in following her dictate. Women have been fashioned in such a way that they give birth to live young; all mammals do, with the considerable assistance of the male of the species.

We live in an age where, in developed countries in any event, health care is superbly dependable. This is something we now all take for granted. Fewer complications during pregnancy, and during childbirth. Where once women normally and automatically took to suckling their young, like all mammals, now it is a concept difficult to grasp and to succeed with.

We also live in an era where people feel themselves to be uniquely entitled to have an extraordinarily high regard for themselves in particular, and for all the hitherto-unattainable - in an earlier era - life enhancements, available to a huge proportion of society. We lavish attention upon ourselves, never hesitate to gift ourselves with any new toys we take a fancy to.

And then, suddenly, there is a tiny being obstreperously, loudly, claiming too much attention, interfering with life as it is meant to be enjoyed, and sowing confusion and no little regret.

New mothers become susceptible to doubting themselves and this new, irrevocable trajectory their lives have taken. Their spontaneity, their independence, their aspirations have suddenly been suborned; who gave this darling little interloper permission to claim precedence over everything that matters?

Suddenly, life sucks. There is no quiet, no peace, no down-time. A life of personal attention to oneself's every concern is suddenly history. Depressing. It's called the 'baby blues'.

Women are increasingly, it would appear, susceptible to this state of post-partum depression. Was it always so? Who knows? Older women who have experienced much, but not that, find it puzzling. But now, suddenly, the virus has spread; it is not only new mothers, but poor old dads too, who are suffering the blues.

New responsibilities, financial stress, sleepless nights, interference in every conceivable corner of one's life has overtaken normalcy. Tch, tch.