how much of our parenting style comes from our parents?

I just found Girl’s Gone Child- she has a post recalling that her earliest memories are of nightmares. She says she remembers waiting in her bed for her mom or dad to scoop her up and put her in between them, safe and cozy in their bed. She writes, then, about her little one crying for her from his crib, and her memories flooded back. Reading that, I reacted with two emotional responses and it occurred to me that they’re probably deeply linked.

At first the idea came to me that babies belong in their parents’ beds- they cry for comfort because they’re in some primal way supposed to be there. Then my memories of my own nightmares came to mind- also among my earliest impressions: The same universal need to be nestled in snug and warm between my protective parents. Only instead, I was camped out on the floor outside their room, or on the couch within view of their closed bedroom door.

So is this memory of an unfulfilled need the root of my desire to be the model attached parent? Does my knowledge that my asthma was probably caused by mom’s and dad’s smoking the reason I’m paranoid about every household chemical and food additive the Birdy contacts? Does my obesity have something to do with my adamant feeling of responsibility to breastfeed the baby? Do many of us parent to try to rewrite our childhoods in a better light for our kids?

Acknowledging that makes me feel guilty- it seems as if I’m parenting exactly opposite my upbringing and making a critique of my mom. I can’t bear criticizing her actions- even when they took her from me. (It was cancer from the smoking.) I’m positive my control problems are compounded by the anxiety of grieving.

Who would I be as a mom if I weren’t motherless now? Would I rail against my mom for offering girly presents and junk food the way I do my in-laws? I’m certain she’d be telling me I should wean now- would I rebel or internalize her distaste for toddler-nursing? Would she have supported my sleeping with the baby like I know her instincts dictated or would she think that I should train myself like she did (caving to Dad’s wishes) against that nurturing drive?

Would she have been in the delivery room, holding my other leg up (replacing the doula)with Bu while I pushed against them for two eternal hours? Would she have urged me to get the epidural and forego the painful initiation? I think she’d have laughed and called me a “veganpagan,” her pet name for me when I did things like stopping eating meat or holding little candlelit rituals in the back yard. She was supportive even when she thought I was clearly insane.

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I’m proud like hell of who I’ve become since her death- would I be this strong now if I hadn’t lost her? Can I celebrate my victories andhoq I live now- even though she was the price I paid to be in this place and time? (Would I even have met Bu again in some hypothetical world where Mom never got sick? …the world I dream of over and over, that never quite manifests and evaporates when I realize in a lucid moment that I’m dreaming; she is dead…

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I can’t help thinking, at my more vulnerable moments, that Molly’s missing the mother she should have too. There’s a relaxed goofy mommy who’s pretty girlish herself, in that other reality, laughing with her little girl and the baby’s grandmother as they shower the baby with cupcakes and tiaras.

Is that baby breastfed? Does she sleep with mom or in a crib? Does her mom work? Will she get fat from the cupcakes? Does any of that matter? Is her mom happier than I am? Is the baby?

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I know it’s ridiculous. Certainly the worry about the baby’s happiness is- she’s shining with baby-glee, nearly every moment.  Each new discovery, each time she’s lifted into her Daddy’s arms or her mama pulls up her shirt to nurse, it’s like she’s amazed.  

And I couldn’t enjoy her more; it’s not possible. My anxieties don’t take up room in my heart; They clutter my mind. That brain with overbusy clockworks, always wondering about the meaning in every little thing.