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dgd1788
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02 Feb 2007, 3:26 pm

Babies have needs that we need to take care for them. If we didn't change their diaper, wipe their nose or vomit, we wouldn't be a good parent. It is perfectly natural for a baby to do these things, if you think of gross things as natural then you won't think they are gross.


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Hovis
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02 Feb 2007, 3:49 pm

I can't bear babies or toddlers anywhere near me. It's almost like a phobia. That sort of high, lispy sound of toddlers voices is like fingernails down a blackboard to me. :(



AspieGurl
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02 Feb 2007, 5:18 pm

omg yes i find them to be creepy


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Melantha
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02 Feb 2007, 6:23 pm

Aspie1 wrote:
I feel neutral about babies. They can be nice to look at sometimes, but they don't affect me in any way emotionally, either. I have a much bigger problem with the crying. Why does it have to be so irritating? Studies showed that babies cry with the volume of 80 decibels (dB), the same as a moving subway train. That's pretty staggering! Whenever I hear a baby crying in a public place, it annoys the sh*t out of me, and I find myself thinking: "Now where's a dose of melatonin (or NyQuil) when you need it? And why won't the parents just make the kid stop? How can they stand it?" It's one of the reasons why I never want to have kids. Two or more years of crying is just too much to bear.

Animal babies, such as little kittens and puppies, do affect me a little bit. I find watching them very comforting and relaxing. And their cries consist of quiet mews or whimpers, not an 80-dB wail. I think more people would be willing to have kids and like them a lot more, if human babies did that.


The crying is a distress signal, it's meant to be unbearable so that the mother will take proper care of her baby and do everything in her power to prevent crying. The crying tells you something is wrong and needs to be remedied. If it were less irritating, parents would just ignore it (although, amazingly, some still do!! !) and babies would not get their basic needs met properly. Unfortunately many people are too damn lazy and/or insensitive to take proper responsive care of their children, so they just let them cry or try to "make" them stop, or even worse, as you suggested, just dope them up with something.
From an evolutionary angle, babies who cry are more likely to get their needs met, whereas the so-called "good" babies who just lie there and don't demand care are more likely to experience neglect and failure-to-thrive.

P.S. The animal babies do not have much need to scream and cry, because their parents have not deviated from the natural continuum of care that evolution designed them to expect. Humans, on the other hand, have in the last couple of hundred years completely screwed up our birth and childcare practices to the point where in most industrialized/Western countries babies are barely getting any of their needs adequately met (from a natural/evolutionary perspective). They are separated from their mothers, fed artificial formula from an unresponsive plastic bottle, left lying in a crib alone all night, left lying around most of the day instead of toted in a sling or pack, and expected to accept toys and other blinking, flashing, musical objects as a substitute for the stimulation of human interaction. Babies are desperate and their cries reflect that. In more "primitive" cultures where mothers still give their babies the care their biology expects, they do not scream and cry the way they do here.



Aspie1
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02 Feb 2007, 7:29 pm

Melantha wrote:
... or even worse, as you suggested, just dope them up with something.

Actually, people used to do just that in the past. By "past", I mean from around the Middle Ages to early 1900's. Wet nurses would rub some opium on their nipples, so the baby would get a dose of it at each breastfeeding. As a result, babies would sleep or lie quietly most of the time. Other times, parents would add a shot of alcohol and syrup to the bottle of milk, for the same purpose. The primary goal was to keep the baby from crying, at all costs. There is a Russian proverb that goes: "anything that keeps a kid entertained is good, as long as the kid doesn't cry". Now we know about the dangers of giving opium or alcohol to babies, so no one does it anymore, and it's a good thing. Then again, melatonin is a natural sleep hormone, and harmless in small amounts.

By the way, with the 80-decibel cry that babies are capable of producing, I don't blame the parents for doing what they used to do. It was negligent of them, but I don't blame them nonetheless. 80 decibels is the same volume as a moving subway train. That's probably the loudest noise people had to put up with in the pre-industrial times. (Although thunderstorms could have been louder.)



dbzgirl
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02 Feb 2007, 10:12 pm

I'm neutral about babies and toddlers; I don't like it when toddlers and/or little kids are doing imaginative play and they run up to me and tell me something about what they are playing and expect a response, and I do not understand what they are trying to tell me so I give them the response they probably don't want, which leaves me feeling embarrassed; I also don't like it when babies and toddlers stare at me, when six or seven year olds insult a special interest of mine, or when little kids will try to involve me in imaginative play which completely confuses me, such as anything not having to do with DragonBall Z, Pokemon, Digimon, or similar things.



nicklegends
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03 Feb 2007, 1:42 am

Babies themselves are okay, but for some reason their hair tends to put me off.



jimservo
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03 Feb 2007, 11:05 am

I find babies to be very cute.



TG
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03 Feb 2007, 11:53 am

Breakbot wrote:
I don't like babies. I also don't like it that people expect me to coo over their own just because I have a vagina.


How True!
I only ever liked my own babies (3), and my sisters two oldest, because I knew them from birth. Other nephews/nieces and friends babies....Nope. Don't expect any cooing from me!


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TigerFire
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03 Feb 2007, 1:00 pm

I only like babies if they are quiet. I really hate it when they cry. I to under go that kind of crying when my sister was a baby.


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euphrosyne
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03 Feb 2007, 3:25 pm

I used to not like babies when I was a kid, they bothered me for some reason. I love them now, but the crying...that is the most horrid ungodly vile noise ever.



jdbob
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03 Feb 2007, 7:42 pm

Babies? AKA "Crotch Droppings" or "Pet Humans"

Crying is the worst thing about them. Whenever I travel on public transportation I take along ear plugs. Of course the parents are sometimes just as annoying when they are trying to keep the baby from crying.



Melantha
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03 Feb 2007, 8:22 pm

jdbob wrote:
Babies? AKA "Crotch Droppings" or "Pet Humans"


Wow, that's horrid. They are humans, period. You were one too.



Aspie1
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04 Feb 2007, 2:26 pm

This reminds me of the story of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It it, humans don't reproduce the regular way; however, they still have sex purely for pleasure, with numerous contraception methods. The babies are born and raised in special incubation centers, called hatcheries, being conceived through in-vitro fertilization and grown in special bottles (the book using the term "decanting"). Most adults, except those working in hatcheries, have no contact with babies whatsoever, or even children, for that matter.



jdbob
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04 Feb 2007, 5:34 pm

Melantha wrote:
You were one too.


I fail to see the relevance of that, I had no choice :?



Melantha
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04 Feb 2007, 5:50 pm

jdbob wrote:
Melantha wrote:
You were one too.


I fail to see the relevance of that, I had no choice :?


And that is precisely the relevance. No baby has a choice. And they are all future adults, as all adults were once babies. Your use of the terms "crotch droppings" and "human pets" implies that they are useless, disposable, unnecessary and most of all subhuman. Which, by extrapolation, is saying this about all people in general, including me and you and everyone on this forum. I find that pretty offensive. I get enough of certain people saying we aspies are useless, disposable and unnecessary without getting it here too.

Babies, and all humans, are beings with individual "souls". All of us are unique and important in some way. It's easy to bash on babies, they're still one group who can't be outraged by it and stand up for themselves. Imagine if people said some of these things about the elderly or the handicapped, it would be considered pretty shocking and in very bad taste.

Babies, by their nature, represent the continuation of life. Discrimination against babies is really just a form of biophobia, human self-hatred. I actually think it's a pathology.