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Why, no, that's not what I mean.
It may surprise you that it is in fact the case that you're mistaken about several of your "no true Scotsmen" assertions about the conditions necessary for a mother to find children relaxing in the context of my wife. It's not your fault, since you don't know her - but one wonders what possesses a man to invent stories about another man's wife.
Comfort isn't the question here. I'm perfectly comfortable doing my job for which I have extensive training. Nevertheless, it is exhausting.
I hope I don't have to explain why you can't compare Amish vs genpop stress and conclude that motherhood isn't stressful. Instead, I'll pretend you reiterated my point about the small gap in stress between married women and married women with children in both groups. I'll go ahead and reiterate what I already said in response to that point, which is that you can find something meaningful, fulfilling, and also utterly exhausting. I also couldn't immediately tell what goes into the hassle assessment, so it's unclear to what extent it even measures what you think it measures.
I'm genuinely puzzled that you don't understand this point. I'm my last post, I assumed that you had worked a job that you doing fulfilling at some point. Am I mistaken on this? Have you never done that? Generally speaking, have you ever done something hard, taxing, exhausting, yet absolutely worth doing?
Has a mother ever told you that raising (especially small) children is relaxing?
I can't help but feel as if your knowledge of childrearing, but also of women's attitudes towards it are entirely symbolic, in the sense that you derive this knowledge entirely from reading words on a screen. Am I correct in this assessment or does the rubber meet the road somewhere?
I’m extrapolating because she’s your n=1, or within your n=5. How else can I respond to your sample? I have to infer from what I know about American life because I have no details.
Yes. But not every moment of it. But that are major moments of relaxation. And traditional cultures find ways to make it relaxing. You don’t think rocking a child to sleep with a lullaby is relaxing to women? Or seeing them jump in puddled in a cute raincoat? Or telling a fun story to make them either behave out of fear or out of reward? I’ll grant it’s also stressful for traditional women, at times, but they have the training that makes it more enjoyable.
Yes but these things often bring relaxation, too. There’s relaxation after a hard bike ride, and you are more relaxed on the whole than never biking. So on the whole, an experience with stress can be relaxing. But not if you’re multitasking two huge stressors, or one huge stressor without previous training. If you told me to unicycle while juggling it would be horribly stressful, but if I mastered it in childhood then I would be a very relaxed clown indeed, happy to show off my neat skills. This is Csikzentmihalyi’s flow state: optimal human mood occurs when doing a challenging thing around the limits of our skill. (The lowest mood is on Sunday mornings when someone lacks a challenge to do). This is the most anxiolytic human state. Alex Honnold is relaxed despite free-soloing mountains all day because he mastered that skill, and I suppose he tells himself that is has “purpose”, but it’s not exactly raising up new life.
There’s only one other way to gain wisdom about this without reading: going around conducting polls. I have not gone around conducting polls in these communities. There’s not another way, as far as I know. Not one that’s reliable.
No, you're engaging in Bulverism. You assume that I'm wrong and work back to reasons why.
That's rather a weaker claim. Almost everything has moments of relaxation. Even the most stressful job you can imagine probably has coffee breaks.
You wouldn't know this since you've never raised a child, but raising a child does in fact involve multitasking a bunch of stressors. This is all squared with multiple children. Again, I strongly recommend you raise a child before forming opinions about what it is like.
In fact, there is a way to acquire true knowledge about the world without symbolic manipulation, and that's by gaining firsthand experience.
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