Reply to SIL just sent out the most obnoxious "coming to visit the new family" e-mail

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Reply to "SIL just sent out the most obnoxious "coming to visit the new family" e-mail"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here's a website advising new moms to asks guests to bring dinner, limit visit time, and assign dad to kick people out. http://sdbfc.com/blog/2011/9/28/5-ways-to-get-rid-of-postpartum-visitors-without-offending-a.html#.VKGvGnAJQ

This website encourages new moms to have a list of household chores that need to be done, like vacuuming and mowing the lawn, at the ready to give out to people who ask what they can do to help out.  Sure Ripley are "volunteering" but it's not that far off from this email. Here's a website advising new moms to asks guests to bring dinner, limit visit time, and assign dad to kick people out. http://sdbfc.com/blog/2011/9/28/5-ways-to-get-rid-of-postpartum-visitors-without-offending-a.html#.VKGvGnAJQ

Here's another website where the departing doula put a sign on the mom's front door after the birth asking visitors to keep visits short and help out with household chores like grocery shopping and cleaning up. The mom suggests we all do this for one another and for ourselves if no one does it for us. http://theleakyboob.com/2012/07/help-them-help-you-new-baby-sign-with-ways-for-visitors-to-help/

So the requests in the email are not crazily out of line when you look at Internet advice that's going around these days. Like I said upthread, I have read lots of people advising new moms to ask for help with housework.  Reacting offended and surprised here suggests to me that you guys might actually be a little out of touch. 
[/quote]

I am always surprised and offended by rude behavior that people somehow try to pass off as okay. The first link you sent was perfectly ordinary advice. When someone asks what they can bring? Say, yes, we'd love some dinner! Nothing wrong there. But the sign on the door where you check off the list of tasks and chores you would like your visitors to perform is rude, as is the suggestion that it's okay to brush off questions about the baby's weight by referring them to the door sign instead of answering directly. WTH??

And this BS that only the mother and father can hold the baby because of bonding flies in the face of literally millenia of childrearing. Again, these are the kind of nightmarish, self-absorbed parents who are going to kill themselves trying to do it all themselves because they have alienated the village.

To be clear--I am 100 percent in accordance with washing hands, not coming when sick or recovering, helping out, bringing meals, taking older kids out, cleaning up, etc. I do all those things! But if you are going to come back at me with some BS that you aren't going to let anyone hold the baby because of bonding? Or email me a list of chores? Hell no.[/quote]

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