A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:My fiancee and I have been together 8.5 years and have a 1 year old son. We are also getting married next week.There have been a couple of instances recently where my partner has been wrapped up in whatever he was doing and done something that has put our son in danger. Leaving the back door open so our son crawled out into the garden (a building site) unsupervised. Leaving him alone in the kitchen where he got into a bag of soda crystals and we had to take him to A and E (luckily he hadn't swallowed any after all). Each time something like this happens I am consumed with guilt, even in instances like these where my partner was the person who made the error. He is usually overly cautious and I am the one who is usually watching our son when he bumps himself because I give him more freedom, but these instances feel so much bigger.Anyway, we are in what feels like an unresolvable fight. My partner thinks I feel guilty because I'm at least partly responsible for these 2 recent instances. I am becoming increasingly resentful because he feels absolutely no guilt. I've asked him to communicate with me if he is leaving a room and our son is in there and to close the back door behind him if he goes into the garden. He says these are unreasonable changes and he still walks around with zero guilt, accepting no responsibility and showing zero interest in learning from this. He says I am just playing the blame game, and at this point I'm so angry that I guess I am. Why, as a mother, do I spend my time walking around full of guilt over where I'm falling short as a parent (even when I'm not), and juggling an extremely demanding job with childcare and somehow also being the sole planner of our wedding? My partner does most of the household chores and works full time in a job that he doesn't love and is definitely also struggling with the demands of early parenthood. We can't take the load off eachother because we are overloaded ourselves. I feel stuck I a fight that shouldn't even be a fight. We have talked it out to death and just keep going around in circles.
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female
reader, Youcannotbeserious + ♥, writes (15 October 2023):
 Early parenthood is HARD. Even those without children of their own, but some limited experience with other people's children, know how difficult parenthood is, especially when the child starts to crawl/walk and get into everything with not a drop of self preservation. You literally need eyes in the back of your head to keep them from harming/killing themselves.
Your son has two parents, who should both be pulling out all the stops to keep him safe. You were very lucky that neither incident resulted in any harm to your son. As you are aware - but your fiance chooses to not acknowledge - the end results could have been catastrophic. Sadly, I don't think you can force someone to understand the danger in these situations. Your fiance sounds like a better partner than father. I'm sorry, I really don't know what the answer is in this situation. I just hope that his attitude is never the cause of any real harm to your son.
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (14 October 2023): If you're unable to watch the child and you communicated that to your fiance, he should have stopped what he was doing to solely put the attention on the child. A kid that little needs to sit in your lap while you go to the bathroom (awkward but necessary, been there) or sit in a pack n play or similar if you or fiance is alone and needs to shower or toilet. Baby can't be left alone. When my son was 7, I was on the toilet when I heard the front screen door slam and by the time I got outside I couldn't find him. I searched up and down the block, the alley behind our house and neighbors fanned out. He chased an ice cream truck. Scared me. Even a kid who knows better and won't eat chemicals without knowing better needs to be watched. Same son, at 9, saw some pink body lotion spilled om the table and lucked it because he thought it was yogurt. Kids are weird and especially babies get into everything. If fiance won't respect or understand that, I'd re think whether he's responsible if he's not going to learn from those two incidents. As for your mom guilt, it's not like you were off hitting a bong while fiance neglected baby, you legit had something to do!
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (13 October 2023): Early parenthood ? You are 30 to 35 , how old is your fiance' ? Unless he is 20 or 22 , it takes a big stretch of imagination to call it "early parenthood ".
The problem is, alas, on one hand very simple, and OTH very hard to fix.
The problem is that your husband-to-be is an idiot. You make sound the story very complicated, mom's guilt, whose fault it really was ? and all that, but it is very simple instead, it boils down to your partner being an irresponsible idiot. People do not need to read child-rearing manuals or scientific magazines to know you never ever ever leave alone an one year old child ( unless he is sound asleeo ) , anot even for 5 minutes because 5 minutes are enough for him to drink in, or to play with matches and set the house on fire. Everybody knows that . If your partner not only is not regretful, but says he can't be arsed to watch his own son properly in future...I just would not marry him. I'd just send the wedding belly up . But not to be vengeful or spiteful.Simply because he is such an ignorant idiot and I find ignorant idiots not attractive at all.
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