There's another video from TikTok trending on X. It's of a few different moms doing their daily activities and chores- walking up and down stairs, doing laundry, dishes- with their baby, and then replacing the baby with a doll to demonstrate their irrational anxieties and fears they have while just living their life with a newborn baby. The doll goes over the banister of the stairs, bangs into the wall going around a corner, flies into the air as the mom trips, or even goes into the dishwasher and dryer like a dirty dish or wet article of clothing.
The point of the skit is to make fun of the irrational anxieties we feel as moms of newborns, navigating daily life with a very fragile infant while sleep deprived. We worry we will slip and fall, so we hold our baby tighter. We worry we'll bash their head into the wall going around corners and give them a wider birth. (This was a fear I personally never managed to have in advance and would instead freak out and grab the baby's head after rounding the corner, despite baby being fine, which is less useful.) We may even worry that we'll absentmindedly place the baby in our arms into the dryer after all the clothes. I never had that one, but I did absolutely worry my securely strapped baby would fall headfirst out of the carrier into my very deep washing machine.
The dryer and dishwasher ones are the peak of the absurdity of the videos, and the ones the men keep saying, "You'd never do that by accident!" No, we don't. We don't do it. But it's precisely that absurdity of the fear and the irrationalness of it that makes it a funny and relatable skit. We worry we might, because we're being silly.
I never would have said I'd had intrusive thoughts, but I suppose if this sort of anxiety counts, then I have. I just thought I was being silly and anxious. I wonder if men might have an easier time understanding it if we described it as such? but who knows.
In the wake of the Lindsey Clancy case, men on X freaked out about this video. Notable figures, such as Matt Walsh, said that the video was women fantasizing about hurting their children, when that couldn't be further from the truth.
Many moms piled in to correctly say that this is normal. This is the heightened threat sensitivity that women experience because they have a precious newborn in their care, and suddenly everything, every mundane activity, reads as a danger to this sweet baby child that they would die to protect. This is good. They were quick to say worrying about something accidentally and tragically befalling your child is not the same as worrying that you, yourself, would ever be a danger to your child.
They're correct.
But I'd actually like to go further. Worrying that you might be a danger to your child is also not wanting to or planning to harm your child. I know, because I have.
Before and during pregnancy with my first, I worried that perhaps I would go crazy after having a baby. Because of stories like Lindsey Clancy, because of stories of mothers drowning their children while the father's are away, because I had seen women seemingly go insane overnight and destroy their good lives, divorce their husbands, abandon their children. Because I knew people personally who had struggled to various degrees postpartum. And I have been afraid of this nebulous thing that supposedly can strip away my agency and turn me into a completely different person who would do completely insane things.
I struggle with the idea of such a thing. I struggle to believe that there is any situation in which I could have no choice and agency, that there wouldn't have been a million tiny decisions where I would've had to say "yes" to evil before I could get there. But I don't know; I have, as of yet, been blessed never to have experienced actual postpartum psychosis or even severe postpartum depression.
My point is this: fear of a thing, even fear of yourself, is not condemnation. It doesn't mean you want or plan for something evil to occur. If anything, looking into the depths of your soul and seeing the potential for what evil you could do and the possibility for what damage you can cause can help you better to fight it, to have some level of being prepared for it. We shouldn't ruminate but that's not the same as acknowledging the potential.
All men and women are evil, conceived in sin. Facing up to and repenting of that, choosing the light of Jesus Christ, and putting on the Armor of God every day is not planning to do evil. It is the opposite.
Society has swung against the idea that all things should be "normalized" and spoken of in public without shame, for good reason. We've lost most senses of propriety and decorum and discretion in the world of anonymous ranting to a void that's not an actual void but is in fact filled with multitudes upon multitudes of other people. But the opposite of normalization is not denial. Denial prohibits repentance.
There is a space between pretending we are not evil and announcing every depth of evil to the world, and that space is confronting the evil within yourself and bringing it to God alone.
So, if you, too, have ever been afraid you would hurt your baby: the potential for great evil does indeed live within you. Facing up to that is not the shameful and wicked thing. Reject that evil through the power of Jesus Christ, and put on the Armor of God each and every day. The devil is as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
Gird up your lions with strength, be ye steadfast, unmovable; watch, and be ready.
It must be said: I do not support Lindsey Clancy. I personally do not believe she was insane when she killed her children, but even if she were, I do not believe it ought to result in a condemnation less than death for the crime she committed.
Discussion
Thoughtful, good-faith discussion is welcome.
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