/Wall of text as kind of a conscious stream
So not long ago I became a godparent (or whatever the materialist way to phrase it is). What I noticed is that the people involved are turning into hangover, sleep deprived pieces of human flesh they haven't been before. Them becoming like that is a harsh contrast to a cute polycule I know which still had all the annoying yelling things, but which were able due to their social and material relations have rest for some parts of the poly cule and also a good social network which reduced a lot of the stress that my friends experience now.
Since we are not living exactly close by any support of me would not be on the same scale as someone who is closer by and could actually have lasting qualitative input and share of reproductive work to be done.
Anything I write is not new, but it really is absurd how two people working nearly full time (even though one gets parent time by the German state law of 2005 or so) are supposed to care for a little crying human. It also is doubly absurd remembering that many walls of social housing (like the block I grew up in) are thin enough to hear your upper and lower neighbours kid's scream when they are very young.
The economic cultural system of the "civilized world" or however that other thread dunking on the syllabus of a course put it does amount to sleep deprivation torture and is good at stress testing the social relationship of the people co-parenting a new born, toddler etc. it also makes it kinda hard to have alone and bonding time, which in turn does strengthen if something at all, bonds with ones friends instead of with the co-parenting partner (which can be good to a point). Arguments about "in earlier times the grandparents did care for children" don't really work in industrial societies in which grandparent would've died to exposure as Engels thought us.
Anyhow the material reasons for two person couples caring for children are partially enshrined in housing codes and the politics and economic abilities to acquire housing - be it by buying, building or renting. Alternative models or the "grandparent" model are made more and more impossible with the current basically global social economic conditions. But if we take Germany or the US alternatives are hardly possible. This is not only cause of the way cities are built for cars instead of pedestrians, not also cause of racist history, but also cause of the focus of housing which is not capital nor energy efficient, but is a home for a family which is understood as cis hetero man and wife and offspring.
Will sleep on a shitty couch to give them a bit more time to chill together and catch up on sleep. I do will bring my own Oropax though.