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Jelousy

There was a news report here in the UK recently about a Man who attacked and beat to death his 8 month old child, because he had become depressed and jealous over the attention that his partner was giving to the young baby.

I'm only human and there have been occasions where I have felt a little jealous, not only of the attention my partner gives our daughter but also the attention she gets from her in return.

They are little flashes rather than strong feelings, the sort you get when you are overtaken by a sports car, they are forgotten about 5 minutes later.

And trust me they will never amount to me even contemplating laying a hand or anything else on her for that fact (Just to clear that up)

but my main question here is am I alone in this or it it a natural thing, as I have never seen programmes on this or read articles, yet there are countless reports on sibling jealousy and rivalry, but never between parents and child.

Jelousy

Karniest, sadly to say it is more common than we think, specially with men. I personally believe these "men" (if we can call them that way) have already (previous to that incident) violent tendencies and anger management problems, when the little ones comes in the picture it does not make a difference from them that if the wife is cheating on them (that's how they see it). Rivalry between a child and a parent is very common but because most of the time the husband (I say husband because it is more common in men) keeps these kind of feelings away from their spouse, mainly because they feel guilty about sharing it with their spouse, it does not mean it does not exist. It does. Now to the point of killing your own child? I believe there were serious problems beforehand with the individual to actually reach that stage.

Edited: LDS_forever on 2nd Mar, 2006 - 11:15pm

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Many tragic stories and Discussions about Heinous Crimes relating to Children can be found in the Heinous Crimes Board.

Jelousy

As a father with three children, I can tell you that the ocassional Jealousy does seep in, though not to the extent of even showing it. While admittedly, after nearly six years of fatherhood, those feelings don't ever show up anymore, I did feel them when I was still a young dad.

The reason, I think, was that I went from having all the attention of my wife to having to share it with a child who, at the time, didn't want me to hold him. It was painful at times, but I got over it, and now my feelings towards my children are not of competition but of nurturing and caring. Its hard to see how a "father" can still have feelings of jealousy when the kid is eight years old, he should have surpassed that years ago. It sounds like his fathering instincts never kicked in and he never made that parental link with his child. I blame him for that, but something else was going on.

The article said he was depressed as well and leads me to believe that something was terribly wrong with this fellow. Makes me wonder what else was going on in his life, either psychologically or physically, that was causing his depression and anger towards his own child, its not a natural thing.

Jelousy

It was eight Months not Years, I think you misread.

I would say this is the best explanation, as I also have an 11 year old, although not with my current partner, and although they are like best friends the jelousy factor does not even come into account with her. I just so happy they have connected and can be friends.

Yet as I'm only 29 I still consider myself quite a Young dad in this respect, and I'll hold my hands up and admit that I can still be quite immature sometimes.

I have sat and spoke to my partner about these glimpses of jelousy as we can sit and talk about virtually anything resonably well, with no judgement.
Her advice was to spend as much time as I can with Holly, which I have been doing recently.

I will feed her, bath her and put to bed on a weekday evening, the weekends, we have started to spend a couple of hours just myself and holly, and to be fair this has been great for bonding with her.

Jelousy

I think the most important thing is not feel guilty about these feelings of jealousy but actually do something about it, as Karniest pointed out a good conversation with your spouse or partner can help in the whole situation. Now, if a person was dealing with other feelings such as anger management, depression or psychological issues prior to these feelings, I think the best is to look for professional help.

Jelousy

In my situation, my wife already had a child when we met. At first, I did feel a bit jealous about this. The funny thing was that her daughter was also very jealous as well. Now mommy was paying attention to this 'guy' and not her. Eventually we both learned to love each other very much and not feel this way, but it does take some level of maturity to accomplish this, in my opinion. Becoming a parent requires some level of maturity to begin with, and if this fellow did not have that, coupled with mental illness, he was doomed to be a bad parent from the beginning.