ABSTRACT
Parents often treat their children, and children their parents, as siblings or compatriots sharing the same stream, either of love or hate. Many men have commented that they wanted to welcome their newborn child, but found the task too difficult because they simultaneously saw the baby as an intruder, like a younger brother or sister. In Latin America it is known that fathers share a state of severe physical decline known as chipil when a new baby arrives. The perceived presence or absence of “fairness” provokes or mitigates the resentments that lurk in all people concerning food, love, beauty, attention, privilege, power; that is, oral, female, or male possessions—the common streams. A sense of “fairness” or proto-morality begins with wide-eyed comparisons between what one has and what the newcomer is getting. An initial reaction may be to exaggerate and then belittle both baby and mother, her caring, feeding, caressing, and time spent with “the other”.
