Monday, November 12, 2012

Rise of the Man-Baby

Real talk right now you guys- there is an epidemic sweeping the nation as we speak.  Or, um, maybe it already swept the nation and I just wasn't around when it started, but I'm talking about the emergence of the man-baby.  I am referring the the concerning growing numbers, at least in my life, of men over 35 in the ER accompanied by their very aggressive concerned late middle aged or older parents.  Most of these man-babies I refer to are white upper-middle class, but not always- this is a phenomenon that seems to transcend race or socioeconomic status.
New hospital is still basically in the hood, but it's not surrounded by hood for miles like the original Hood Hospital, so a lot of the folks from the nicer areas seem to trickle in pretty frequently.   I think this dynamic tends to play out in these families a lot of the time because they tend to be smaller. See, most man-babies are almost always only children, although some are occasionally the youngest sibling, usually by several years.  Virtually all are unmarried and childless. Many, but not all, also live at home- all are unusually dependent on mom and dad in various ways without any contributing physical or cognitive limitations.
Man-babies present to the ER for things that could almost always be addressed at urgent care.  You would not know this by their behavior or the behavior of their parents.   Mom is ALWAYS present with man-baby, but sometimes dad makes an appearance, too.  The parent's behavior goes beyond healthy, caring parental concern and into a brand of helicopter parenting that would put modern parents of toddlers to shame.  This is their business, I guess, except that parents to man-baby are never happy being the only one to render care to their special guy.  No, man-baby's parents will find you in a CPR and bring you in to fluff son's pillow. Their concern for your lack of concern usually manifests itself in various ways ranging anywhere from passive aggressive suggestions about how your job should be done to straight up indignant yelling that things aren't just right.  I actually had parents of a man-baby being treated for a scalp laceration last week get upset with me because I didn't wash their son's hair to get the dried blood out.  For reals.  
Man-baby, for his part, varies in his response to this behavior from his parents. Some man-babies will be obviously embarrassed, but still too afraid of their overbearing parents to shut the dysfunctional behavior down.  Most play in to the drama like they've surely been trained to do their entire lives.  Applying an air splint to a sprained ankle is comparable in their world to amputating a limb without anesthesia. Parents stand by wringing their hands and critiquing your technique, holding man-baby's hand and talking him through the crisis.  Occasionally, I've gotten the super weird parents as man-baby's wing man/woman type of situation, where man-baby will try to be flirtatious and the parents will catch on, flip the switch and start trying to be my new best friend all of a sudden, as if all prior behaviors and their son being old enough to be my dad aren't all huge red flags.
I swear I've seen more and more of this since I first became a nurse, but it may also be that I'm just becoming more cynical and less patient and noticing it more.  So grown up nurses, help me out here- are man babies a modern phenomenon, or do you think our girl Florence Nightingale had a couple of man-babies in the tents out there in Crimea?

17 comments:

  1. I dunno, I suppose Flo would have had to deal with it if man-baby's parents actually lived long enough to see him into old age...

    But yea, helicopter parents....smh

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  2. Sometimes man-babies do get married. Then their mommy-wives bring them in and function just like man-babies' parents did. Oh the joys.

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  3. I actually had to bring my husband in to the ER a few years ago because he said he had some pain in his chest (was a muscle thing in the end), and as soon as his parents heard that, they insisted we not go to the ER without them, drove an hour (I suppose if the problem were serious, he could've died while waiting for Mommy) to fetch us, and then go on to hospital. I wound up sitting in the waiting room while my mother-in-law took her man baby in. I wasn't even considered as someone who should be with her precious baby. The man-baby is definitely among us.

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  4. ah the man-baby, another form of modern day entitlement. i had a tiger mom in her 70s a little while ago that told her up ad lib, fully functional middle aged son that i could give him a bath. that would be a NO.

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  5. Dear God above.

    Well hopefully they won't reproduce.

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  6. Man-baby's are growing. We're breeding them because of our changing culture of how we treat kids. Kids aren't even allowed to walk home from school at the age of 10 these days. Forgoodness sakes. Everyone's afraid they are going to be kidnapped. This is really a problem.
    Please don't let me marry one.

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  7. We get them in social work situations once their parents die. They have no living skills at all (we have to teach them everything, from laundry to car maintenance to nuking lean cuisines) and tend to be rockin' a lot of axis 2 action. Histrionic men, yuck.

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  8. So true. It is, I think, a form of social Darwinism. These men should ABSOLUTELY NOT BREED

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  9. Yes, I noticed them a long time ago. And travel nursing for years they exist around the country. What made me first notice was how stoic a 90-year-old woman with a broken hip was, and how much of a baby a 28-year-old male with in ingrown nail could be.

    The only thing worse than the Man-Baby is the women who marry them and continue the coddling.

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  10. ah yes species manicus babyoid (AKA L-O-S-E-R), lets hope they go extinct quick like

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  11. My first patient last night? Man-baby. I wanted to cry...but he beat me to it.

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  12. Ahh yes, the man-baby... him: 40ish, pasty and passive. Her: 60ish, demanding and protective. Mother? Wife? We dare each other to ask... Either scenario is equally horrible. He sits there on the exam table like a lump of dough while she answers all of the questions. And when the man-baby gets a man-cold.......

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  13. I think people need to suffer a little bit in life to get some character. Go through a stint of poverty, spent the afternoons alone after school in Junior High trying to figure out how to make yourself a snack, live in a shitty house with six other people on $500 a month in college, or, if nothing else, if you're too rich for words, go volunteer in some war-torn African country or a battered women's shelter or homeless shelter for a bit.

    Otherwise, if you never suffer nor understand the true suffering of others, you turn into this narcissistic, self-centered dependent loser who can't figure out how to tolerate a minor needle stick because absolutely nothing in life is tolerable.

    Suffering is key. In other news, these guys gets #18s exclusively.

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  14. oh my gosh. This is hilarious. hahaha

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  15. In our ED, this is diagnosed as "Acute Scrotopenia."

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  16. hahahaha
    I don't have anything to contribute except
    I'm new to your blog and you crack me up.
    Now I'm going to spend the next hour stalking your old entries instead of studying :D Thanks a bunch for sharing/being awesome!

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  17. I should be studying too, but this is seriously good entertainment. Tell us more o wise Hood Nurse, you are great girlfriend!

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