Ubu's

Ok...another sexually awkward post, but from a completely different angle.

Punkinhead has become obsessed with breasts. Particularly mine.

It just came out of nowhere. One day he was sitting on my lap, and he went to cop a feel of the girls. I moved his hand and said, "No baby, those are mine." Smiled...no big deal, right? Wrong.

Since that first groping, he now cops a feel anytime he's near me, smiles his "Dennis the Menace" smile, and says, "Mama, I touch your ubus, hehehehe." The first time I heard the girls referred to as ubus, all I could think of was that old ad that ran after tv shows of my youth. I mistakenly shared this withCharlie Brown, and now, he talks to my chest, "Sit Ubus sit. Good girls."

The other thing that Punkinhead began doing is when he throws a tantrum (not uncommon for him, he is after all 2), he'll hit my breasts. I'm not comfortable with the symbolic misogyny of this kind of aggression, and he gets a BIG talking to, time-out, etc. Just for clarification- ANY aggression is a big no-no for this Mommy, but I'm particularly troubled by the long-term, implicit meanings attached to acts of ubu aggression.

Then....maternal doubt:
Did I nurse him too long or not long enough? Did that Victoria's Secret ad trigger this?

No, having talked to other mommies of boys, this is a somewhat normal phase.

This relieves me, but at the same time, I am freaked out by this norm, almost as much as I am with my knowledge of Freud's theory of the Oedipal Complex. This filial fondling is just not something you want to think about, much less are taught when learning about human development/parenting/gender differences, etc as I did as a coed majoring in psychology.

Perhaps even more discomfiting than the ubu experience is my extrapolation of the Oedipal complex, and the conclusion I've arrived at as the mother of a boy.

Think of Pavlov's dogs.

Then think about parenting roles in western society.

Who usually changes diapers? Mommy.

What does a diaper change usually entail? Cleaning a baby's more primitive, pleasure areas.

So for a baby boy, early penile stimulation is generally going to be associated with Mommy's face looking down at him. Freaky, huh?

Especially freaky for me is the fact that my mother-in-law is also a red-head!

So much for intellectual discovery, best for me to use another Freudian mechanism regarding this: REPRESSION.