Crying Babies

When you take as many train and airplane trips as we have in the last few months you’re bound to end up in certain inevitable situations. For instance, you’re bound to be kicked out of your first-class seat because you’ve only got a second-class ticket. You’re bound to be caught on a platform with a bunch of football hooligans. You’re bound to be stuck in an embarrassing situation with an acute lack of toilet paper.

And you’re bound to be sitting for several hours in the same cabin with a crying baby.

I’m not a parent yet, so I can’t really speak or reflect from that point of view on the phenomenon of crying babies. But I’ve known several new parents and have the requisite cultural knowledge of the infant state. Conversations with said parents and general knowledge, combined with a few recent experiences involving crying babies in tight spaces, lead me to reflect a little on this remarkably human situation.

Babies cry because they have a need, either real or perceived. They need something, and they cannot communicate the specifications of this need in linguistic terms. Therefore they do what ultimately and almost unerringly commands the attention of all adults: they cry. There is something particularly poignant about the crying of a baby. Perhaps it is a deep-seeded pity for the fact that a baby has very human needs but cannot yet articulate them. Perhaps it is a more visceral, animal resonance that reminds the lower parts of our brains of our own experience as babies. Perhaps the Lord designed our inner ear to hear more sharply the particular pitches and tenors of babies’ cries. Whatever the case, it strikes a certain chord in my heart. That chord is dissonant, however; the consistent crying of a baby grates on the heart and the nerves.

There seem to be times when the need that gives rise to a baby’s cries cannot be identified. We may see no symptoms of teething; the mother may try unsuccessfully to nurse her child; the father may get no results from rocking the child in his arms; the temperature may seem to be just right. Yet the baby continues to cry. The only thing that is clear is that the baby suffers for some reason, some unfulfilled need.

As I sat at different times and in different cabins occupied by crying babies, I wondered why adults don’t cry as babies do when their needs arise. Conversely, at what point do children learn that inarticulate crying is not the best way to summon the meeting of their needs? Several tools come to the aid of developing individuals: articulate speech allows us to ask for specific things like food, blankets, or the toilet. Certain gestures achieve the same effect: witness a toddler who gets her mother to pick her up by looking up and raising her arms (instead of simply crying). Another tool for getting one’s needs met is the recognition that certain people can fulfill our needs and certain others cannot. I have never seen a toddler ask her baby brother if she could have a cookie (she asks her parents, of course); a baby will cry for everyone to hear.

There are exceptions, of course, to the development of the ability to communicate need. Even beyond the age when they will cry because they are hungry or cold, children will give inarticulate cries because of physical pain. Witness a child falling down on the concrete; there is pain and there is surprise. There is a need for comfort, but that need is expressed not by linguistic expression but by crying. (Of course, there is the strange instance of the child who, when adults are present, will scream bloody murder when he falls; but if no adult is paying him any attention, he’ll stand up and get right back to what he was doing. I suppose this is a different kind of need.)

At some point along the journey of life, we learn how to suffer in silence. Somewhere along the line we learn (or decide) that expressing our needs in an outward fashion will not get those needs met. There may be thirty other people in the train car with that crying baby. Ten of them may be quite tired; twelve of them may be hungry; five of them may be experiencing physical pain from wounds old and new. But none of them is crying like that baby. Most of them are not telling anyone that they suffer. Many of them, I’m sure, will not tell anyone at any time about their suffering.

I wonder if, too, there does not come a point in the life of many people when all suffering is done in silence. Even those sufferings that clearly result from a difficulty in human relationships (which may be worked out if spoken out) or from a basic physical dysfunction (which may be taken to a physician) are borne in silence. This seems to be the exact opposite of the crying baby situation: instead of crying out loud to all the world that she is suffering, the silenced adult cries out in no form to anyone. And whereas a crying baby will attract the attention of everyone in the train car, the silent adult will attract none. Perhaps this is the purpose: just as people often get annoyed by crying babies (rightly or no), people are afraid that their own words of suffering will be deemed annoying or bothersome. But what a horrible life to live, the suffering of silence!

~emrys