patricia : i am partial to saying "my man" personally. you could try that.
thanks everyone for the concern and advice. i sometimes (frequently) feel inequipped to deal with adult life ; situations like this feel confusing and overwhelming. but if i hear that baby crying again i think i will call the social services. it's even a more delicate subject because ALL the babies in this damned building seem to cry a lot, but they are not necessarily without adult supervision ; there is another baby (she is slightly older, because she walks around already, maybe around 3) who regularly has screaming tantrums in the courtyard, but her mother is right there and does nothing, or else shouts at her. and it's not surprising, because the mother is also very loud, having very long conversations on her cellphone in the courtyard at the top of her lungs. they both drive me crazy as well (oh, and guess what : i saw that woman coming into the building the other day, and she is pregnant.
). i don't think any of these people are very good parents and i wish none of them had had children (i really don't see why they do, none of them seem very happy about it, and it's not like contraception is not available for god's sake), but sometimes i'm not sure where to draw the line between "mediocre parenting skills" and "neglect". i would never have guessed that baby was alone even though he was crying for so long and i heard no adult voices, just because to me it's so clearly an unacceptable thing to do it never would have occurred to me that someone would do that. *sigh* i really hate this building, it seems to attract crazy people.