Of course, you don’t know me from adam. I could be a terrible parent; I could be lying myself. I can only ask you to believe me when I tell you that those things aren’t true. I have been married for over twenty years, my husband and I love each other, my son is bright and happy (now, on medication), we live a very Ozzie and Harriet-looking life in many ways.
Nonetheless, it would be very very easy for someone to comb through my blog and find “evidence” that these things aren’t true. When I was writing it, people sometimes did so, and wrote blog posts like yours. I can only tell you that most of what they concluded was wrong, and highly shaped by confirmation bias to fit prejudices that they already had: that educated women with children were bad mothers, that people with depression are self-involved, that my husband and I would be divorced within a year, that I was surely warping my son and should have him taken away from me. Again, none of those things were true; we are a very happy family. We have been through some hard times, and I have written about them–often with jocular (or not so jocular) exasperation, including statements like the ones you found in Liza’s blog.
It is very, very easy to pass judgment on what people write about their lives. It is very, very easy to pass judgment on parents, and especially mothers, in this culture. When one is a mother, that kind of judgment is ever-present. It makes parenting in public, let alone writing about it, difficult at times–especially when one is under stress, or when something in one’s life doesn’t fit the Ozzie and Harriet mold. Everyone has an opinion about mothering; everyone has an opinion about mental illness.
From Tedra at Buffalo Mama.
I followed the rabbit hole then all the way back to the judgemental blog post. Wow.
I’m blown away too. I like the parts she wrote before your quote as well, about the power of personal blogging.
Very disappointed in the post criticizing Liza Long. I stopped blogging years ago. I knew I mostly wanted to write about my family and decided to preserve their privacy by quitting all together – but I totally see where Long was coming from in the parts quoted, and to have them taken out of context that way, well, can you imagine – we’d all have our children taken away if we gave voice to how they make us feel at times?!!
I was also moved by the post as I have an (often, not always) angry child who is very very bright and probably on the spectrum. It’s hard for me to talk about my very similar fears, even with other parents whose children are on the spectrum, as fears are often pooh poohed or dismissed. So to say I relate to Long is an understatement.
The post title and timing were indeed provocative, but I can’t presume they were deliberately so. I do so wish we could all stop telling each other how and when to speak though.
I took 3 kids out in public today. The youngest was feeling crap and behaving horribly. I got one of those looks from an older woman and it just left me feeling dreadful, defensive, like I shouldn’t be out in public with my less than perfect children. Parenting in public is often a v fraught experience.
Michelle
Times like that I wish I had the guts to tell the disdainful person that they were a child once too. Sometimes I’m brave enough to comment to my hubby (if he is there) that obviously ‘that person’ came out an adult and doesn’t know what children are like. Okay, it was once but it worked (she pulled a face and turned away) and more importantly it allowed me to get enough cranky off my chest so I could deal with my upset child.
It helps to have really aggro friends to defend you. One of my friends just set her tantruming toddler down at the feet of a disapproving stranger in the mall this week and said “Fine, YOU fix it.”
Even better, one time a childless friend was carrying my toddler while I carried some shopping, and a random parent with teenagers said loudly “Well I guess MOM needs a hat but it’s okay for the BABY to be cold” and my friend yelled “WELL AT LEAST HE WON’T GROW UP RUDE!” at her.
I can understand her fears on the one hand, while on the other hand I’m wincing in anticipated sympathy for her son once he discovers what she has written about him, which will probably happen within a week at most with half the internet fossicking to find out all about the family. I can’t imagine that he’ll see it as anything other than a huge betrayal of trust to find that all his schoolmates and neighbours have now been told that he is dangerous to be around.
I get that she was in emotional distress herself, as so many of us were as we learned the details of what happened at Sandy Hook School. These times of distress are however exactly the times when saving the draft and waiting until the morning to read it again before hitting that Publish button is the course of wisdom (knowledge hard won by my own personal experience and several regrets).
There are other forums out there besides one’s personal blog, firewalled forums where folks can share these intensely personal parenting concerns, and where it’s better locked down from going viral.
But then it has no possible political effect. And we desperately need people to put some resources into mental health care in the United States, instead of funneling almost all of it through our prisons.
My son is on the spectrum and the wait list to get evaluated by a pediatric psychiatrist is 6 months or more.
Also – if the child has been removed from at least one school, and has been committed for several days at a time, and can’t be trusted around sharp things, the people he knows already know this about him.
There’s presumably possible political effect from people freely choosing to share their own medical histories and experiences, rather than the only possible political effect being from parents sharing their children’s stigmatised medical histories and behaviours (especially in essentially non-anonymised form). It may not be as strong an effect because such people are so stigmatized, but there’s less ethical concerns with it.
Tedra has updated her post with a couple of links to pieces by adults talking about their own experiences as a child/teen exhibiting violent behaviour: I Was One of the Scary Kids and I am Liza L.’s kid. The latter writes:
I read both of those, and I do get the argument.
The thing is, both sides need to be told. The people writing as now-adult “scary” kids were not the ones negotiating the system, and it’s the system that needs to change. The stigma falls (mostly) on the kids but nearly all of the work taken away from the old system of institutionalizing kids and putting them into state custody has fallen on mothers.
On the general subject of Long’s article and Kendzior’s response, I looked at Kendzior’s response and my initial reading was “yeah, could easily be typical parenting blog hyperbole”.
But then survivors of parental abuse that I know seemed to mostly be reading it as “those excerpts sound eerily like my parent-abuser!” So it reminded me of the dynamic Kate Harding talked about long ago:
Presumably the same is true with conversations about wanting to throttle children or have them jailed: you may not mean anything by it other than emotive impact and mild humour, but you may be providing cover for actual abusers, and making them think abuse is more widespread than it is, because everyone else sounds like they have pretty much the same parenting style.
Hypothetical “you” I should add, I did not specifically mean blue milk or her commenters!
Thank you for this. I’ve read and learned so much from many books and blog posts about relationships that are OVER. Relationships gone wrong. Memoirs of fights, pain, and sadness on the way to relationship ruin. I’ve been grateful for these cautionary tales. And that’s why I truly appreciate the bravery of anyone who writes about their current relationships. Including the relationships between mothers and their children. We can’t exactly divorce our children and write a book about it called Birth, Pray , Love or anything like that. We have, it seems. only one sanctioned choice : we must live in a kind of desperate secrecy if, heaven forbid, our children fall outside the range of normal. (whatever that is) or if we ourselves aren’t coping. Because if our children aren’t okay, then we, as mothers, are not okay. We must put up a front. And when everything comes crashing down around us the judgements come. I’ve gone through some very tough times as a parent. My mother friends have been my sanity. I’ve been able to confess to them, and to be absolved. I am grateful to the mothers who have let me into their less than perfect private, behind the scenes mothering existence, whether IRL or on line. It feels lonely being an imperfect mother of flawed children.
Thank you.
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bluemilk did you see this one?
http://laurafo.dreamhosters.com/blog/2012/12/18/on-caregiving-domestic-violence/
[…] This is a particularly troublesome topic at the moment because of some high profile writing by mothe…. People with disabilities already pay a high price for prejudice, can they afford to pay any more when their mothers write about their disabilities in very unflattering terms? However, mothers and carers also pay a high price for caring work that is grossly undervalued in society and poorly supported, can they not write about that penalty? […]