Parenting books promising to save our sleep (and tame our toddlers) and the yummy mummy movement have something in common. Both contemporary trends capitalise on women’s fear of motherhood. Or that’s what I think, anyway. As a second-time parent there is something now peculiar to me about how frightened we all are of the transforming effect of motherhood. Why are we so afraid of losing control, of being softened, of giving in, of being affected, of changing?
And yet listening to first-time parents sometimes all you will hear is their burning determination to not be altered by motherhood; to make their babies fit into their lives (lest they be duped into doing it the other way around). This baby will sleep peacefully through dinner parties and know how to behave appropriately in restaurants. This baby will listen to our music, and in fact will prefer our music to nursery rhymes. This baby will not disrupt our lives. This baby will not control us. Another theme among first-time parents, and surely related to the first, is the disturbing unreasonableness of our babies. We are overcome by babies that feed for too long or too often; babies who sleep too little or too lightly; babies who want to be carried too much; babies who are too fussy; babies who cry too much; babies who don’t like car trips, strollers, automated swing seats; babies who won’t be left alone. Babies out of control. Babies who seem to be demanding that a stand be taken against their tyranny. These babies drive us mad. They drive us to responses and decisions we need to justify. It was us or them. Someone or something had to break.
And I am the first to admit that I said many of these same things; I obsessed over them in fact (and I have the blog to prove it). I truly despaired of my first baby such was her unreasonableness – this is not fair I cried (and it wasn’t). But I wonder now, why did I ever expect babies to be reasonable. What made me think a species of mammal born so highly dependent would be at all reasonable in its demands?
And when I railed against the unreasonableness what was I really trying to express? What are all those parents, like me, trying to say? What are the parenting books and the yummy mummy mythology tapping into? What will happen if we lose control? If we succumb to our lives as mothers? What will it say about us? Why do we not want to be changed by our babies? What are we frightened may happen to us? Who will we become? Where do we assume it will end?
You certainly have a point about the fear. All I know, now that my third child is about to turn five, is that I’ve learnt to accept the loss of control, the chaos, and that doesn’t make me a worse person.
I think motherhood can be like becoming a Buddhist – we can learn to relinquish our egos, accept that there is a process and we will be changed by it, try our level best to live in the moment so as not to go stark raving mad.
Or we can fight it. And that’s where unhappiness lies.
What a great post. I do think there is a problem with too many books out there, or even websites, giving us “information.” We’ve run into the problem of thinking we can research our ways through the problem rather than dealing with it instinctually or figuring it out from ourselves. Usually, a friend’s experience helps a lot more than a whole book.
I think we’re expected to be good mothers, automatically. There’s a lot of pressure. And so we don’t always allow ourselves a learning curve. The thing is, our children are very forgiving, and they allow us more leverage than we think.
Some tentative thoughts:
Yummy mummy—there’s a lot of status women get if we look properly sexy-femme, and lose if we don’t fit that mold. So the loss of status would be an unpleasant prospect.
Why do we not want to be changed by our babies? What are we frightened may happen to us?—-Loss of identity. In my observation of the culture, it doesn’t look like just loss of control. It looks like fear that we’ll be turned into an entirely different person, and none of our friends will like us any more. All of the personal qualities we’re so proud of will vanish. Maybe our husbands won’t like us any more, and we’ll be abandoned with a baby and no friends. Very scary prospect.
I personally fear the loss of sleep and control over schedule. I need my sleep. If I’m woken too untimely, I will be non-functional. Sometimes I just sleep through the alarm because I don’t care if the house is on fire, let me sleep! I also need quiet time to myself, at least a couple of hours a day. If I do not get that time to myself, I get very bad-tempered. The vision of a sleep-deprived, very angry me in charge of a baby is why I don’t have children.
I’m finding this post to be much more thought-provoking than it was when I first read it. I think there’s a lot to be said for the general lack of acceptance for children’s humanity in our society – thinking of the adult privilege checklist, here – that helps us forget that our young just have different needs than we do as adults. Hence all the books and tools and advice about how to “train” your baby to do x, y, z – it’s about being able to exert control over that tiny little life, justified by the assumption that it cannot control itself, that its rhythms are not only different but wrong because they create inconvenience and more for ours.
I think it’s also interesting that we reflect the same fears, in a way, when we involve ourselves in intimate adult relationships – there’s the same sort of fear (of commitment?) that This Will Change Us, and a resistance to that kind of change, possibly because our myth of individuality prevents us from acknowledging the impact that others’ (external) forces have on us?
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a vulnerability thing, you know, like learning to need and be needed that we *know* will change us, except we can’t predict *how* it will change us, and we fear the unknown.
…I need to think about this more, but those are just some of the thoughts racing around my head at this point.
Undoubtedly there is a lot to be unpacked here, but I immediately wondered if some part isn’t to do with trying to make motherhood look something like fatherhood currently does for a lot of men. (Of course fatherhood does not have to look much like this, but…)
A father very often keeps his job and career trajectory and progression rate. A father quite often keeps at least some of his child-unfriendly social life (late nights, noise, adult-centered conversation, alcohol-focussed stuff). A father can walk out of the house and not have to consider his breastfed child’s next, unpredictable, feeding time. An exhausted father, no matter how caring, can respond to his sleep deprivation badly enough that his breastfeeding partner can eventually throw up her hands and say “go ahead, sleep through the night tonight! please!”
As a mother, and for my social circles, a young mother among many acquaintances who are not planning children until mine will be at school, and with many male friends who will never question that that’s the way to parent, it’s tempting to try and get me some of that, because it’s what my childless (in some but not all cases childfree) surroundings look like.
Also, Sara, no one is promising anything (part of the point of the post I guess) but I was terrified of the sleeping bit, and it’s been much better and saner than anything I read dared to suggest.
@Mary: I think you’re onto something with that. The social expectation of motherhood as all-encompassing (comparative to fatherhood, at any rate) is probably contributing a great deal to the anxiety @bluemilk is talking about.
Oops, the sleep comment was intended for Kathmandu. Perhaps that doesn’t speak well of last night’s sleep… (actually, it was pretty good, but we do get up very early now).
Mary: Good point about trying to make motherhood look like fatherhood has so far. Men’s lives have been the default model, and keeping one’s career progression is a valuable goal, worth striving for. But society hasn’t really come to grips with how much that default model is based on having someone else do the heavy parenting.
Thank you for the reassurance about sleep, it’s just … a lot of it is luck, you know? If your baby sleeps through dinner parties, it doesn’t mean you’re Doing It Right, it means you were lucky to have a sleepy baby. Conversely, if your baby cries for five hours every night, or insists on being held all the time, that doesn’t mean you’re Doing It Wrong, it means luck brought you the colicky baby. So you can’t count on having an easy baby, and that means there’s nothing you can plan on or know, before actually having the baby, that you’ll still be able to do.
Which leads us back to the subject of desperately wishing for at least some control. Sara no H. wrote “it’s about being able to exert control over that tiny little life, justified by the assumption that it cannot control itself”. It can’t control itself. Babies can’t even control their bowel movements, and toddlers don’t have the self-control to wait even a few minutes for their need to be met—whatever is bothering them right now is FILLING THEIR WORLD.
So if you are a responsive mother, jumping to meet a small child’s needs means your time isn’t under your control either. And if you’ve been an independent adult for several years, you’re used to controlling your own schedule (at least outside a job), and may get really upset at losing that self-determination.
I see a lot of parents, male and female both, imposing age-inappropriate demands on young children because they’re so frustrated at constantly having to defer their own desires or do the same chores over and over. I get the impression they didn’t sign up for such an all-encompassing enterprise.
Actually that is what I found so helpful about the concept of attachment parenting. Gone were all those messages about fighting my baby and trying to pretend that life wasn’t going to completely change forever. Instead it seemed to be all about just surrendering and letting it all wash over you. I found that incredibly liberating – being given clear permission not to have to fight my little one (and not to have to feel like a failure for not winning!).
Of course, sometimes I still think: ‘this isn’t fair!’ But I can laugh at myself for it.
You for sure can’t count on an easy baby[1], and that is pretty scary. If I have more children, I’ll be scared again in advance. But I do think easy babies are far more common than parenting advice and discussions make them out to be. I’d had almost nothing to do with actual babies before I had mine and had got the impression that a baby that sleeps was a rarity.
[1] There’s easy and easy though. Mine won’t be going to dinner parties any time soon, he needs to be having his proper I’m-home-now night sleep at that time.
A flippant reply (although I know what you’re saying is actually serious and worth thinking about): we’re afraid we aren’t hardened, male but sexy supermums*.
I think it’s fear of loss of career, money, prestige … because who can concentrate at work if the baby’s kept them up all night? Who can go do the expected socialising that goes with maintaining a career if the baby’s screaming?
And what, fear of fears, if we find we don’t want to go back to work after this? If we actually, unfeministly* want to stay at home, be domestic?
*I totally agree that it’s about motherhood not being fatherhood, so not fitting in well with the office, still maintaining the required connections with the boy’s club etc
*not a word, and I realise feminism is more complex than this
[Disclosure: I said everything bluemilk listed. I still do, and my kids are three and five – I didn’t change my tune with my second child.]
Why do we not want to be changed by our babies? What are we frightened may happen to us? Who will we become? Where do we assume it will end?
These are all really scary questions. Kathmandu’s comments resonated for me. But I wasn’t scared that my friends or partner wouldn’t like me any more; it was more that I couldn’t recognise my self, and I missed that self. I had kids in my kid-thirties after decades of creating a self with no expectation of motherhood. I felt I had to rebuild my self from the scraps of my previous life, and the unreasonableness of my kids (which I think may never end) made it difficult to do this.
I think things are unfair and we can’t expect children to be reasonable, but we can expect our partners and our society to mitigate the impacts of our children’s demands upon us as mothers, and so often that mitigation is glaringly and unforgivingly absent. So an alternative reading of the fear and the railing may be this: it allows us some small way of speaking back to the expectation that mothers must give all to their children while simultaneously being found wanting for doing so.
Maybe it’s an act of protest that goes beyond the personal dynamic of mother-child into the politics of motherhood and social change?
That should be ‘mid thirties’ not ‘kid thirties’, although the typo perhaps makes the statement more reflective of my life.
What a great discussion!!
I had no idea how motherhood would change me; let alone have such a profound impact not only on my life but my core being as a person. I can’t see how it could not change you?
I have become more relaxed, less organised and more patient – and I’m loving it! Being able to grow a person from a cell is mind blowing stuff; this is what life is all about 🙂
Sure i have single friends who want me to go out and party and who don’t understand the huge shift that I have experienced and who wouldn’t want to fit back into their party dress and have a few cocktails. At the end of the day though I am now first and foremost a mother and that is the most rewarding role I have ever fulfilled.
I feel society has lost focus on the important and challenging role mothers play in our world and because of that the whole concept of motherhood has been mixed up with all these books, idealogies and pressures to be everything to everyone.
if more value was placed on the role a mother plays in our world; then we wouldn’t feel so much pressure to have social lives, be glamorous, have a career, have a perfect home, be happy and oh yeah if you have time…be a great mum….
At the end of the day our role as mothers is to love our children and that is all anyone can ask of us.
Very interesting discussion! When I had children I was ready for a change, something different, and of course that came in spades! People who have children determined that things will continue as before are in la-la-land, and I wonder why they bothered in the first place. Having said that, I think wanting some balance is not unreasonable. I think that sleep and feeding are things that can be brought into some structure in most (not all) cases, without damage to the child and this can definitely enhance the child-parent relationship. When I get enough sleep I am a better mother to both my children so I don’t think it’s selfish to do things that will promote more sleep!
In addition, our modern lifestyle of mainly nuclear families makes it a much harder job to cater for a baby’s every demand. If childcare were shared amongst a group on a daily basis then the behaviour wouldn’t appear so unreasonable etc. Any anthropologists in the house who may care to comment?
Finally, as so many have suggested, it is what our expectations of adult life are that make childrearing so difficult. If we didn’t expect anything more than to do that from a young age then we wouldn’t rail against it so!
Yes a very thought provoking post. I am in two minds about it myself. I agree that there is too much pressure for us to be perfect parents. For us to tame our children and get our lives back to the way they were pre-babies. We all know that is never going to happen.
I have struggled as a mother with my two children. I have a sense that I am not as maternal as I should be. I love them both more than I could have ever imagined, but I do not want to carry them around all day, feed them constantly or sleep in the same room as them. (And yet my 8 month old has never ‘slept through’ and I still feed him during the night). As someone who had children in my 30s (as many people now do), I feel it is harder to accept the loss of identity the older you are.
For me it is a battle between wanting to be the best mother I can be, and also wanting to be successful and happy in myself as well.
I think that Kris has a great point about the politics of not expecting more from our babies but from society and our partners etc. I was quite happy to be utterly responsive to my daughter, but I also expected my partner to be utterly responsive to my needs in turn. If he hadn’t then it would have been far more difficult.
I also think that it is interesting that a mother’s call for society to be more supportive is often re-interpreted to mean that she is unwilling to be make sacrifices for her children. It’s a convenient way of silencing women isn’t it? The expectation is not only that we will give up so much for our kids, but also that we will not complain or expect any assistance from society in the process. It is that silencing that I really reject.
My first experience of this came when I was pregnant with my daughter. I wrote a post about the challenges of being pregnant – and being faced with such a loss of identity etc. and the vitriol that I got in the comments was shocking! People (mostly men) were outraged that I dared to complain about such things and that I wasn’t willing to silently be grateful for the amazing gift of motherhood, etc… (A couple actually suggested that my baby be forcibly aborted due to my lack of gratitude!)
It was very enlightening.
Cristy,
I think we are required to be grateful for the blessing of motherhood. And especially in pregnancy when the child isn’t visible and is really only making life difficult for you and not the bystanders.
I think we are also expected to shut up because the choice was ours to make: you made your bed, you lie in it. What gets me about the second approach is this: I chose to have kids, yes, and for me it was an active choice, but I didn’t chose to live in patriarchy, or a society where motherhood is simultaneously idealised and de-valued, or an economy where the choice to place mothering or fathering on equal par with paid work is punished or forbidden by employers, etc, etc, etc. The initial choice to have a child (which is often itself a constrained choice) doesn’t presuppose the acceptance of related outcomes, even if feminism, medicine or psychology might have predicted them.
As for living in la la land in expecting things to remain the same, as Tamara comments – well, yes, in hindsight I can see it was a little silly. But I’d never actually had any sustained contact with kids before my own, and I suspect that’s true of many of us. We simply are unaware of the logistics and realities of children – it’s a lack of knowledge and an understandable failure of imagination.
Do you think it might also be because the decision to have a child comes only after we start to feel like we have gained some hard-won control over our own lives? For those of us who made a ‘decision’ of course. I know I only got to a point where I felt I had some control over choices in my life, to find myself with a baby and in a situation where concepts of control and choice just didn’t really matter any more. So I think I was pretty angry that I didn’t understand that it was going to happen that way, perhaps anyway. Thanks for the discussion, all.
kris, I didn’t mean to come across so judgmental! I guess I was working on certain assumptions, for example, all the scary literature about parenting out there surely must be making people aware of the negatives? I was also coming from my current standpoint, which is at home with a toddler and baby (and a partner who works long hours) and not even being able to go for a regular walk that doesn’t involve buggy pushing! Still, back to work part-time soon, for some me time!
Kris I think those points about being in la-la land and not having previous with kids, and railing at the feeling that motherhood cuts us off from who we are and our previous support structures, are actually connected. For many people becoming a parent requires finding a whole new bunch of friends, because one’s childless/free friends are living in a different timezone from us. We can’t hang out because they’re at work when our kids are awake and ready to play, and when our friends are free to catch up we’re at home reading stories and implementing some sort of bedtime routine (or feeling guilty about not implementing it). If childless/childfree people were in a position to spend more of their time with other people’s children we might as a culture have more realistic ideas, but there’s a lot of pressure on childfree people to work fulltime un-kidfriendly hours.
kate, I think you hit the nail right on the head here.
I’m childless and I’m pretty sure I don’t want children ever. However, because I’ve made that conscious decision, but I see community-building (to put it as generally as possible, but it includes *someone* having kids!) as valuable, I’ve also made a conscious decision to support friends/siblings etc as they have children.
However, not many of the people with whom I’m close enough to provide real support have had kids yet. And I’ve been thinking as I read through the comments that I’m learning a LOT, whcih will put me in a better position to support my friends/siblings as they have kids.
Now, as kate says, the sort of things I’m learning from this thread, from discussions like this, are probably things that I would know (or have a feeling for) if there was less of a segregation between the childless/childfree and the parents. As it is, I only have the contact I have with parents because I make the effort to make myself available to certain parents I know.
That’s not to say “hey I’m great for doing that” or that everyone should – I’m just describing the choice I’ve made. However, the fact that I have to make a conscious choice in order to have that sort of contact with parents (when in parenting mode) – rather than naturally being exposed to parents in parenting mode – is interesting.
As kate says, society and social norms encourages us all to segregate those parts of our lives. I find that problematic.
Hey Tamara, I didn’t feel judged and you didn’t sound judgmental. I look back at my dear, naive childless self with a fondness and exasperation, because I truly didn’t know. I heard the stories but … I thought it wouldn’t happen to me, that I would be the exception, that I would have a routine and my child would sleep because I would be firm and unyielding and loving and engaged. It’s a bit like all those young women in Gender 101 classes (I was one of them, too), who totally get there are gendered structures in the world, and these are oppressive to other women, but they themselves won’t be affected because they will work harder, play the game smarter, be tougher than the others. I couldn’t know motherhood until I’d lived it – I believe there’s no such thing as an informed choice, a truly informed choice, when it comes to being a mother because it is experienced individually even though we are steeped in cultural stories, advice, and moral tales and many of us share common ground and social positions.
And picking up on Pen’s point, I think it makes it tougher when we enter into this after a hard won sense of control and getting it sorted – only to feel that we ourselves and our lives may never be recognisable again (though I am starting to get glimmers, now).
I think Kate, the issue of knowing and support is in part of that of different timetables of friends, though it makes keeping a sense of the old life so hard. I once would have been far more embedded in family and local structures, and far more in step with the life stages of my peers.
Oh, Bluemilk: this post is SPOT on.
I really like Pen’s point here about feeling like we’re losing control after having worked so hard to gain some in our lives. Once I got all my ducks in a row and finally felt like I knew what I needed to feel like a functional, contributing member of society, I deliberately chose to introduce babies into my life and lost all hope of maintaining that “positive” control over myself. It can make a person feel unwound. Without choices. Lost.
But ultimately, I think the main problem is the one Mary brings up–that for our 3rd wave (4th wave?) feminist generation, many of us *have* won the social and personal expectation that we can operate “as men” in terms of a career trajectory and personal satisfaction in the world–we are educated for it and capable of it. But once we become mothers, we are completely off the track. But men who become Dads are somehow not.
And I struggle with the question: Does this request from my children/the universe that I relenquish control make me more or less powerful? Am I wiser for it, or am I a patsy?
Wow. I’ve been following this post all night but haven’t had a chance to respond until now – I’m picking up a theme about control, and the lackthereof, and I wanted to just name that. @kathmandu, when I said “justified by the assumption that it cannot control itself,” I think I meant something a little different than how it was interpreted. I don’t mean to say that one can expect infants to have the same fine motor control as, say, an adult, or that they can “control” their behaviour in the same way an adult can. I was thinking more along the lines of the The Adult Privilege Checklist, in that the lack of “control” a child possesses somehow gets translated into a lack of personhood, which we see reflected in our culture in various ways but (relevant to this thread) especially in the form of “training manuals” for raising children, which in my experience have been largely about conforming a child to an adult schedule. Society loves children, but only when children operate on society’s terms. (Sound familiar?)
And one thing that I want to add that I see getting touched on, but not particularly articulated, is how closely a sense of control over one’s life is linked to the amount of power one has in society. Control is a privilege awarded to only a few, while the rest of us struggle with the illusion of control and a lack of support in filling in the gaps where we find it most lacking. I’m lucky enough to be raising my children with a husband invested in equal parenting and nearby to my family, with enough income to be able to afford the necessities – and for the most part, I accepted long ago that there are many things beyond my control, so becoming a mother was less fraught for me than the experiences many of you have shared. On the other hand, I know that my own mother struggled with finding her place when my brother and I were born – she had the additional burdens of having moved across the country, away from her support network, and was balancing children with marriage with work and commuting and my father’s long hours helped her none – I can’t imagine how adrift and alone she may have felt, and my heart aches for her when I think about those times.
@westwardbound: I understand the why behind the question, but I can’t help but feel that it’s the wrong one. It plays into the false dichotomy that the rest of society would like us to believe is the only paradigm and, while it’s important to acknowledge the social structures that do have power over our lives, I also think that it’s important to imagine and work towards something less constrictive than the dualistic concepts with which we’re presented.
Have heart, the things you are struggling with are the same things I struggled with thirty years ago. I have 4 grown children, two boys, two girls, in the space of six years.
I rejoined the work-force when my baby entered kindergarten. Being a mother, running a household is the best management training anyone could ask for: juggling resources, innovative approaches to problem solving, handling tantrums, directing a discussion, and on and on.
Just so you know, the soap-box from which I speak is as a mother, grandmother, daughter, and Director of Quality Assurance & Regulatory Affairs at a big Pharma Company.
Advice: If you can financially swing it and you’re emotionally and mentally inclined, give your vocation as mother your all, you won’t be sorry (well, maybe some days you will wonder.) The work force and your career will still be there.
As I tell people who report to me: If you disappear tomorrow, no matter how good you are, you will be replaced here, not so easy to do on the home-front.
Best of luck with the juggling
Adela
PS – I’m still conflicted where grandchildren are concerned; I’m jealous of the retired grannies that can spend more time with them. When they are teenagers, I’ll be there. Yikes!
@Sarah No. H: I totally agree that the black/white either/or construction is ridiculous. Of course there’s something more complicated and fluid at hand. Your idea of control=societal power is what I think I was after in my thoughts there…
Wow, so much going on in my head now. @Kris, I was just like you before I had kids – I also thought it wouldn’t happen to me, that I would be the exception, because I was “going to do it right”. HA! What naivity and clueless arrogance I had!
I think part of the problem too is that people tend to blame a child’s temperment on the parents. If a child is more high-needs, it is because the parents are doing something “wrong” and not because this individual child just happens to have a more timid or spirited temperment naturally. So parents are likely to lean on books that tell them how to do it “right” and therefore force their child into an easy temperment. I think this is part of the problem with the children as non-people point of view taken so frequenty in our culture.
I think it’s partly because Motherhood and being a mother is not displayed as an optimal choice in our society, not an image that generally is potrayed as a wonderful thing to be (nappy and baby product advertisements aside). So by saying that my child won’t do this, and I won’t let this take over, we are saying that I will not be *that* mother, I will still be *me*.
I don’t know if that all makes sense but I feel like that somehow we feel/society feels/ that there is an impression out there that our pre kid selves are somehow more/better/the choice most would make as opposed to our mothering selves. So motherhood is approached as a fight to hold on to our “better” identies and not as a hard but wonderful transition into Motherhood.
Strumpet
For me, and I am speaking only for myself, I didn’t feel that I lost a ‘better identity’ for a ‘worse one’, but I did lose many valued and hard won elements of my self: professional identity, bodily strength and integrity, financially independent woman, yoga practitioner, reader of books, and on it goes.
‘Motherhood’ isn’t a coherent identity, and most of the time I don’t define myself as mother. Rather, it’s a role and a set of practices, many of which have contributed to my loss of components of the past self, and many of which are now being incorporated, with greater and lesser degrees of grace and joy, into a new self.
I think identities are fluid and never reflect a ‘true’ self, but I also feel my change has been fundamental, seemingly ontological, and that’s been a real challenge for me. Wanting – unreasonably – some degree of control – reflects a well founded fear of losing my bearings, even though in the end, my changes would occur regardless of sleep patterns or easy eating or general compliance of the part of my child.
You know, I’ve written so many words in these comments but I’ve not articulated what I am trying to. Motherhood, identity, fear, control: they’re really tricky.
Kris
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I was thinking further on this and I guess what I was trying to say is that I think society teaches us to be so independent and proud of our independence and that focussing on ourselves is a good thing, that maybe when motherhood happens that the focus on another (and therefore not ourselves) is what is fought against. Of course, I’m not saying that’s everyone’s expereince but I’m suggesting that it is maybe why “the sotftness” of motherhood is fought against.
Which is maybe a more meta way of saying what you are saying as an individual….
Hmmm many thoughts…not all of them easy to digest!
What a great post and marvellous comments. So much to think about from everyone.
A couple of the points mentioned really resonate with my experience. The first is the sadness at being cut off from my old social network. These are people who had been integral to my life so far and then suddenly, because I was at home with a child and my hours had changed I was no longer able to spend much time with them at all. I felt adrift.
Making new friends who are parents has been great, but it’s also really drawn a line in the sand between the old life and the new, and I miss the old one. It feels like I am living in a different country.
The second is the discussion around a child’s personhood. I’ve found it so hard to explain to others that my child is his own person; that I can’t force him to be that kid who sits quietly in cafes or lets me talk on the phone or goes to bed on his own. He’s just not like that. And it’s not because I’m doing it wrong.
Before I became a mother I had very few fears about it; perhaps I should have had more! I think that loss of community (and I mean the same community I’ve grown into adulthood with, not the new one I’ve discovered) is the worst loss. And yes, it is very much about the way our society is structured around full-time work OR children.
Now I need to go and read all the comments again.
Flo
A lot of interesting comments here. I wonder if some of our reluctance to let ourselves be changed is, in addition to our deep attachment to individualism (“always be true to yourself!” “never let other people change you!” “don’t let anything get in the way of your journey, of finding yourself, expressing yourself!” – we’re a pretty selfish bunch), but also as a reaction to the expectations of women to give their all to mothering in earlier generations. A pendulum swinging sort of response. Although I’d also add we’re not the first to put adult expectations on our children. Children take on a lot more adult-like responsibilities in many other cultures. And even in our own culture, it wasn’t so long ago that children were seen, not heard, and so forth.
A somewhat related thought that a couple comments here have got me thinking. This idea that having children is a choice (and the related result that Jo Tamar talks about – having to go out of her way to spend time around children). This whole business of children being a choice is a relatively new (and Western) idea in human history. Up to now, people have generally accepted that reproduction is a normal human activity. And while I wouldn’t want to live in a society where societal norms effectively force everyone to have children, I find our attitude to “breeders” (gawd, I hate that term) to be really odd and downright disturbing. Sure, I chose to have children, but it’s not the same kind of choice as choosing a steak for dinner or the house I live in.
I realize this opens a whole other can of worms about biology and reproduction and feminism, which I’m not trying to do. I just think it’s interesting how we’ve shifted our thinking about reproduction to the point where parenting is a lifestyle choice. Ironically, as I’m sure many childless folk will attest, we’ve also managed to retain vestiges of “you exist to reproduce” attitudes too. So if you don’t have kids, people will make nosy inquiries into why you don’t, but then once you do have them, you’re a breeder who made their own bed and can damn well go lie in it alone.
Wonderful post, and it and the comments are such a refreshing change from the ugly comments from the people on mainstream media “blogs”, which overwhelmingly seem to skew to the “children are a lifestyle choice, and don’t expect ME to do anything to accommodate YOUR dreadful brats, who should be seen and not heard Actually, preferably not seen, either” opinion. (And they preen themselves on their non parturition being a sign of environmental sainthood, while I personally wonder how many SUVs and jet skis they own!)
Part of the problem as it seems to me is that taking a significant chunk of time off to raise a child is not seen as an honourable alternative job, but rather some kind of vaccuum of lost time. I’m no fan of the anti-work (for women), anti-childcare crowd, but I do think time spent off paid work looking after young children should be viewed as an honourable activity, as it would be if (for instance) a male worker took time off to volunteer in Somalia or sail solo around the world or something similar. But I’ve strayed off topic, I think.
Hey, I liked this piece and I mentioned it in my post here
http://www.sharnanigans.com/2010/03/cramping-is-my-style/
Cheers!
When I was pregnant with my son, a friend gave me her dog-eared copy of Babywise, which is, apparently, the ultimate parenting gestapo training guide. My stomach acid curdled as I skimmed it. I’m delighted to say I never gave in to that theory of parenting. My style has been firmly cramped for years now, and I’ve got the bags under my eyes to prove it, but I’ve never reached a point of frustration with things that made me want to change my babies. Not for one moment do I think any of this makes me more evolved than other mothers. No, in fact, I tend to think of my slippery ease as a result of sheer, unadulterated laziness. Do you know how much planning it takes to get a baby to adhere to a parent’s schedule? Not happening.
Great post.
This might be my favourite thread ever here. I have really enjoyed reading and thinking about all your comments and I have come back to them again and again.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by fertilefeminism: Fantastic post by @bluemilk ‘The terrifying softness of motherhood.’ Why are we scared to let motherhood change us? http://bit.ly/9SKB7c…
[…] be disappointed if she seems too judgemental, or perhaps worse, too non-political about it all. But the mother shock that comes with one’s entry into motherhood – who wants to put that kind of vulnerability out there for public consumption? (Well, I do, […]
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Hey thanks for this amazing discussion, blue milk and all, I can relate to pretty much all of it.
The thing that strikes me about it just now is that we tend to think of motherhood/parenting as something that only happens between birth mother and child. Whilst I expect that bond to be real and unique and predominant in many cases, I also expect that others in my community will be a part of raising ‘my’ child. Not least my partner (who in my case will be the baby’s birth father!). I don’t think lifestyle changes like sleeplessness or life-altering patterns or a general loss of control will or should only affect me. We will go through it together. We will all be changed. And this is why I’m not quite so frightened as my culture would have me be about bringing little ones into the world.
Wow–love this post. I think part of the desire to maintain our predictable, pre-baby life has to do with our fear of getting older and ultimately, dying (very existential). I think it also has to do with the idealization of youth, as well as the greater praise and attention younger women are granted. Somehow, even though we are entirely relevant to our offspring, it feels like we become less relevant to the world once we have little ones in tow. And our general desire for control is at work, as well.
I’m loving your work, Bluemilk, having just found you.
This post resonated beautifully – but there is an aspect of our mothering identities that I haven’t seen represented in the comments. I remember very clearly when as a child I first witnessed my mum in her professional role: as a teacher, on stage at an awards ceremony, orating with grace and authority. She was commanding – all 5 foot nothing – and I grew an abiding admiration for her as a woman. Not just as a mother.
Now as a mother myself, I feel capable of slipping into the role completely, and to the point where my own professional and social identities dissolve. Part of the ‘terrifying softness of motherhood’ for me is that my son won’t grow to admire and respect me in my worldly guises, but will only see me as ‘mummy’.
A very thought-provoking post and I have to admit that my first reaction was one of defensiveness…. yes, motherhood is very transforming and it can be wonderful but can also be very overwhelming and scary!…
I am someone who drowned a little in all the differing information/advice/parenting styles. I found it hard to work out the best path for me and my gorgeous son, and fell into a bit of a hole for a while, where I struggled to find the ‘right’ way of doing things. Actually, I found attachment parenting to be really intimidating and not right for me, and found some of it’s advocates really judgemental. I got so angry once when I read on a friend’s facebook update that she had left her baby to cry once cos she was so tired/frustrated etc, and one of her ‘friends’ went on a rant about how leaving a baby to cry will damage their trust forever…. simply not true and not helpful! My natropath – the most spiritual, self aware, compassionate, trusting, lovely woman I know, cheerfully admits that she was left to cry many times and that she doesn’t think it did her any harm. What’s more important is that the mother look after her own mental health so she is able to cultivate the endless reservess of patience and love one needs as a mum 🙂
It’s not always that people are trying to cling to their old lives out of selfishness or desire to be a yummy mummy…. when you’ve spent your whole life building a place where you feel secure and valued, you are good at what you do and happy with the life you’ve built around you… and then you’re at home on your own with a bubba and all your old childless friends are working and partying and expect you to cart your baby around to various parties/outings because ‘so and so takes her baby everywhere with her and she was at a party with her baby 5 days after giving birth!’ and you didn’t actually leave the house for 2 weeks after giving birth because you were so overwhelmed by the glorious being you held and didn’t want to go anywhere…. and then people ask ‘what have you been up to?’ and you figure they probably don’t really want a blow by blow account of sleep deprivation and nappy changing…
and you feel intimidated by the totality of all parenting extremes…. then yes, I can understand why people search for the security of their old lives. Hey, I was good at what I did! And more importantly I KNEW HOW TO DO IT! Or if there was something I didn’t know how to do, I knew where to find the definitive answer. Motherhood is so much more nebulous than that. There is no right way, and that definitely drove me insane at the beginning… I wanted a manual of the ‘right’ way to do things!!
If we could just give mothers the space and love to do things the way that works best for them! It’s hard not to be judgemental… for me seeing very young babies in sunlight without a hat is a trigger for me to disapprove and tut tut…. and I have to tell myself to shut up because I know NOTHING other than my own experiences. I’m starting to trust myself as a mother a bit more now… as my son reaches his first birthday….and I breathe a sigh of relief as every day we can understand and communicate better. I still struggle with what I perceive to be other people’s judgements of me and my mothering. I recently started my son in childcare for 2 x 4 hours a week and on the first day spent the whole time sobbing and feeling like the worst mum in the world because I wanted some time for myself (to study as it happens, but would it have made any difference if I said because I wanted to paint my nails and watch DVDs? A friend pointed out to me that as a mother, we even feel we have to justify every second we’re not actively parenting…. ever heard a childless friend justify a trip to the movies or a bath?!!!!) Of course he cries when I leave him… but he’s fine and each time he gets more used to the place and people and I get more comfortable with the fact that he might even gain something from the experience that he couldn’t get from me! 🙂
Becoming a mother has made me look in wonder at all the women around me and see reserves of strength and a capacity for 24/7 work and unconditional love that I never knew were possible before I became a mother. That’s what’s frustrating… that you just can’t know what it’s like til you’ve been there. You can try to prepare yourself but you can’t…
My mantra is… go easy on each other! Accept that your way is not the only way! Give advice when offered but try not to judge. Be honest with each other about the ups and downs. Big hugs all round! 🙂
xxxx
Thanks for those lovely and thought-provoking comments, Ginny and nicky.
[…] for sexual passion is far from unanswered. Secondly, Jong thinks mothers are frightened of sex, but it is motherhood we truly fear. The motherhood movement as a backlash against sex? Oh gawd. For the record, I’m perfectly […]
Thankyou Bluemilk ….for waking me up! Lost in a haze of sleepless confusion needing context and grit to understand this new planet Motherhood….it’s all here……sigh
[…] The terrifying softness of motherhood […]
God I cannot express how much I’m practically weeping for joy on funding your site. I have struggled through 3 long years of motherhood feeling deeply isolated and wrong as I cannot fulfill what a ‘perfect’ mum should be and fuck I’ve tried! This struggle resulted in pnd when my daughter was 13 months but was only diagnosed 6 months ago- she’s now 3. My illicit feelings and thoughts are being echoed in your blog- you’ve no idea how happy finding bluemilk has made me.
To respond to above yes the unreasonableness of babies is shit you don’t need to pretend that you can cope or it’s no big deal. Get support- if you want a break through desperation or through your own non baby defined self just wants to fuck off for a bit take it- husbands, partners, family, daycare, babysitters I would say mum friends but in my case I only have a few who are feminist, but then again the crunchy, sahms who are gaga with fulfillment don’t need to know, you can tell them you need some time to work on playgroup ideas- vomit!
[…] The terrifying softness of motherhood […]
Bluemilk asks: “What are we frightened may happen to us? Who will we become? Where do we assume it will end?”
A pre-sexual child probably be able to answer these questions more truthfully than us adult woman. There’s a societal revulsion of mumsy – a hatred and fear of housewives, who are always perceived in non-sexy terms (hence, non-alluring to male or internalised male connoseuir terms, ie, discountable and invalid). In our society we very often only listen to women who are sexy. If you aren’t attractive your views aren’t worth listening to. And mums aren’t very sexy, because they’ve declared their allegiance to a man (usually an absent man when these thoughts are being processed). They’re not on the market, they’re not available. Jong may be right.
There is hatred of one’s own mother. Who of us doesn’t have mixed views towards the woman who brought us up? A loving mother criticises, controls, and manipulates her daughter – and naturally, the daughter develops ambiguous feelings towards her.
Many of us react, as pre-sexual girls, by rebelling. To pick up Mary’s point that as adults we try to fit a father-ing model rather than a mother-ing model. I think in fact, as pre-sexual girls we think “I won’t become that! I’m not going to be a Mummy! I’ll be a daddy instead”. And as young women, again, we enjoy the privileges of being perceived in sexual ways but still don’t understand exactly what it means to become a mother – the end point of sexual intercourse is pregnancy and motherhood, but that is a woman’s experience not a man’s experience. Young women are enabled in our society to enjoy the flirtation and the sex, just as men are, but without the female experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and then finding you’re relegated to mummy-track.
Young girls are brought up, disney-princess style, to follow their hearts, to fulfill their dreams, to become true to themselves. None of these are always applicable to the softness of being a mummy, where one’s one self-actualisation needs fall very low on the priority list. It can be hard to realise it isn’t about you anymore, that you’re not the central character in the predominant culture’s narrative.
And I think this is one of the key fears that we have of being soft as we become mummies – the circle of life is moving on. And we will grow old and die. Danaudellweiner mentioned this and I think while it is existential, it is also true. There is a “little death” in childbirth. And that is terrifying, as it foretells the death that we all face, as the world moves on under the stewardship of our children.
Many women are terrified of motherhood. And I think that the world is poorer for the absence of mothers. Being able to surrender to motherhood has made me so much stronger and better – more whole, more myself. I am so glad I was able to spend time as a fully-engaged mother.
[…] as 2014 Funder, but that’s not entirely true. I was worried about going soft. So when I found this post, it really resonated with […]