This last week, my chest felt like it was in a vise, but not from anything physical. I was fighting off anxiety over the kids’ crazy baking schedule. Brownies for one girl's class on her birthday, stollen for another's “Share a Bread” day, and gingerbread cookies for a Grade 1 presentation on family traditions. I tried to convince her that our new family tradition was hiding in bed, trying to ignore all the coloured sheets of paper in her backpack announcing more school “FUN!!!” but she didn’t buy it.
I know what you’re saying. ”So, Mrs. Busypants, just say no.” But no one wants to be the mom whose kid didn’t bring the treats on her birthday or whose presentation didn’t include the snacks that the student teacher suggested that you could provide (in a letter to the whole class, by the way). Motherhood has become a competitive sport, with kids as our proxy players.
But why? How did things get like this? This debate was brought to my mind by the whole “Never worked a day in her life” kerfuffle, which then reminded me of the times when I was out with my stay-at-home mom peers and heard that moms with nannies “don’t love their kids as much as us.” And the time my friend worried aloud if her son’s autism was due to the TV she let him watch. Or the sadness I felt reading that Veronique, at Vie de Cirque, went to Grad school, in part, over feeling ”that (she) was a rather lousy mother.” (Which I totally don’t get, because her blog always makes me feel like a couch potato slacker.)
This self-loathing, coupled with drive-by character assassination and the endless busy-busy-busy, is due, I’m sure, to the fact that a target is worse than just moving. It flies around the room like a laser pointer piloted by a toddler, landing on everything for exactly three milliseconds. There is no consensus on what makes a good mother. When is your job done? What do you owe those little angels of yours? A college education? A Tiger Mom study schedule? Non-stop “advocating,” until they are placed in the gifted class? A TV? Trans-fat-free diet? Perfect spank-free discipline, delivered in a monotone voice? Three meals a day and roof over their heads? Money? Frugality and simplicity? Really, I ask what?
And God forbid if you get it wrong. Your adult children have the licence to go on about how their mistakes in life are somehow due to you. (Thanks, Dr. Freud!) And that’s what we’re fighting against—someone, someday looking at our messed-up offspring and thinking, “What kind of bad mother lets that happen?” After all the sleepless nights, the money spent, the stretch marks from here to your ankles, this is what just might come your way—a judgement of failure. You should have done more. What that 'more' might be, that’s not so forthcoming, but judgement—as a society—we’ve got loads of.
What makes a good Mom? You try your best with what you have. Period. What more can anyone really do? But more importantly, we are about to pass this toxic hate cult on to the next generation. I’m not sure how happy I’ll feel watching my daughters fall as casualties in The Mommy Wars. While I’m not sure where this all began, I feel deep down, in my bones, that this is where it all should end. I believe we need to have a conversation on the Philosophy of Motherhood. As a society, children are now (mostly) fed, clothed, and sheltered. We need to look at the opportunities this affluence has given us, and decide what we are going to do with it.
Because I can’t believe that motherhood is intended to be a guilt-laden taxi-service marathon, until we figure out otherwise, that’s just what it’s going to continue to be.
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