I, admittedly, have somewhat of a unique experience with the ideas behind the role of a mother. My world began courtesy of a woman who didn't particularly want to be a mother, and thus opted out of the motherhood experience... to my knowledge, at least temporarily. As a result, I was--for a time--motherless. I existed in a world where I clearly had a caregiver or caregivers, yet none of these were officially labeled as 'mother'. Three months into my short life, the woman I now know as my mother appeared. I was adopted.
My mother worked out of the home in my early childhood, while my father was the primary 'bread winner', as it were. Apparently, I traveled along to housecleaning appointments. Maybe this is the source of my love for cleaning--an early-instilled love! That being said, my mother returned to work part-time once I entered the education system. And, eventually, she increased her work hours as I increased my level of independence. I was, and am, an only child. Independence was my childhood identity.
Eventually, my mother became the only winner of bread in our family. My father, plagued by a neurological disease, was unable to work. Thankfully, my mother was always a proponent of the female career. Clearly, her ideology paid off in a very practical way. All that to say that, despite my parents' busy schedule of work throughout my childhood, I was rarely in the care of others--I was with a parent, or on my own. And this experience is what leads me to be writing, and connecting my ideas to those of Erica Jong, who penned an article for The Wall Street Journal entitled "Mother Madness".
So how do we appropriate time in child rearing? And why can the role of mother become such a burden? With a little help from Ms. Jong, I'm going to try to sort this one out.
I face somewhat of a conundrum when it comes to my own future of motherhood: do I give birth to my own child as my own mother could not? Or do I adopt and, in a sense, 'pay it forward' for my own adoption into a loving family? Maybe I do both. I won't, however, lump myself along with Angelina Jolie and Madonna, who--as Jong mentions--"collect" children to "advertise their open-mindedness". Granted, I would like to think that I am open-minded, but I don't require an adopted child to show said open-mindedness.
The recent 'trend' in parenting/motherhood is something known as "attachment parenting", which can essentially be boiled down to a simple equation:
Mother + Baby = Life.In no means do I wish to denigrate the role of mother or father; however, it isn't practical to have said baby dominate your life. As Jong mentions, how a parent or parents are to financially provide for their child while doting on them 24/7 doesn't get mentioned often. I was lucky enough to have parents who really understood what it meant for a marriage to be a partnership: that they worked together to raise me. Together. My father would work an early shift and be around to meet me when I got home from school; my mother would work evenings so she could get me on the bus and have my meals prepared. In our society, however (or at least with the attachment ideology), independence is of the utmost value--parents are supposed to be able to do the parenting 'thing' alone. The notion of a village raising a child is long-forgotten.
Additionally, parents are burdened with the stress of raising the perfect child... or at least a child that is far above the dreaded average. I witness this regularly when I see young, highly-involved (read: over-committed) students struggling through junior and senior high school. Most likely a product of their hyper-competitive mothers and fathers, unfortunate as that may be.
Jong purports that mothers in specific are "victimized" by expectations created out of the attachment parenting ideology. I would argue that fathers are victimized as well, though this is not a time in which I feel particularly inclined to defend my feminist revisioning. Society does, however, tell us that we can 'have it all'... you can be a mother and a successful career woman! This is all well and good (as I hope to find fulfillment in both work and parenting, just in different ways)... but I DO agree with Ms Jong:
Mothers must be free to choose.
In parenthood, one of the most harmful lessons that is too often transmitted is that of "I'm not good enough". For mothers and fathers to allow themselves to feel inadequate as parents will only increase their child's likelihood of feeling the same way. Inadequacy, however, is best staved off by recognizing the value of interdependence--that long-lost idea of "I don't have to do this on my own". Parents must recognize that part of being a parent is realizing that your child will and must be influenced by the rest of the world.
Inevitably, children must be informed (or they will discover on their own) that the world is, as Jong mentions, not a place they can control. My parents consistently reassured me that, though some other kids might be mean or say bad things, our home was always a safe place. Home should be a place of refuge for children, as long as those children realize that there is more out there than what is at home.
In short (or in long if you're judging based on the length of this blog),
Do the best you can. There are no rules.
--- chRistie
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