Letters to the Editor
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Get Over Yourself, Pt. 3
I rarely write letters in response to questions, but this one made me roll my eyes and think, "Get over yourself." I had a lot of ideas about what motherhood would be like before I gave birth. These ideas included doing things like knitting or gardening while my baby slept peacefully near by.
Well, things didn't turn out that way. Nearly everything I thought about motherhood and having an infant was turned on it's head. Things I swore I'd never do, I did, and things I thought I must do above all else, I found unnecessary.
LW, you will find your own path and your own experience. If you don't want to identify yourself as "a mom," then don't. If someone asks you what you "do" (a boring question, anyway), tell them whatever you like. People generally don't care and don't listen as much as you think they do.
And, really? You'll be ok. I say that because it seems like you're freaking out about the unknown. It's like you're trying to gain whatever control you can get about a big, scary, new experience. If you can say, "I'm not going to call myself a mom, goddamit!" it might make you feel a little less anxious. You never know, one day you may find yourself giggling helplessly over the rather unexpected joy of being "a mom."
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Hell Yeah I'm a Mom
When I was pregnant with my first child, I too had a more diffident view of motherhood. I think I envisioned that my child would be this prop withwhom I'd share my world. Birds would be chirping as I set her on a blanket and dug in the garden and showed her worms and whatnot and some days it works out that way. But, most days it doesn't. I don't think I truly anticipated how wholly a person she would be.
I have 2 young ones at this point and a majority of my world is their world and sometimes that's amazing and other times it can be draining. I do miss painting, reading without falling asleep after a couple of pages and playing music, but those are all things that I can do again later. I'll never get to see the world through such new eyes again and it makes the "loss of identity" completely worth it.
The best part of this mommy brainwashing as some view it is that if you just embrace the life your living, you really don't care what your title is.
I bet you have a birth plan too...GOOD LUCK.
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Hey, moms,
do you think that if you tell the LW to "get over herself" enough times, and if you write enough glowing paeans to your own little whelps, that you'll make the LW decide to be more like you? Why so defensive? Afraid there's another path?
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Household drudge
That's what I tell people.
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You'll lighten up
Before I had a child, I was very worried about "momism" because I had bought into society's general lack of respect for the role. I didn't want to be one of "those" people, and was sure that, if I did stoop to becoming a mother, that surely some other hobby/job title/etc. would serve to identify my 'real' value in the social order.
Then I had a kid and lightened up. Yes, I still make a bit of time to see friends. Still have hobbies. Still work. But being a mother just matters more than the other things. More fun. More meaningful. More impactful. More love. More compassion. It's OK to embrace that and be proud of it. That doesn't mean that you have to be a bore or not continue with your interests (you'll need to do that just to retain your sanity, trust me), but it certainly doesn't mean that you have to embrace the overall perception that motherhood is a low-status occupation. Claim motherhood as part of your pride and your identity. It's a feminist act.
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To anon from a mom
Who is saying that anyone SHOULD be a Mom here? No need to be snarky about someone's glowing reviews of motherhood (even though that would mean they aren't telling us everything). Yes, it is your choice and your decision and I could care less what you do.
I am reading a lot more of "Damn this is hard" than "Everyone should have children" or any other preference. Everyone likes options and there are many who don't choose to procreate. Cary, as just one example.
It's all about choice, and thankfully we are in a country that lets us have that! I agree with an earlier post that suggests people actually try reading. If you haven't met any moms who have a life and don't talk about their kids all the time, then you don't know many moms.
Cary was right, don't pretend to know or have all the answers. If you like your life, cool. Don't rag on others by assuming an entire group follows one philosophy. Don't assume that anyone is advocating you take on their lifestyle unless they actually tell you exactly that.
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My mother
I have the identical reaction to goeswithness below:
"At first I thought the letter was going to be about being annoyed by the word "mom." I would definitely identify with that. I call my mother Mom, but for some reason I can't figure out it REALLY annoys me to hear "mom" replace "mother" in common speech. It seems like spin. It seems like an attempt to be young and hip. Or maybe it's just that it's overly informal, too personal a term to me."
I can't describe how much I too hate the term "mom" replacing mother. Yes, I also call my mother "mom," but I don't say "my mom."
Speaking of my mother, I never heard her or any of her friends describe themselves as "moms" when I was growing up in the 1960s and '70s. My friends' mothers were teachers, career counselors, social workers, nurses, etc., and we saw them as such.
I think anyone who's my age (late 40s) or older, remembers a world where adults mostly spoke to adults about adult things. They really did not obsess about their children. In some respects, they largely ignored them. You sent the kids to school; checked in to see if homework was being done; let them watch hours of TV; and you sent them outside to play.
Adults had adult parties, and you took the coats quietly upstairs and stayed there. You knew not to come downstairs, because you were just a kid. No one could care less what you had to say. At holidays, the children sat at the "children's table" and didn't bother the grown-ups.
There was no obsession over children, and the worlds of adults and children really didn't mix much.
I can't even picture my mother talking to anyone about being a "mom." My sense was that the adults back then saw parenthood as a given, not something by which they identified themselves.
Even today, I don't see my mother as a "mom." My sense is that women of her generation mostly had a lot of regrets about things they didn't or couldn't do. If anything, they obsessed about the careers and lives they wished they'd had. I can almost guarantee you that when a bunch of women got together, they were talking about that - not about being "moms."