I tell a lot of people a wide variety of things about why we don't have kids, and all of them are true: we're too poor, we move around too much, we're both too busy with school/work, we feel too young to be parents. But none of these are the real reason why I'm afraid of having children, and none of these account for why Adam is so much more gung-ho about babies right now. So why am I scared of having kids? It's not about losing sleep or painful breastfeeding or gaining weight or giving up wine.
It's because I'm scared of other mothers.
Well, it's not really about mothers, per se. It's more about "mommy culture," about the vicious and frightening ways that society picks mothers apart and tries to break them completely.
I follow some "mommy blogs," and pretty much all they've taught me is that, no matter what choices I make, they will always be the wrong ones. I will always be a terrible mother.
If I have an unmedicated birth, I'll be a masochistic show-off. If I have an epidural, I'll be deemed too lazy and selfish to have a "true birth experience."
If I breastfeed, I'm a showy boob-Nazi whose sole purpose in life is to make other people uncomfortable with her breasts. If I formula-feed, I'm a quitter who poisons her child with artifical filth.
If I send my kid to public school, I'm abandoning them to a wilderness of drugs and violence and state tests. If I send my kid to private school, I'm a snob who can't bear to force her ickle precious baby to interact with different people.
If and when we have a child, I am not going to be talking to anyone about it. No one. We'll figure it out ourselves, because that sounds a lot better than being shamed, castigated, railroaded, berated, ignored, pitied, and accused by complete strangers. Most of the internet drama I have seen unfold before my eyes has been related to childrearing and the fact that some people do things differently than other people, and I just don't want any part of that intellectual bloodbath.
I am not interested in going to a playgroup and sitting through a lecture all about why you should have only purchased organic onesies and why real mothers make all their own baby food from yams and flaxseed. I am not interested in people making sneaky comments about how it must be "so hard for me to be working and missing out on all these milestones." I am not interested in "oh, that's a different name" or "aren't you going to teach him sign language?" or "why would you let your daughter wear that?" or "I would never send my child to that school, but I guess we all have different priorities" or "Daycare? Don't you have family around?"
I read Susan Douglas' The Mommy Myth awhile back and loved it, because I thought it really explained a lot about the forces behind the "Mommy Wars" and what their motivations might be. But it never answered one crucial question: Why do we fall for it? Why do we care so much about other people's decisions?
I guess, in a way, we care because we fear other people's decisions might reflect poorly on our own, and make us feel like bad mothers. If that woman over there is homeschooling her kids because she thinks they'll get a better education, then does that mean she thinks my kids are getting a poor education in public school? If that woman over there is breastfeeding because "breast is best" and breastmilk is more nutritious, does that make me look like a bad mother for formula-feeding? Or more importantly, does it actually make me a bad mother?
I don't really want to be that invested in what other people do, but it looks to me like it's unavoidable, at least from what I'm reading and seeing.
And really, I don't want to be absolutely obsessed with motherhood. I don't want that to be the only thing I can talk about, think about, work on, experience fully. I want motherhood to be a part of me without being the only part of me. I want to be a mother, but also a wife and an academic and a runner and a Christian and a Democrat and a chocolate lover and a reader. I don't want to be consumed by this one role.
How do I do that? Is it possible to become someone's mother without becoming an unwitting combatant in the Mommy Wars?
It's true: Everyone is judgmental of parents, especially mothers. Much as I might like to think myself above that, I did catch myself reading this post thinking "Well, it just *makes sense* to teach your baby 'baby signs,' they cry less!" and "Fuck the haters, man, I had a *great* time in private school!" Who cares about my opinion? I've never had kids.
ReplyDeleteI think a large part of it comes, though, from people having to interact with other people's kids. "If only," you think to yourself, "those damn parents had taught their kid sign language/to clean up after himself/whatever, I wouldn't have to deal with his screaming/broken mug/whatever right now." But that's not really true (with some exceptions). A lot of this stuff really doesn't matter.
There is a couple at work who are the exception, I think. They very clearly have A Plan for how they are going to raise their kid, which would be fine (you can fuck up your kid however you want -- This Is America!) except that they're always bringing the kid to the pub at work. The mom breastfeeds *everywhere,* including in the pub, which is already quite polarizing, but she also does things like change diapers in the pub (ewww, people eat there!), take the kid outside to pee on the lawn next to the patio, and not clean up after her kid if he breaks things. I feel OK judging someone for putting poopy diapers on my dinner table.