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AIBU?

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Original poster

To say portrayals of motherhood have become too negative?

305 replies

Mushroo · 17/04/2024 10:45

Im coming to the end of my maternity leave, and it has been the best year of my life. Yes there have been hard days (and less sleep!), but overall, it’s the most content I’ve ever been. I love my LO so much, I feel like I have a real purpose and I look forward to everyday with her. It’s really been a blessing.

Now I’m not naive enough to think that it will stay like this, but so far, having a baby is by far the most rewarding and best thing I’ve ever done.

However, I very nearly didn’t have her! I’m a classic ‘high achiever’ - top uni, grad scheme, great job. All I’ve heard for years is how hard babies are, how you’ll never sleep again, it’ll ruin your body / life / freedom / career. Lots of blogs and tv shows about the relentlessness of parenting. No one really seemed to have anything positive to say.

For years and years I was terrified and even though I thought I wanted kids I kept delaying as it seemed there were limited positives to the early years.

Even when pregnant I thought I’d made a mistake as the rhetoric that your life is over is so strong and I was dreading a year off work with a screaming baby. I saw it as something to get through and then I would hopefully enjoy having an older child.

I actually now wish I’d had babies earlier and can’t believe I nearly didn’t have her. (Of course, if I hadn’t, I’m sure I’d have still had a great life!)

I know my experience isn’t universal and I’m extremely lucky, and lots of people do struggle, but AIBU to say that more people should talk about how great having children is? I spent years just hearing the negatives, and actually, for me, it’s been amazing and that never really gets spoken about?

I know a lot of people will say that the positives are inherently obvious, but for me they weren’t and I’ve been really surprised.

It probably helped I went in with very low expectations, and the negative / realistic portrayal are super important as it’s definitely not easy, but we shouldn’t hide away the positives?

OP posts:
Sparksi · 17/04/2024 11:05

Glad I read this as someone who’s pregnant now. I do think it’s mostly negative on here. But I suppose like with anything, the ones enjoying it and loving every single second probably aren’t the ones spending large amounts of time on here.

ImVanillaBaby · 17/04/2024 11:04

I think you need to take a look at who you surround yourself with!

And also, maybe stop believing everything you hear. You sound quite gullible. Had you never spent any time either babies or young children previously?

Cbljgdpk · 17/04/2024 10:58

Who did you hear this from? Before I had DC I heard the negatives from friends but also that it was the best thing they’d ever done; there wasn’t an overly negative portrayal from my view. I didn’t engage with the instagram mum accounts as I didn’t even know about them as someone without kids and I don’t think i would have been interested.
On munsnet there is but that’s because people come on here when they’re struggling and finding it hard so it’s going to be skewed.

JaninaDuszejko · 17/04/2024 10:56

I think going in with low expectations is probably sensible. And it sounds like you've had an easy baby (or at least a baby you've found OK to deal with) which as helped. Maybe you'll find another age harder, maybe you've got a lovely even tempered child who will be like that throughout life.

Having children can be very rewarding which is why people keep on doing it. Personally I found my first maternity leave hard work and very isolating, I really enjoyed my second (very easy baby) but found my third harder again (premature baby, health issues) but I now have lovely teenagers and it was definitely worth all the hard work at the beginning.

Revelatio · 17/04/2024 10:54

I feel the opposite. I think in general motherhood to me was portrayed as something inherently natural, you’d have this innate mothering gene and spend days staring at the baby sleeping or feeding. My maternity leave would be spent having lazy hazy summer picnics, or sitting in cafes with other mums staring lovingly at their children.

In reality I found it incredibly boring! I thought I was doing it wrong, or wasn’t a natural mother. I started to enjoy it more when they came up to their first birthday and I went back to work. They’re now 2.5 and I love it, we can chat and play etc.

I really didn’t enjoy the first bit and when I read other’s similar experiences it really helped me and made me feel less abnormal!