Motherhood

I find it really hard when people say that there is no public reward to being a mother. There is and it is called how your children turn out. If they are happy , well balanced and successful in life that will at least in part be down to the fact that a woman (mostly it is still women) sacrificed a big part of her life to do it. To say "I am just lucky with my children" does actually degrade being a mother to being a food factory, cleaning lady and launderette.

Being a mother has nothing to do with the patriarchy and I agree with what exotic fruits says completely. DH and I are equal partners when it comes to making decisions about the children. In terms of motherhood being something that should be resisted - why? We give birth to our children; we feed them and I can't understand how any women would not want to be a mother.

My experience of being a mother is so positive. I love it - I find my children fascinating and being a mother is the best job I have ever had.

Grumpla: I found what you said about women's friendship after children very interesting.

Female friendship is profoundly affected by motherhood in so many ways. It's so hard to keep the friendship going when your friends don't have kids and you do, or the other way round. Or even old friends who had children a lot later than you did.

Being a mother has a major impact on your working life, your social life and no doubt, your personal life. Whereas for men, the impact of having children is not so hard and they seem to be less judged or isolated by the fact that they've become parents.

I think the problem with motherhood, or having children these days, is that it is mostly view as a "woman's role". I think society's perceptions of raising children have to change. Both men and women should raise their own children or spend hours with them in equal amounts, especially in the early stages of their lives.

Society puts too much pressure on women because of that and forgets that men are as much responsible for the social and mental well being of children. But our economic system doesn't allow for a lot of choice in many cases, and men are pushed into very long hours at work and women are pushed into the house with the children.

We need to reevaluate our society, our economic system, capitalism, our values etc in order to create a more balanced view of motherhood.

Hi neeps: sorry to hijack but seeing your name reminded me: I don't know if you checked back on your thread about women composers, but I came to it quite late and sent you a link. Very good OP above: I've been an 'instinctive' feminist since I was a child (i.e. knew I thought things were unfair, but didn't know about the concept of feminism, hadn't heard of the word) and am still nowhere near as articulate about it as this.

I agree about toddler groups - I've found them to be invaluable in finding new friends in a new area and the other parents I've met through them have been brilliant.

I find toddler groups a good source of a sense of community. I know they're not everyone's cup of tea but there are some very good ones near me and I really enjoy them. I haven't been going long enough yet to have built any solid friendships but I now know quite a lot of people that I will chat to in the street and that I know I could call on if I was really stuck.

YY to Callin's point about having to get used to living without external recognition / praise! I think that has been a very difficult change for me - having always been a high achiever.

Mind you, DS1 did come and inspect my work in the garden the other day and say "Well done Mummy!" before giving me a round of applause

I think I have found motherhood waaaay more isolating than I expected especially because unused to enjoy spending a lot of time on my own. I now realise that I expected "time with baby" to be approximately the same as that. Ha!

My DH and I parent in a fairly feminist way, he is self-employed and I work part time, we both spend a lot of time with our children and although housework etc has not quite reached an equal split (partly due to him travelling away a lot) we are getting there. I think one of the things I find hard to cope with, though, is that his life seems (to me) to have changed so little since we had children, whereas mine has changed beyond all recognition. The most visible manifestation of this would be that he has managed to sustain almost all of his friendships - I have lost a lot of friends since becoming pregnant. I also find it excruciating whilst on maternity leave to deal with the glazed expression when you tell people what you are up to at the moment...

I have found having my second child so much easier than my first and I think this is because this time round I have put myself first much more. When I was having a terribly wobbly hormonal time as breastfeeding was failing I slept in the spare room for example. I was worried that if I didn't sleep I would tip over the edge into a depression. A few nights sleep gave me the resources I needed to get through that bad patch.

I really do think that had I "put DS first" in that context he would have suffered as a direct result - a depressed catatonic mother is not a good thing for anyone. But first time round I think I would have baulked at that - even though all that it entailed was leaving DS in the charge of his very loving, competent father for a few hours! It has been hard to shake that premise that the mother has to do everything. But as the mother of 2 sons I feel it's now especially important to let go of that and allow DH to fully take on the caring / emotional aspects of parenting. I want my boys to grow up feeling that loving, nurturing behaviour is not gendered.

It is sometimes hard though as I am a bit of a control freak when it comes to parenting. But I think that too stems from the fact that is me who is judged on these things, not DH! So I'm trying to relax a little bit more and not care too much about what others think.

People in general are not keen on the 'it takes a village........' You only have to read MN to know that they want total control over the DCs environment, even when not there!

I think nowadays "extended family" - in other words, people who can supply support and other adults to bond with and help care for the child/ren - needs to be broadened/loosened as a term that includes other carers, whether they are informal (friends) or paid (childcare professionals).

I agree that relatives aren't necessarily the ideal support squad! But leaving it all down to the one or two parents concerned looks like a model that fails too many people, especially mothers nowadays. Lots of us do have support within the community and among our friends, but I think there are also too many that don't. That's a lot of the reason why the Sure Start centres were started up - but typically, the parents who most need that kind of support are the ones least likely to access it.

I agree with Callin about your own situation, neeps - only you know what's best for you and your family, no one else has the right to make a judgement if your DC are well cared for, in whichever way that works best for them and you.

They do have a rose tinted view. MIL had a specially strong position,something they forget, so as a mother of 3DSs it might be quite nice!

I agree exotic. TBH I think people have a rose tinted view of the whole extended family scenario. I grew up with my mother's entire family (about 60 people) living within 3 miles. It wasn't all sunshine and roses and wonderful support. It was nice to see my cousins a lot but my mother and her siblings didn't really help each other out at all. There was plenty of sniping and feuding and back biting, as well as some fun times of course. It is nice to have a sense of community and of course in an emergency everyone did rally round, but it could be terribly stifling, especially as a child, when you had 8 aunts and uncles and their spouses watching your every move!

The world has changed though, we are never going to get back to the whole extended family living in the same neighbourhood. People are often on here with complaints about 'strangers' (generally dirty) touching 'my' baby. They do not want to delegate to MIL,especially when they can't control! The nuclear family is here to stay.

Neeps, that's what I meant about digging down and finding your own validation and equilibrium. You're in a place at the moment where everyone else's opinion and feelings on things matter more than your own. Yes, people will judge you no matter what you do, your task is to get to a place where you're happy with your decisions, so that their judgement means nothing to you. Not easy I know.

I was reading an article recently about human's being one of a few species with a middle age i.e. years of healthy and active life after the end of fertility. It mused that the reason could be in evolutionary terms to help with the continuation of the species. Human have such a long childhood in which they don't really contribute in the society but demand a lot of input. I guess further expanding on the 'it takes a village...." saying.

I agree the nuclear family has made motherhood much harder. I imagine the playing on the insecurities and guilting of new parents wouldn't happen as much if most women had a strong and experienced support system to rely on. I am not really sure what the answer is just sharing something I thought was interesting.

Good points, Callin.

I think the nuclear family is very far from ideal when it comes to raising a child. The more parenting experience I get, the more I think I agree with the "it takes a village to raise a child" adage.

There seems to have been a rise in PND in our country over the last few decades. I suspect lack of wider family/community support may have a lot to do with that. And it impacts on the children too. The various members of my family who are primary level teachers say there's a growing number of children with attachment issues - so much so, that courses are now being run for teachers specifically to help them address these issues as they impact in the classroom.

That underlines my previous point about the importance of parenting.
The impact of misguided/uninformed/unsupported etc. child-raising causes unfortunate ripples throughout our society.
One might ask the capitalists if they consider social problems to be detrimental to the economy (leaving aside the difficulties for individuals and their well being) and therefore whether it might be worth rethinking the value that is laid on decent parenting.

One of the difficulties of motherhood is that it is a very private occupation. We're brought up in today's society to perform and to seek the approval of others by doing well at school and sports, by landing a good university place, by doing well at work etc. They're all quite public achievements that attract admiration and praise. Once you're a mother you're essentially on your own. There are no appraisals, no reviews, no promotions or salary bumps. If you're used to public praise and recognition it can be a shock to the system to be suddenly working very very hard for little or no reward. You might attract the admiration of your peers or your partner, and perhaps your parents or ILs but that can seem a bit paltry if you're used to industry awards and big bucks.

To an extent that situation is a product of the patriarchy in the sense that capitalism is a patriarchal system that measures people's worth according to public achievements. If you can't produce a measurable outcome, you've produced nothing in the view of the capitalist system. There are very few measurable outcomes to motherhood - you produce a baby, yes, but after that progress is slow and you can't really claim full credit for how your child turns out. Some mothers do try to claim credit - they place their worth on their child's achievements, become pushy and competitive, but that way madness lies IMO. Accepting motherhood means accepting a new way of thinking, of stepping out of the patriarchal "achievement" mindset and taking on a more wait and see, patient sort of attitude. Both men and women can adopt that mindset, I think, although the patient playing of the long game is seen more as a female trait.

You also have to start digging inside yourself for your sense of worth rather than hoping for recognition from outside. I do think parents do a massively valuable job but I don't think they should necessarily invite praise from society. The reason being, if you invite praise you also invite criticism. Unless you're willing to be told you're wrong, you shouldn't claim you know best.

Yes, I had a partner who had lived away from home and partnerless for years. Makes a difference in their attitude to what they are and are not capable of.

We did option two later on, OH worked from home freelance. Then we used grandparents and did option three,
How others saw our set up was irrelevant to us all, it worked and most of the time it was acceptable to the adults and the children were happy.
I had to stave off feelings of self-pity when various mothers whose children I taught came up and hugged me and told me that it was a shame I was working and that my man should be keeping me.
Sometimes I thought 'No, I am empowered modern woman, able to make my own gender-free choices'
Other times I thought 'Snivel, yes, I want to be a kept woman and be cooking and cleaning and fluffing up the laundry.'
It's always a compromise IMO.

I did choose a man who had been single and lived alone for 20 years- he could cope with everything and anything.

Mine are older FallenC and looking back the time was short, I am free to do whatever I like now but thankful I took time out.