to find this article on motherhood inFURiating?

[BlooferLady]

Guardian writer in 'motherhood is hell' shock

Disclaimer: je suis TTCing. Erm, for a LONG time!

I didn't want children for years. YEARS! Was violently opposed to it And you know why? Because it looked like one long unending saga of drudgery, misery, isolation and loss of identity and self-respect (I have a large family and thus had the opportunity to observe its effects up close every 18 months or so).

We're TTCing now - hormones and a little wisdom took over, and I would very much like to be a mother. And yet here on MN and in the press I find my old terrors reinforced, and this article sums it all up. Everything I feared is true...

BUT IS IT? By the end of the article I wanted to slap the woman. She complains of her life dwindling to a miserable compressed world of perma-exhaustion, leaking breasts, nappy changes, never seeing her old friends, losing her sense of a professional life, only ever socialising with mothers and mother and toddler groups, bitterly envying women who still go to work, angry with her partner for not helping out round the house...

Someone PLEASE tell me it doesn't have to be like this. I wanted to yell at her, get out of the damn house and DO stuff you moaning bint! No-one MAKES you go to mother and toddler groups - put the creature in a sling and wander round the V&A! Let your partner do a bottle feed in the evening and go out for a boozy dinner! Do some work from home! MAKE your partner help out!

Surely there are people here on MN whose entire character isn't subsumed into the drudgery of being a mother? Who continue to be lively, interested in the larger world, engaged with their friends, interested in their career, happy in their relationships, still maintaining a sense of self and self-respect? For motherhood extends, informs, illuminates their life - doesn't effectively end it! Because if not, I don't want children. AIBU?!

lesley - I feel it becomes a job at 7.30pm when I just want them in bed as DD has been 4.30 am at the moment. On the other hand, it's magical to do stuff together and see them develop and grow, wouldn't want to do anything else.

I agree it becomes work. But I guess I mean't by saying I didn't see it like a job - is that unlike some mothers I didn't expect to achieve goals or for me to control things. I was actually in some ways very strict with my children, but I didn't have fixed ideas of what things would be like.

Sorry I'm not explaining it very well! But like at work you have an idea of where you are trying to get to. So some mothers think well I want a toddler who is learning french, eats healthy organic food and has a great vocabulary. While the only goal I really had was that I wanted them to behave well in public. So it was the only part of motherhood I approached like a goal and got really stressed about.

Of course I got stressed when a toddler had a tantrum in the house or I was struggling to get them to bed - but it was different.

Hmmmm. I read the article slightly differently to you, Bloof. The statutory 'being a mother is hard work' disclaimer led into a really interesting point about co-parenting - which is bloody difficult the way that society currently works.

I have a four-week old and I'm just coming out of newborn hell and finding out who my son is. My husband is back at work. He's barely seeing his baby...so suddenly I'm entirely responsible for a new small human. BF'ing, while great, really creates a situation where only I can meet my son's needs - it sets up an emphasis on mother as primary carer which I suspect lasts forever. And that IS frustrating.

lesley - I felt I could easily control the eating and they are bilingual because I never speak English to them, but DS's behaviour in public I could not control at age 3!! Had a good go at it though - even more reason for him to run off and shout poo poo head every opportunity given. Now he tells his sister (2) to do it.

perfect dromedary - would there be any way or would you want to both work part-time, when your baby is a bit older?

If men and women both insisted more on p/t working and were proud of being a parent, wouldn't there be more career progression possible for women? I feel there would be more senior part-time jobs around and it wouldn't always be the woman who goes and picks up the sick child from nursery/school.

Drom you raise, as ever, a good point, and you're right: the article did lead on there. Because I am not yet at that stage it interests me less than the misery, if you see what I mean.

The DH and i recently discussed BFing ishoos and he tentatively said that if a child was EBF he would feel rather redundant and isolated. And the flip side of that is the casting of the mother in the role of primary carer regardless of any other factors. Obviously for me this is all purely theoretical on every level as I don't have a child - but it's a debate worth having even in the abstract...

Also, what Gabid just said.

Without wishing to drudge up the old cf/bc debate - there is a very interesting feminist piece on this on Atlantic press I think it is... son don't have url on phone.

gabid I'm not trying to say that getting them to behave in public is easy - its not. And I'm not trying to say other things I said like eating and being bilingual are hard - they were just examples of the type of mother that worries about everything and tries to do everything perfectly.

I think this creates a lot of unecessary extra work. So yes I tried to get them to eat vaguely healthily, but I wasn't worried if they didn't always. I didn't waste my time or money rushing young children round lots of classes such as french for toddlers. I had 4 children so this would have made my life very busy and exhausting and very poor.

It is obviously different mothers taking young children to classes because they want to meet adults and they enjoy it - I have no problem with this.

I know its not easy, but I guess I'm saying it is important to try and relax and not make life harder than it has to be. So during the summer I really enjoyed sitting in the garden with 4 young children and some wine as they crawled, toddled around, ate bugs, etc. That was so much easier and fun than trying to rush 4 around a whole lot of classes.

It is quite hard at the beginning, it gets easier as time goes by.

Good luck in your quest, I'm sure you will really enjoy your new baby.

I was discussing my shall we/shan't we perpetual agony with my cousin a few months ago, and talking about the issues of money/work with her. We run our own business and there are times of the year when we are beside ourselves with exhaustion. Particularly last summer, I was thinking, this would be utterly impossible and you're a fool for ever thinking of having a child. I still have these thoughts. Does anyone else out there work for themselves? I should add that this is a business which doesn't make a huge amount of money and we are still in a lot of debt from start up costs etc. Cousin was of the opinion that it could work very well given that we wouldn't have to pay childcare and while the baby is small, it could be brought to work (um...yes...not sure about this one myself!) and we spend most of the winter working from home anyway. I'm still dithering of course and would probably dither until the day it was born. And therein for me lies the crux of the issue - that having a baby, is such a totally irreversible decision. Once the little thing is here, then you owe it the best life you can give it, because you decided you wanted it. Yikes!

Being a mother rocks. It's bloody hard work at times, but the good FAR FAR FAR outweigh the hard times. I have 4 ranging from 17½ down to 2 and the joys I have had over the years watching the older 3 grow and mature into wonderful (almost) young adults is immense. I wouldn't swap any of the crap for anything. It's part and parcel of life.

I think potential new parents should discuss the impact of children.

I think it's the Mother's choice about breast-feeding. And the Dad should support and help.

But things like who is going back to work, division of housework, expectations of each other, realising how much life is going to change should be discussed.

If the one is going to be a sahp it should be appreciated that is just as important as the wohp. And especially in the early days they aren't responsible for the majority of the housework.

We worked on the assumption that whenever the wohp came in from work everything was equal both parents had done a day at work.

Finances is very important, it's both of yours money, also the sahp should,if possible, still be paying into a pension.

YANBU

It really doesn't have to be like that.

Yes, you will have much less time for yourself.
Yes, you have to see to your baby's needs pretty much all day long for the first year or so.
Yes, you often feel tired for lack of sleep.
Yes, some people may find motherhood boring.

BUT

Most mothers are only on mat leave for a year AT MOST!
If you have a good (but not too rigid) routine in place everything becomes easier.
If you have a partner you can share responsibilities and if help isn't forthcoming initially - ASK!
If you are able to carry the baby in a sling it is very easy to go out and do things, such as seeing your friends, going out for walks, shopping, sitting in a cafe etc.
Your baby may sleep through by the first six months - life becomes much more manageable.
You learn (hopefully) to adjust your expectations: life isn't just about you anymore, but that's ok. When one accepts that, it gets better again.

I think it is good for today's self-obsessed people to have consider someone else's needs, and perhaps to find that it is actually very rewarding to care for someone other than yourself.

Here's an excerpt from Charlotte Raven's article in The Guardian on feminism. I think it is relevant to this.

^Completely sold on the myth of "self-invention", today's woman believes herself in control of her life, from birth to the present day. There's no governing philosophy, just an urge to assert her will. She doesn't know what she's doing, but she's damn well doing it.

Anyone who challenges or questions her will get short shrift, even our own children. A slew of motherhood memoirs portray the baby as a "rival consciousness". This memorable phrase was coined in Rachel Cusk's A Life's Work. Cusk's nuanced portrayal of maternal ambivalence was read one way by those seeking support for their perception of motherhood as an endless bad hair day.

Mothers are now more able to portray themselves as victims of their children. Brett Paesel says she was prompted to write her memoir Mommies Who Drink by the silence around motherhood and women's unwillingness to bear witness to their subjugation, "which feels like complaining". No one dares convey the rage evoked by the maternal requirement to put someone else's needs above their own? None except Stephanie Calman, author of Confessions of a Bad Mother; Kate Long, author of The Bad Mother's Handbook; Mel Giedroyc, author of Going Ga Ga ? Is There Life After Birth? and so on and on. These controlling mothers seem to feel wronged by the autonomy of the people in their orbit. The fact that their children are separate beings with their own beliefs and habits seems like a dreadful affront. Female confessional writers seldom pay much mind to how it feels to be them. Far from being a golden age of female self-expression, this is the opposite. Real self-expression requires dialogue. With the other point of view excluded, candid authors are communicating nothing^

lesley - you don't need to justify your examples. I suppose after 4 children you do relax a bit. I tried to do everything right, especially with the first and I feel he always was quite a handful, but at 6 he still hasn't had a Happy Meal! Last week I took DD (2) to McDonalds as she appeard to be terribly hungry but she didn't like it.

It is hard being with them all day but I am not quite sure what it is that's so hard. I feel all I really do is sit around in playgroups, chat and watch her play, which I enjoy. But I must admit I felt happier doing that with DS because I had a good group of friends I am still very close to. The same hasn't happened with DD, just more shallow aquaintences.

I thought the article told it as it is, for plenty of women.

PMSL at 'strap your baby into a sling and wander around the V&A'. The reason you end up at the toddler groups feeling your identity leaching away is because a/ you are lonely and need to be places where no one will mind if your baby cries and b/ your energy levels are at rockbottom. (After that, yes, it gets better, much better.)

I think it's good to go into motherhood with your eyes open. I had no idea the first bit would be so hard, and so sudden. 'The loss of autonomy and the self-abnegation were instant and absolute': yes, this is exactly how it felt to me.

In answer to the OP, YABU.

Every time I feel down and have a bit of a whinge to get it off my chest someone comes along and tells me I am no longer allowed to feel sad or frustrated or angry or bored or lonely because I am 'so lucky' to have children and they would 'dearly love' to be in my position but are having problems TTC.

Motherhood is not a passport to eternal happiness and mothers sometimes feel crap. As and when you have your own DC, you will realise that it is just another lifestyle that has its pros and cons. And we are allowed to moan about the cons.

Sorry haven't read the posts here but I just read the article & my reaction was that she was in the first stages of new motherhood. It does feel like that at first. It all seems like an absolute outrage.
Then you get used to it, adjust your view of yourself and things slowly become much more lovely (most of the time) than they were pre-baby.
The author just hasn't got there yet.

I don't know if all mothers with 4 young children relax, but I would have found life intolerable if I hadn't.

I never bothered that much about cleanliness, germs, stimulation, etc. I did try and build in some variety for my sake. Young children love things been repeated - same books, songs, etc. I used to plan days out or meeting friends often for my sake.

Nowdays mothers seem to try or are expected to subjagate everything for the benefit of their children. I didn't do this tbh. So I wanted them to be happy, but I also wanted to be happy. So rather than singing the same nursery rhymes (one of mine was obsessed with row, row the boat!) I would organise a trip with them out to the local country park.

I also really used to enjoy being silly with them - playing monsters, rolling around the floor. And I would happily leave them outside in their pram or in a play pen to amuse themselves.

I agree with Procrastinating. It all gets easier in time. And then you may even look back and think: it really wasn't that bad.

But I think it's good for people to go through it. I for one would be even more lazy, selfish and unempathetic if it wasn't for my children.

All the just get on with your life and bring your baby along conveniently forgets having other children as well. Not so easy to pop along and have coffee and a tour of the V&A with a preschooler, a rabid toddler and a small baby is it?

And I'm fucking sorry that we aren't all a beacon of hope and wonder for you. I do look like shit, I do feel like shit, I have neither the time or the money to dress well and can't go back to work with 3 children in need of childcare, its too expensive.

Its a real treat to be told that not only are you a miserable zombie failure of a mother, you're also a shitty role-model for the mouthy but child-free.

Great post MadamDeathstare :)

I could have written that article during both of my maternity leaves. I found them claustrophobic, I felt my formerly interesting and independent life was shattered. Returning to work has helped a bit, but my career is in shambles (I work part-time). I also feel I've had to take on all kinds of traditional roles I never expected.

I wore my first-born in a sling and travelled around the world with her. The arrival of the second child two years later limited my life a lot more - even getting to the corner shop became difficult/impossible.

Being a mother has given me other freedoms - I've been able to downshift, switch careers, live overseas - but I still feel that the 8 months after each child's birth were trying and painful times.