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?!

It's great to hear someone being so clear on their identity as a mother corrie :)

I should hasten to add that it's not fear of hard work that's giving me the collywobbles: I am the sort of person that thinks sleeping in past 7am on a Saturday shows a Lack of Moral Fibre, and if anything would welcome having more stuff to busy myself with. It's just the unhappiness that scares me...

Bloofer - sorry, but I felt like that when the children were little. Tbh I am not sure whether PND made me feel like that or whether I felt like that and it was the catalyst for PND if that makes sense? It wasn't unrelenting misery and there were good times, but I have to say I enjoy life much more now and am infinitely happier now that the children are a bit older (6 and 8). I just found the stage where they were highly dependent upon me for everything, not able to communicate effectively and completely unable to occupy themselves for more than 5 minutes quite hellish. However other parents sail through and absolutely love all aspects of that phase.

Despite a shaky start and I am unreservedly delighted that I have been blessed by two great children and love them to distraction. They have enriched my life as I hope I enrich theirs

Florence I honestly would sooner eat my own toes than judge a woman on whether she's a mother and still pretty or well-dressed or anything trivial like that - truly I would and I wonder if you're bringing some of your own worries to the debate (I mean, erm, obviously you are).

I don't know how to put it any more clearly really....it just sounds so unhappy, that's all. And it's not just the article; it's all around me, the same despairing FB statuses and emails and texts and overheard conversations and MN threads and debates on the radio. "I can't sleep, I never go out, my husband never helps, I'm bored, I'm lonely, I miss my friends, I miss my work, I don't know who I am anymore.... " I'm being sort of selective in my listening I guess, and focusing on the the bad stuff because it's what scares me. And like others have said, people often don't talk about the good stuff for fear of sounding smug.

It's not that I'm judging people because they don't manage a hedge fund and have spensive clothes 'even though' they're Mums. I just wonder if it's absolutely an unavoidable element of young motherhood to be miserable....

TBH I have worked with men who are happy to work later and go home when the kids are in bed. Have also known men who have went part time to spend more time with their kids.

hmc thanks for your post. Realist but cheery. I wish I could thank everyone who's bothered to reply but haven't time!

I assume the writer of the piece is an educated woman.

I do wonder why she hadn't read (or perhaps not propertly taken in) the ten thousand other similar articles that have graced the pages of the weekend broadsheets and magazines in recent years.

Hasn't she even heard of Rachel Cusk?

It all seems to have come as such a shock and surprise to her.

She might have heard of Rachel Cusk and refused to read her books. I have, and did, chiefly because everyone on here says she's a right whinger

yes it is harder than anyone tells you.

But it is also better than you can imagine, unbelievable love you feel.

Everything is more intense, the highs and the lows. So the bad times (baby sick, self sick, DH on businesss trip, nobody to help, having to call strangers to cart you and sick child to hospital... or even less dramatic, the nights they won't sleep) are hell, the good days (the LOVE you give and get) are bliss.

that is why so many parents think childfree couples are "shallow" as they haven't experienced these high and lows. (not saying they are right)

I love my DC more than anything, and I love seeing my DH and myself in their faces, their personality. They think I am great just cause I am their mum. I'd fight a lion barehanded if I had to. Strong emotional stuff.

It's not for the fainthearted really having children connects you to your deepest instincts, your worse fears, a dark side inside yourself (mothers would kill if they had to pretect their child) but also to the essence of lif

I think you've hit the nail on the head BlooferLady when you said "people often don't talk about the good stuff for fear of sounding smug.". Even to post my answer above on this thread I had to think very hard to phrase my post in a way that doesn't show how nice I found motherhood in comparison to the writer of the article.

Even on MN you see that on threads where mothers are struggling they are met with nothing but support usually (and rightly so) but if they are too positive they get accused of being smug or wanting a medal etc.

Agreed. Am just saying that this is nothing new. Some people really don't enjoy motherhood, no matter that they love their children. And some will admit to not even really loving their children. But this is all so well documented and "out there", I can't truly believe that this woman thinks she has anything new to say.

I have never read a Rachel Cusk book in my life, although I think I did look at some of the serialisation of her book on motherhood in The Observer. That certainly didn't inspire me to become an avid reader.

Infact, one of my favourite ever pieces of journalism was someone in The Guardian (maybe Jim Crace) writing a review of one of her works - I think it was about a year she spent travelling with her family - in her style and mocking her mercilessly. I have saved it in my Favourites .

e.

Bloofer I feel EXACTLY the same as you in terms of the article being the 'great fear' as to how it will work out.

I have always felt so equal to my male friends, ex boyfriends and now DH that the fact that we are different only really occurred to me when I turned 35 and realised that (even though it wasn't emotionally ticking) I had a physical body clock and my male friends didn't. And I imagine the differences double when becoming parents.

I kept posting on the 'unmaternal', 'terrified', 'I love my career too much' topics with the greatest of fear being that I wouldn't be able to carry on my life as before. Scared too that I would lose my buzz for things I had before! But hey ho, I have since had a miscarriage at 12 weeks. Like you, I still plan to TTC but am still worried about the potential changes. Strange biological urges that mark us out as being different to the boys down the pub after all...

What I have read on MN has made me feel that it IS possible to have a good career, have a DH who does half and still have a life with children. It still looks like damn hard work though :)

(my last to Prunnhilda, btw)

Its a valid question, I just think you could have phrased it better.

Is misery an inevitable consequence of motherhood? Personally I think not. I do however think that the first few years can be unremittingly dull, hard, relentless etc. Or not. You don't know until you do it. But saying that we are all either one or the other doesn't help anyone, stereotyping and judging only makes the experience harder.

Blooferlady

Hi- I am just writing because what you wrote resonated with me so much-

"I would want to live in such a way that I didn't resent my children." I think this is key to your happiness with children.

I have two small ones, and am lucky to live in a small beautiful city with gardens and art galleries lovely shops etc. If you can do things like pop them in a sling and enjoy yourself walking about it can settle your baby and you can enjoy it too...

My problem was for a while that I didn't see many mums doing the same and I still wonder why not as I potter in botanical gardens etc with my toddler...I wondered why they go to those groups all the time...

Anyway you can be creative and do your own thing with it, including work. The woman in the article sounded like a victim. Good reading-

The Idle Parent
How Not to be a Perfect Mother

Also about the breastfeeding thing. I fed mine both to 2 yrs plus but didn't do it in a hall or whatever..why do you have to do that?

Disclaimer to set the scene: I am a bit of a feminist and my career and independence are important to me.

No - it doesn't have to be this way! If your partner is prepared to take equal responsibility for his child and if you choose not to wallow in the guilt that comes from not spending every second with your child (I have found this bit hard by the way) life doesn't have to be so bad. It is harder than I expected but it can be done.

Maternity leave does set the scene for women to be responsible for the kids, but you can make a conscious effort to fight against this. If every day you tell your partner what has happened in the day so that he too can feel part of everything and if you hand over responsibility to him at the weekends, things become easier. But he has to be willing/eager to be equal in this. Also, I never felt that I had to cook/shop/clean the house too - I would occasionally make a token effort. We survived on omelets and salads. I appreciate that others might hate this.

And as for a social life: yes you can go to art galleries and so on, but your baby must like spending ages in a sling or pram. You'll just have to improvise. Instead of going out so much, invite your friends over. Take it in turns to go out at the weekend and have lie-ins. Get a babysitter when your baby becomes a reliable sleeper at night Although my baby's first year has felt like a struggle and it feels like we've achieved very little, we have been on holiday in 4 countries, been sightseeing, had lots of nights in with our friends, been out to lunch a lot (instead of dinner which we previously did), done exercise. My career is surviving me leaving work early to see the baby and the fact that I now work 4 days a week. I just work harder when I'm in the office. And my partner also works less to reduce the hours our baby is in childcare.

The first months are tough though because of the lack of sleep and the breastfeeding. But it gets better. But the one thing that seems clear to me is that you are dependent on your partner stepping up and taking equal responsibility. If he doesn't, things will be tough for you.

I feel bad about commenting here because I'm not a mother but a father, and so everything is rosier for me as I'm free from the judgments and conceptions people have about women as parents in particular, but I have been a SAHP for a long time, and then basically assumed childcare responsibilities, and the article makes a series of very valid points both about gender and about parenting.

I love(d) being with my children full-time-I loved them, the intimacy of it, and the way I got to understand them. And I didn't find the 'drudgery' too hard to bear as a consequence-although my children know far more about housework and nappy bags as a result of me prattling to them than is healthy.

But there are real problems with how parenthood, yet alone motherhood is constructed. You learn about where and when healthcare is available, how to handle your kids when ill, and so will end up doing it regardless of whether you go back to work. You are thrown into a world where your responsibilities mean any interaction with other adults takes place when looking after children. Or you take children somewhere and lose yourself in their world. Outside of very large metropolitan areas where you have choice, the groups around you are not people you share interests with, but people who got lucky shagging about the same time you did. And you end up longing for your partner to come home during the last witching hour of the day, and then unable to speak to them because they have real worries and all you wish to do is speak about something adult or say how cute some kiddy antic was. And after about four months I seriously couldn't understand my past life-reminiscing about nights out with friends I seriously found myself inventing the fact my partner was childcaring even though we'd had no children at the time. And then, if you return to work, you find suddenly that you can't be a parent there at all, so you don't get what you really need which is not simply to be 'childless' but to be an adult, with your children, but also with real friends doing adult things. It is intensely isolating, even as a man with a partner who now shares care equally and had been through the same on maternity leave. I genuinely don't think I could have coped with four-six years of this, all the shit heaped on mothers, and a partner who didn't even get the basics.

And that doesn't mean don't become a mother, or that all this is simply unavoidable, but when it's 10.15 on a Wednesday and you know there is a baby group open, and you can have a cup of tea and feel your kids need a little less looking after, you will go to the baby group, and become 'parent' not you.

Iirc we had a thread on here very recently where the op was saying all the same things as this journalist (but in a less self-pitying way) and we were all encouraging her to go back to work, and the thread was incredibly positive and supportive.

So, sorry crip but I don't think sharing care doesn't make it better, it just means the crapness gets more equally divided.

Freelance I am glad you understood - and I'm so sorry about your mc. Good luck with TTCing still! It'll iron out in the end, I think, for us both....

Bibbity pliz to link to savage review?! I love a savage book review, me.

Orange that's so optimistic and cheering somehow, thanks. I do wonder whether the people who don't get out and about and enjoy beauty and culture or whatever when they have babies/small children didn't do that before they were mothers, so could hardly be expected to start once they did have them....

I agree. She sounded like a victim. I was too mealy-mouthed to say so though

haven't read the article, but have to say a lot of my abiding memories of when the DCs were small are the drudgery, the exhaustion, lugging them in and out of car seats etc, the tantrums, having no money for me etc. then it was hoomework, arguments, even less money, whining etc etc. Now the DDs are in their late teens, its much better - apart from all the taxiing around. We did have nice times - holidays in France etc - but they would have been nicer(r) holidays without the DCs to be honest.
i have discovered I am not particularly maternal and if I had my time over again? No, I wouldn't have children. I would rather have my freedom and my identity rather than being so and so's mum.
I realise OP that might sound very insensitive when you are TTC, but you did ask

Crip, really, really interesting. I have noticed that the unhappiest of the young mums that formed my slightly dismal ideas of motherhood had hopeless and/or absent partners (for instance 2 of my sisters' marriages did not survive the first 3 or 4 years ).

adela thanks. I think it's essential to hear the male perspective. And you talk about the crapness being equally divided - I guess the fact is that there is crapness, and that if it is entirely shouldered by one parent then misery or at least resentment is bound to ensue...

demented I did ask, quite right, and am very grateful for honesty!

Bibbity I totally agree. Though, before I got pregnant, I did find that people didn't really want to say things out loud for real, so it was easier to discount whingy columns as being all about a certain type of person.

I heard a lot of 'the positives outweigh the negatives' and that is generally 100% true but it truly did not feel like that when ds was 3 and wouldn't leave me alone for 5 fucking minutes so I could wipe the kitchen floor and then I was dying inside because nothing in me at all wanted to be fighting to get time to wipe the kitchen floor....you get the drift!

(In case anyone cares, I prefer older children, I am really enjoying it now!)

I left it late to start breeding, and I was diagnosed with breast cancer soon after the birth of my 2nd child. Young babies are brilliant - you can take them anywhere, attached to your front or your back, you can pass them around as long as you remember who you passed them to, then when they start eating proper food, you can feed them what you eat, apart from the salt mine and the alcohol.

There are things that I don't enjoy, like the school run and being shouted at by a know-it-all 6 year old. I feel a bit mumsy cooking much of the time. The children have changed my relationship with my husband. I think for me that my children are a reminder of a life I left behind a long time ago, and in lots of ways do not want a repeat performance. That's hard.

"I do wonder whether the people who don't get out and about and enjoy beauty and culture or whatever when they have babies/small children didn't do that before they were mothers, so could hardly be expected to start once they did have them...."

you get worse, you really do.