To say portrayals of motherhood have become too negative?

[Mushroo]

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?

@Madge91 I think if people “hold off” to early 30s due to people talking negatively rather than out of necessity, that’s already put you in a different bracket to a lot of mothers and the challenges faced.

I was a similar age becoming a mum and did truly fear struggling and actually loved the early baby stage, even though having another child highlighted my first born was higher needs.

However, I absolutely don’t think motherhood is portrayed too negatively. I think the challenges mums face, both throughout maternity leave and far beyond that bubble are, if anything, completely understated.

@SarahD19 yes I think now I’m going to mum/baby groups, it makes me realise a lot of it was more the people around me that had kids, rather then the general parents out there! I only had a few friends/family members with children, and now speaking to other mums more regularly, the people I knew were defo more negative about it all still compared to other people im now meeting! My other half likes also pointed out these friend and family members are also very negative about most parts of their lives so not to judge from them 😂

I could have written this! Parenting is not without its challenges but for us it hasn’t been as bad so far as everyone makes out. Having said this, our kids so far are good sleepers (likely a combo of mainly nature and also my spending a lot of time working on sleep schedules, gentle sleep training etc), and I think sleep probably shapes your parenting experience more than anything else. I’m not naiive enough to think it won’t get harder later on but the baby years have been much easier than the utter horror show it was made out to be.

I don’t think it takes much intelligence to appreciate that everyone’s experience will be different.
I had a terrible pregnancy, so much so I finished work early. My labour was horrific too, but times change and now there is more medical intervention and far more planned caesareans.
I absolutely loved spending time with my dcs and we are incredibly close now they are adults.
A lot depends on the help you have. Rather like coming on here and saying how wonderful being married is.
Some people have great husbands and wives who put them first. Some people don’t.
For lots of Women it is a struggle.
Maybe the father if their child is dead. Maybe their child is disabled. Maybe the grandparents cannot or will not help.
It’s great the op is finding it wonderful.
I look back at when my dcs were children and yes, it was wonderful for me too.

Also I think it does depend on how much effort you put in.
I cannot understand anyone having children and them palming them off at every opportunity.
If you don’t want to spend the majority of your time with them, then don’t have them!
So many parents moaning and shouting at the children, you chose to have them!
I see endless parents ignoring their children, putting them in front if a screen instead of engaging with them.
Talk to your child. It’s not hard.

That’s silly. It’s perfectly possible to be a decent parent without ‘spending the majority of your time’ with them.

I am an older mum who still couldn't afford part time work and had absolutely no local support. I returned to work FT 4 months after giving birth.
I still find it exponentially better than non motherhood shrug
Motherhood is a privilege IMO.

I think some people are naturally good parents and many people aren't. Also, liking/loathing being a parent isn't a universal thing, but people are often swayed by others telling them how wonderful/terrible it is.

It's also important to remember you're biologically wired to love and take care of your baby. The older your child gets, the less you will feel this way. (This is also one of the reasons why grandparents typically love their grandchildren more than their actual children). Your opinions are being coloured by the biological factors rather than objective reasoning, which is in itself a biological factor for reproduction across a species.

For many people, having a child is their calling or feels like their purpose in life. For me it's not, I'm from a similar background but there are other things that give me purpose and feel more like my life's work. I'm far too impatient to have kids, I come from a long line of women who had kids because they felt they "had" to for various reasons, and ended up not being great parents in the mid/long term and resented having them because they were taken away from their actual calling.

It's more about what your purpose in life is (or feels like) rather than kids yes or no. If you don't really have a long term purpose, then having kids can be an option for that, but it absolutely isn't for everyone and isn't the only option. If you don't have kids and also don't have a purpose, you likely have some issues that feel unresolvable but are actually linked to not feeling like you have a purpose.

The important thing is that women have the freedom to choose whether they do or don't want to have kids and they go into it in an informed way rather than doing it because their parents guilt trip them or they feel like it's something they "should" do rather than something they want to do.

This is true. I think the OP's point ma's maybe that the overwhelming noise one hears from women in the media and in life is that motherhood is such a pain and sacrifice, when it shouldn't be.
There are definitely tragic and complex circumstances that lead to that being the case, but in most cases motherhood is potentially being described as more of a burden than it needs to be.

Certainly society's setup is challenging but still, people do often overstate the negatives IMO.

The important thing is that women have the freedom to choose whether they do or don't want to have kids and they go into it in an informed way rather than doing it because their parents guilt trip them or they feel like it's something they "should" do rather than something they want to do.

This. And there’s not much positive coverage of childfree life and people in the media either. People who do talk about it positively are often accused of being smug and living empty selfish lives. The message should be that you can have a great and rewarding life whether or not you have children.

But who are these 'people'? Who is the 'media'? Right now my social media is filled with people's happy pregnancy announcements. Quite a few celebs posting about their children and newborn babies. Where's the negativity?

There's too much information for anybody to definitely state that the 'noise', whatever it is, so positive or negative. And everyone has their own agenda. If you follow a lot of bossbabe/enjoying life travelling channels for example a lot push the childfree narrative because that's their target audience. People wanting to settle down with families aren't likely to be interested in their content, or buy whatever they're pushing.

Discussion on matters of public policy, treatment of maternity etc is different. 1/3rd of maternity units failing safety standards is a fact. Cost of childcare, etc also a 'fact'. It's not negativity to point that out.

Again, if one is weak willed enough to be swayed by this noise don't have children. Your biological urge probably isn't strong enough.

The problem is that the society we live in does not value motherhood. I hear many men say their mother or wife was ‘just a stay at home mother.’
They never say their father was ‘just a full time labourer, teacher, nurse or anything.’
Likewise if their mother/wife works it’s never ‘just a nurse, librarian, etc’ no it’s only ever applied to full time parents.
Parenthood is undervalued. Status if given to those who earn the most.
Yet motherhood can be the hardest job of all.

I do not hear that at all. I hear people happy and excited when people become mothers and fathers and treat them as grown up important people.

@Whycantiwinmillionsandsquillions I agree when children go to school that SAHM are seen as lesser. That is because parenting children at school is not a 24 hour job although some try and pretend it is.
And people do say about paid jobs - oh I am just a cleaner, or I just work in a shop. Teachers and nurses have status even now, some jobs do not.

@Commonsense22 and I would have to share the view that my children bring so much to my life and it is a privilege being their mother (although not everyone shares this feeling as a parent).

But if asked if my life is also more complicated and much harder as a parent - absolutely. And if I believe that people/society are aware enough of the challenges and discrimination etc, my view is absolutely that we are not. Many are blind to the challenges and view parents (namely mothers) as “entitled”.

We still need open discussions about the challenges, but that doesn’t mean we cannot or do not love or appreciate our children.

Just have to say completely agree with all your points here and extremely well said IMO

@NoisySnail I would have to disagree. SAHM is not respected or valued for young children whatsoever. I remember during the pandemic trying to work from home (self employed project) with a 2/3 year old and a baby who was a few months old. I mentioned this at a health check and was basically told “oh at least that’s straightforward, not like teenagers or anything”.

In general mothers are routinely labelled as lazy and entitled. Fathers get more respect for doing bare minimum. The recognition of care and domestic work women undertake just isn’t there for the most part…

Totally and utterly agree with you, I could have wrote this myself! Ended up having my first at 37 and now so desperately wished I’d started younger, I feel like my life didn’t start until I had my children and all those years I thought I was living my life I just wasted .
i think people are definitely negative and I always try and be positive when talking about being a parent. Yes at times I am shattered and stressed, but overall it is amazing x

Well sure, babies are great. Especially one baby you can devote your attention to while you’re on maternity leave. Juggling work, older children (who become more challenging) and certainly multiple children is not quite so easy. And, for me, it isnt motherhood that’s the problem, it’s the lack of support and societal expectations that are the problems.

@Madge91 I also think that until you have a child, it is very difficult to imagine how your life changes, even if the changes do feel positive overall. Sometimes when friends have children earlier you can just be at different life stages and not aligned. Parents may sense child free friends don’t understand their challenges and so stress their challenges more - or those challenges may seem alien to a non-parent or a person with different circumstances and so seem negative.

I had a friend who only admitted after having her own baby and nursing that she thought I was being negative and making excuses when I said I couldn’t go out for dinner during a newborn cluster feeding stage. To her being out a couple of hours (with travel either side etc), was no big deal and she didn’t understand cluster feeding and also felt it should be easy to get a baby sitter etc. That’s I guess one of many examples. I hadn’t felt I was negative, but I had had to explain I was up every hour nursing even at night - and she had heard it negatively…

I’ll ask you again when your baby is a teenager 🤣

I think if you have talents to achieve well in your career you probably can achieve well in motherhood.
In order to be successful you are generally more knowledgeable, sociable, able to problem solve and manage difficult situations. All necessary skills in child rearing. So if you have the skill set you've just applied it to motherhood and having good experience here too.

Ps I could've written your post, I'm loving being a mum so much I'm only going back to work one day a week long term

This is so lovely to hear!

However, I think the sharing of “negative” experiences is so common because it really helps women feel less alone during those tough times. Many people feel like they can’t be honest about those and actually have the opposite experience you are having which is that everyone else seems to be doing great and that they are somehow failing because it’s hard for them.

My view is be honest about how you’ve found it, it’s wonderful to hear people’s positive experiences. But be mindful that some people will have found it unbelievably hard, so ask questions, listen and show empathy.

Best of luck going back to work, it’s a juggle! But as you say totally worth it :) x

People will hate you for saying this but I absolutely agree. If you’re a woman that has done well career wise (without any special privileges afforded to you such as family business etc) you’re likely to possess the qualities needed to deal with motherhood. This is not to say those that haven’t can’t be good Mothers of course they can and are.

Agreed. And I think that's a true representation of motherhood. It isn't always wonderful, there are harder periods.