Mum wasn’t the mum I needed

[TheRareFish]

My mum was a SAHM great at giving me and my siblings the ordinary things in life. Food, clothing, clean house, rides to school etc. But was emotionally unavailable. I can’t remember having a good chat with her or going for a coffee. If I tried to get close to her, she would grab the hoover and clean or say she had to start dinner. She was quietly manipulative, would listen to my phone calls. She was difficult to please and always wanted more from her life. Pushed my dad to the limit to provide for her and always wanted a bigger house and then another bigger house. She took Valium constantly throughout my life but wouldn’t admit it. I feel like I didn’t really know her and wonder why what she had in life kids, home etc didn’t seem enough

Did she want to be a SAHM or was that choice a product of the times?

My mum was medicated through most of my childhood. Before marriage she had a very good civil service job that was contractually only open to single women so when she married she was forced to resign.

She then wanted to throw herself into family life but had fertility issues so only had one child. She was miserable for decades. She's been much happier since everyone in her age bracket is retired and I've had children. I think it stopped her feeling like a failure/not being where she should be.

She was a very anxious mother but we became closer during my teens and we have a good relationship now so maybe this is easy for me to say - but I think for many women there has to be more to it than motherhood. Definitely for me. I felt awful on my mat leaves and am much better with the balance of working 4 days

*more to life

I think it's mental illness, there are people doing their dream job like musicians but end up destroying their lives nothing is ever enough

It might help if you try to see things from your mum's perspective.

Sounds like your mum was struggling and just doing her best.

Yes, possibly. Forgot to mention her mum (my nan) lived with us all throughout our childhood - they were very very close and did everything together. It was almost impossible to get my mum on her own.

Parents are only human. None of them are perfect and they are a product of their own upbringing, circumstances etc. Much as we would like to think every parent should be capable of giving what we would consider the perfect childhood this is usually not possible. Good enough (which it sounds like yours was) is ok. I would try and see things (now you are an adult) from a grown up perspective and give her a break. It must have been awful for her to have to take Valium.

I am guessing very few of us had the Mum we might have wished - because they (and we) are only human. On the whole I think mums do their best, but this does mean perfection is not part of it.

Maybe she felt marriage and motherhood unfulfilling and needed external validation by appearing "successful" - big house etc. A little Hyacinth Bouquet perhaps? You sound like you have a good reading of her but she's unlikely to change. Grieve the DM you felt you needed as a child, learn from her mistakes and use your understanding to move forward and enhance your relationship with your own family.

Similar though my Mum was not manipulative and we were poor as piss.

But I don’t have a single memory of having a conversation with her as a child. Even as an adult they were simple, surface level conversations. She never told me she loved me or looked at me with affection. In fact, I don’t really remember her looking at me at all. I have no memory of her hugging or cuddling me, not even when I was crying when my cat died.

I think my Mum was destroyed be her own childhood followed by marriage to my Father, even though he wasn’t a ‘bad’ man he, for reasons of his own ( autism and harsh father) was not the person to help her grow into the person she may have been able to become, but had been squashed down by her own upbringing). I don’t think it was possible for her to be other than she was.

A house and kids would not be enough for most people, I think. If you Mum was on Valium constantly she must have miserable. Unhappy people often make poor parents. That’s little comfort to children damaged by unhappy parents. Sorry you had this childhood.

Sounds like your mother was enmeshed with her mother. Did your nan regard your mother as her mini me figure?.

It is not your fault your mother was like this; you did not make her that way. Her own family did that lot of damage to her. Her best was simply not good enough and she did not receive the necessary or right help either.

Valium was known as mother's little helper in the 50s and 60s and was prescribed widely as an anti anxiety medication. It gradually emerged that Valium wasn’t quite as risk-free as everyone had hoped. In fact, it’s highly addictive and coming off Valium could have unpredictable side-effects, including panic attacks and seizures.

You need to grieve for the relationship you should have had rather than the one you actually got.

Where was your dad here; do you think he let you down too?. Is either parent in your life now?.

Do read Recovering from Emotionally Immature parents by Lindsey C Gibson.

I think, only now that I am a mum myself, I can give other mothers the grace they truly deserve.
This is only my personal experience but I know my daughter will not know me to be the carefree person I was pre-DC. I feel like as mum there is so much more responsibility than I ever had before having DC, I am winging it whilst also being in therapy for anxiety and praying I am giving her a happy childhood and I don't mess up. I think some people are amazing at being parents, and are very good listeners and patient and all the other good qualities but for some it is that little bit harder.

My own mum, on threads I've made about her, could be described as toxic. I feel like she is so persnickety with me. But I also knew how young she married, the unbelievable stress she was under, how she couldn't bond with her babies like she wanted to, and she is an anxious personality. And I also know, because I'm the eldest child, whatever I go through, she is going through it for the first time as a parent even if she is in her 50s... I know she sacrificed so much for us to have a happy childhood, she gave us healthy meals every single day, was always there on time for drop offs and pick ups, we were clean, well dressed children. With my own DC, I marvel at how my own mum managed it all (things I previously thought were simple everyday tasks, some times just feel exhausting and neverending for me).

This is a very long way of saying, it is sad that she couldn't be the mum you needed, but also, maybe she was doing her very best and at least she managed to show up for you in other ways.

I am in awe of mothers since becoming one myself (it really took having my own baby to really understand motherhood).

There also wasn't as much awareness of mental illness and emotional abuse or neglect. My mum was like yours she kept saying how useless my dad how she is tired of the drudgery of being sahm and being stuck with him because she didnt have a career (married young and kept having kids) but i think my mum would have found something else to be unhappy about, it's her stinkin thinkin. We have so much more awareness and conversations on the media about this stuff than our parents time.
I just had to find compassion for my mother that this is was her best ability and it wasnt because of me it was her. Im a sahm with my DC and initially i was restless and dreaming of another life. When my MH improved i valued what I had/have. There is stigma and shame about vallium so i get why she hid it.
You can heal and reparent yourself, most of us have some childhood trauma.

We're all doing our best. There is no manual.

My mum wasn't the mum I needed either. But then I wasn't the daughter she expected to have. Having been diagnosed ADHD at the age of sixty something, I can now see how confusing and awful it must have been for a woman who'd lived through the War to be presented with a daughter who had no interest in 'girl things', was emotionally unstable and cripplingly shy. My mum didn't have the tools to cope with me; she'd had a stillborn baby before I was born which she was supposed to just 'forget about' - all in all I forgave her for not being everything I wanted. I don't honestly think any mother could have been.

Mrsmust

It is to your credit that you are addressing your anxiety in therapy, not everyone does. Keep going with this!.

Your mother did a lot materially but where was she with you emotionally?. Her best was not good enough.

I do not think you will become another mini me version of your mother because you have two qualities that your mother lacks: empathy and insight.

Intergenerational trauma.

Parents in the past were different; the rules and expectations were different. My Mother was distant and emotionally unavailable and sometimes downright nasty, although there were mitigating circumstances. As an adult, I felt nothing but profound pity for her - things didn't work out for her as she thought they would.

Honestly, I don't remember my childhood well enough to remember if she really listened to me and my emotions. I know as an adult it feels like she doesn't listen to me.

But also maybe she hasn't really experienced what it's like to listen and be listened to. And I think she is from a place where introspection is not so common.

When Liza Minnelli was once asked if her mum (Judy Garland) was a bad mother, she replied "she was the best mom she knew how to be". I think that sums it up perfectly. To say your mum wasn't what you needed implies that mothers are mail order commodities. They are in fact human beings, shaped by their own upbringings, traumas, frailties, education and to an extent their marriage. Most mums strive to be the best they are capable of being and If that means providing a clean home, clean clothes and dinner on the table every day, then it could be much worse.

I don't remember much of my childhood, is that even normal? I remember bits but not much. Having my children triggered alot of emotion, my parents were not and are still not the people i wanted them to be.

I relate to a lot of this

I’d advise you to accept that your Mum was a flawed human being who did her best to be a good parent, but didn’t get everything right. Forgive her for her failings, iyswim.

My Dad has had lifelong MH issues and is pretty hopeless at parenting. He did some terrible things when I was a child, such as suicide attempts where I found him and still says horrible things to me when he’s upset.

Sometimes I compare him to other Dads and feel resentful, but I’ve accepted him for who he is. He’s not a nasty person and he loves me, he just wasn’t cut out for parenting.

@TheRareFish your situation isn't rare at all. Older than you but my mum left school at 14 as was the case then, was talented and got a good job, came from a poor family and ended up pregnant with me at 19. Her dad was a miserable man who liked the booze. She was lucky with my Dad as he was a good man. Both of them worked hard in their lives but I think she felt she had never achieved her potential or that her chances were ruined by having me. She went away " for a rest" once when I was about 9. She had a volatile temper. You could never talk to her about any problems as she had had it worse. I believe it was the best she could do in the years they lived in. It was hard to live with at the time. There was no labelling, no care for women, times were tough.

Hopefully we’re the last generation to be raised by mothers who didn’t really want children but felt pressured into it. We forget how different society was even thirty years ago. When I was a teen in the ‘90s, it was still considered weird to be middle-aged, single, and childless. Such women were pitied. Consequently, many clever, talented women who just weren’t maternal had kids in their early twenties and bitterly resented the loss of freedom. If they were good people, they grudgingly did their best. If they weren’t, they took out their misery on their children.

Lots of young people today seem to distrust the nuclear family. I’m not sure why. Maybe it comes of living in a therapy culture in which so many of our problems are traced back to it. Many of the young people I know (male as well as female) seem to see relationships and parenthood as dangerous - a trap you will probably have to endure rather than a joy you should pursue. Obviously that’s not universal. Many young people do still want a family of their own. But there is a wariness and hostility that wasn’t so common when our mothers were teenagers.