A day late, but hopefully not a dollar short.
For quite awhile now, I've been wanting to comment on the so-called ongoing "Mommy Wars." If you are fortunate, these have been completely off your radar, and I congratulate you. The Mommy Wars posit opposing contingents of mothers - primarily, stay-at-home versus working mothers, but also no-TV-allowing versus TV-embracing mothers, breastfeeding versus formula-feeding mothers, and single versus married mothers. There's probably other "versuses" out there that I'm blanking out on. It doesn't matter - you get the point.
This stuff isn't new. Women with kids have been taking flak for their decisions since they started entering the workforce in greater numbers. They've been made to feel guilty about putting their children in day care; for depriving them of the supposedly essential, irreplaceable experience of the doting, 24-hour mother. Nor is this an exclusively American phenomenon. I recently read an article on how something like 40 percent of professional German women don't have children; if they do but then return to work, they are denigrated as "rabenmutter" or "raven mother," who leaves her fledgling alone in the nest to fend for itself. What an awful cultural taboo.
But this miserable, misogynistic crap keeps periodically surfacing to the top of the pop culture discussion. Sometimes a well-known individual goes public with excoriations of the working mother or the single mother, a la Phyllis Schlafley. Sometimes it's a book - lately, a screed by one Caitlin Flanagan, who lauds herself for being a stay-at-home mom and a traditional wifey-pooh, when in fact she was a full-time work-at-home mother with a full-time nanny. Sometimes the news comes up with questionable "trends" such as that recently reported of highly-educated, well-paid women leaving the workforce in droves to become stay-at-home moms. Since I became a mother myself nearly twenty months ago, I have found this finger-pointing and the resultant self-doubt triggered in many moms to be colossolly frustrating.
I am frustrated by the way the news, entertainment and publishing industries know they can reliably make bucks by selling us mothers more criticisms of the ways we choose - or are forced - or just plain *want* - to parent. I believe that at some level, the good-ol'-boy status quo patriarchy smiles on all of this, because it knows that for so long as we women are tearing out each others' throats, we are not joining forces to overthrow it and achieve a better world for all of our children. I am so damned tired of reading articles about how badly day care retards children's intellectual development, of reading nasty pointed bad-mommy comments posted on the blogs of mommies who chose to feed formula instead of breastfeeding, of watching the Caitlin Flanagans of the world surf to the upper reaches of the bestseller lists on the credit cards of self-doubting women seeking affirmation or condemnation of their own parenting styles.
One thing I am proud of, however, is how little self-doubt any of this has engendered in me. Nothing I read leads me to question what I am doing with my little girl or why I am doing it. I am doing what I am doing because it is right for me, for us, for my marriage, for her development. I am working because my career makes me happy and gives me personal satisfaction in an area totally unrelated to motherhood. I am working because I *need* to be away from my little girl periodically, in the company of professional adults, to fully understand how lucky I am and how much joy she brings me once I return home. I breastfed her because I was lucky enough to be able to, and too cheap to pay for formula. I continue to breastfeed her now because it brings us comfort and togetherness periodically throughout days in which I am increasingly not the center of her orbit. I let her watch children's TV because she learns from it, and because damnit, sometimes I need to take a shower or load the dishwasher or take a crap in peace. I stay married when it would be easier to walk away because she is at her very happiest when she has both me and her daddy rotating around her like a planet with two moons.
I am at peace with all of these decisions. I do not suggest that these are the right choices for anyone else but myself and my family. But neither do Phyllis' or Caitlin's finger-pointing and shrill accusations move me to self-doubt. These generals in the so-called Mommy Wars find no battlefield in my soul. Somehow, blessedly, I have moved beyond caring what other people - other women - think of me or what judgments they make as to how well I parent. This, for me, is huge. As the chronically unpopular child and teen, I hungered ravenously for approval, and the harder I tried for it the less of it I got. Now that I'm an established adult, I'm done looking for anyone else's stamp of approval. It's not my job to make other people happy, except my little girl. The only person whose approval I need is my own; the only person whose cooperation I need is my husband's. And honestly, my daughter is remarkably resilient. Her emotional stability and intellectual well-being are not fragile like spun glass. They are elastic and capable of infinite expansion in any number of directions. My professional satisfaction will not come at the expense of her adolescent self-confidence. Of this, I am certain.
The whole Mommy Wars thing is a line of bullshit that's being fed to us to make money off of us and keep us busy fighting amongst ourselves. There is no real, authentic conflict at its center. I hereby call it on the carpet for the unclad emperor that it is. And more than that, I would like to call a Mommy Truce, together with a Pact of Peace. It goes a little something like this:
I, Susan D., hereby pledge to support and cheer my fellow mothers at every opportunity. I will not point my finger at any of them in angry accusation. I will not insult their choices as inferior because they are different from mine. I will acknowledge that many mothers make different choices than did I because they had no choice, and I will honor them for soldieriing forward with far fewer opportunities than I have. When I see a fellow mother making what I believe is a bad choice, I will ask myself why I think it is bad. And if then, I still believe it is a bad choice, I will offer aid and comfort rather than insults and anger. And I will be a voice against the forces that hold all mothers and their children down. I will take every opportunity to remind other mothers that they are not each others' enemies but rather, each other's potential allies in the real war for a better world in which to raise our children to reach their fullest potential.
And having taken that pledge, I acknowledge that I owe someone an apology. I was cruel and harsh to my brother-in-law's Babymama on this blog, although somewhat less so in real life. Upon reflection, I do still believe that she has made a number of really bad choices. I cannot offer any further aid and comfort to her, after allowing her to live in my home for six months, but I can say that I am sorry for having essentially called you a bad mother and a sorry human being. I know that you are being the best mother you know how to be, having learned how from your own mother who made her own share of bad choices. I know that your reality is large and frightening and that it intimidates you to face it head-on. I hope that soon you understand that you must face it down in order to move forward, and that you can believe that you do have the strength and intelligence to do it. Your little girl loves you more than the world, and I know you love her too. I hope that you can look into her little face and draw from her the courage and inspiration to fight the powers that hold you down. I think that is why I - and my husband, and my brother-in-law and his wife - were all so angry at you. We all believe that you have the potential to break out of your current circumstances and build a better life for you and your little girl, and we haven't understood why you don't believe in yourself the same way. I can only offer you this much - I believe in you. When you are ready, you will rise up, and there will be no stopping you. And I hope I will know about it, so I can cheer you on.
Happy Mother's Day to all my mothering friends.
