Post by Misstique on Jul 13, 2009 6:46:28 GMT 12
Bad Mother, A Chronicle Of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities And Occasional Moments Of Grace, by Ayelet Waldman, is published by Doubleday.
EXCERPT:
No one wants to be called a Bad Mother - but do Good Mothers actually do a better job?
Not so, says Ayelet Waldman, who argues that no woman is a perfect mother, and the sooner someone stands up for Bad Mothers the better.
Ayelet, a 44-year-old lawyer turned writer, lives with her husband, novelist Michael Chabon, 46, and their four children, Sophie, 14, Zeke, 11, Rosie, seven, and Abe, six. She says:
Breaking the ranks of motherhood: Ayelet Waldman says competitive parents overload their children with unfair expectations.
The moment I first realised I was a Bad Mother, I was in the park with my three-year-old daughter. Sophie was sitting on the swing, a huge smile on her angelic little face as she cried out: 'More, Mummy! More!' By then I'd already been pushing that swing for over half an hour. I was sick to death of it. My arms were aching and my brain was crying out for something - anything - more stimulating than this. Glancing at the mother standing beside me at the swings, I moaned: 'Aren't you just bored out of your mind with this?'
The look of stunned horror on her face froze my blood. She couldn't have looked more outraged if I'd confessed to feeding my daughter neat vodka for breakfast. What had I done that was so terrible? I'd simply admitted that being a mother isn't always the greatest job in the world, and that while I love my children to bits, motherhood sometimes bores me to tears.
But, as I gritted my teeth and carried on pushing that wretched swing, I realised three startling truths about being a mother.
Firstly, that - unique to our generation - we are gripped by the terror that we're not Good Mothers.
Secondly, it struck me that so-called Good Mothers can be downright bad for their children. Over-anxious and over-ambitious for their offspring, they risk making them feel like failures. Good Mothers don't just want the best for their children: in their minds, if their sons and daughters are not super-brains with armfuls of certificates, then what have all their maternal sacrifices been for?
The third horrifying truth is that, far from supporting each other, we mothers are always trying to find fault with each other.
We openly police each other - desperate to find a mother who's not as good as us, so we won't feel so bad.
And it's so utterly unfair - because, let's face it, no one hurls criticism like this at fathers.
Go into a pub or the gym and you won't find men agonising with each other about whether they're Good Fathers. After all, what constitutes a good father? Someone who shows up at the birth and is around to read the occasional bedtime story.
So where did it all go wrong? Well, I blame my mother and her generation of feminists. They fed us the belief that we could have it all - and we can't. All we've been left with is a sense of failure.
Does admitting that being a a mother isn't always the greatest job in the world make you a bad parent? Soon after I was born, in 1964, my mother discovered feminism. As a child, one of my earliest memories is of sitting on the stairs and listening open-mouthed as she and her friends - including my schoolteacher - bitched about men in their 'consciousness-raising group'.
Deprived of a career herself because she was at home with the children, my mother raised me to believe that I would be able to work full-time as well as being a mother. After all those marches and all that bra-burning, my mother and her generation were convinced they had sorted everything out for their daughters. We would have it easy. Our male bosses, all raised by feminist mothers, too, would surely be supportive and sympathetic to working mothers.
And that's what I honestly believed, at first.
I studied at the prestigious Harvard Law School. I was even in the same class as Barack Obama. I fell in love and married Michael, who, as a writer working from home, was the perfect partner for an ambitious career woman like me. And then I became a mother - and all my carefully laid plans went up in smoke.
For starters, by the time I hit the workplace, conditions had totally changed. Men used to leave the office on the dot of 6pm and be home for tea. It may be a coincidence, but as soon as women joined the team, the hours became punishingly long.
When Sophie was five months old, I returned - without a shred of guilt - to my job as a defence lawyer, but I soon found I was yearning to be at home with her.
I didn't feel like a bad mother for abandoning her to go back to work. I knew she was having a fabulous time with her father.
Ayelet Waldman (right) became jealous of her husband bringing up their children while she went out to work. The simple truth was that I missed her desperately, and was jealous of Michael for enjoying all the quality time I was missing out on. The turning point came one scorching hot day. I'd been back at work for 12 months and was sitting in my car outside court, gazing longingly at the photo of Sophie I kept in my purse. Calling Michael on my mobile, it was obvious he was too busy for a long chat. He'd just come back from story-time at the library and was about to play in the paddling pool. I realised, in that instant, all that I was missing. That same month I quit my job, and I've worked from home as a writer ever since.
To my shock and horror, though, the feeling of joy at being a stay-at-home mum lasted barely a millisecond. Even though I'd opted to leave my job, I was consumed with guilt. I felt I'd betrayed my mother, feminism and myself. My mother's generation had sacrificed so much to give me opportunities they never had, and I'd thrown them back in their faces. My mother made no secret of the fact that she couldn't understand my decision. She still can't.
But, most unexpected of all, I found being a full-time mother hideously boring!.
And I realised that one of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of some indefinable ideal. A Good Mother is never bored, is she? She is never miserable. A Good Mother doesn't resent looking up from her novel to examine a child's drawing. Career women often want to have it all - but feel as if they are bad mothers for leaving their children while they work. She doesn't stare at the clock in music class, begging to go home. She doesn't hide the finger paints because she can't stand the mess. A Good Mother doesn't just put her children's needs and interests above her own - she actually enjoys doing so. If I wasn't enjoying myself, then I wasn't a Good Mother.
On the contrary, I was a Bad Mother.
I'm convinced that this obsession about being a Good Mother has its roots in feminism. Women of my generation have grown up convinced we'd have exciting careers. But we've realised the workplace isn't conducive to being a working mother. We've either quit to become full-time mothers, or we've carried on with our careers compromised by the pull of children at home. Either way, we've been forced to make huge sacrifices. And so we become eaten up with anxiety. We've given up so much - either by quitting or being torn two different ways - that we feel we'd better jolly well be Good Mothers and have perfect children. Otherwise what was it all for?
To my shame, I've been guilty of trying too hard to be a Good Mother - and overloading my children with my unfair expectations. Our kitchen drawers are brimming over with abandoned learning flash cards; Baby Einstein DVDs gather dust in our television cabinets, and our children's toy chests are littered, at their lowest levels, with educational mobiles, sports gloves and broken violin bows.
Bad mothers? Finding motherhood boring is ok, says author Ayelet Waldman I'm ashamed to admit that when my wonderful, funny, clever, charming son Zeke was diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), I was bitterly disappointed in him. It's one of the ugliest emotions I've ever felt.
Other people's children made their musical debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic. They did quadratic equations in their heads while they were still in nappies. And that was what my children were supposed to be like. Even before I had them, I knew they would be brilliant. They would be plucked from their school rooms and taken to the gifted class.
They would play Mozart at age three. They would shine brighter and do better than any other child. There was no room in my life for something like ADHD.
After Zeke was diagnosed, I became insanely jealous of those smug mothers with super-gifted children. Why couldn't my child be like that? Now, when I look at my lovely son, I feel terribly guilty that I could ever have considered him a disappointment - and of the damage I could have done to him had I not snapped out of it.
The most toxic thing a parent can do is allow their delight and pride in their children to be spoiled by disappointment, by frustration when the children fail to live up to expectations formed before they were even born - expectations that have nothing to do with them and everything to do with the parent's own ego.
Quite simply, trying too hard to be a Good Mother can be bad for our children.
Motherhood has become a hideous competition. Instead of supporting each other, mothers love to beat each other up. We seem to believe that if we can find a mother who's more selfish than we are, that makes us a better mother. What is it about parenting that allows us to be so vicious to each other? Normally, we don't feel particularly threatened about the choices other people make. You live in the country, I live in the town. I might even tell a friend I'd be bored by your lifestyle. But I'd never stop you on the street and tell you to move.
Child's play: Allowing youngsters to be themselves and not being disappointed if they are not fiercely intelligent is key to being a 'good mother'
Seeing another mother's different approach to parenting raises the possibility that you've made a mistake with your child.
We simply can't tolerate that because we fear that any mistake, no matter how minor, could have devastating consequences.
So we proclaim the superiority of our own choices. We've lost sight of the fact that people have preferences.
And since mothers discovered the internet and launched hundreds of 'Mummy Sites', it's open season. In 2006, an academic study showed that women are 25 times more likely to be the targets of malicious online attacks than men. We say things online that we'd never dream of saying to people's faces.
The truth is that all of us have our faults, because mothering is not a perfect science.
Sure, I've made mistakes - terrible ones, from forgetting to invite the Tooth Fairy to visit to failing to turn up at school when the children are putting on a show. But I still believe I'm a good enough mother - and that, honestly, is good enough for my children.
None of them are grand chess masters and they'll probably never win a Nobel Prize. But, when I look at my amazing children, I realise I can't have done that bad a job.
It's time we all accepted ourselves for who we really are: mothers who do our best, and for whom that is good enough. Even if, in the end, our best turns out to be, simply, not bad.
• Bad Mother, A Chronicle Of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities And Occasional Moments Of Grace, by Ayelet Waldman, is published by Doubleday.
EXCERPT:
No one wants to be called a Bad Mother - but do Good Mothers actually do a better job?
Not so, says Ayelet Waldman, who argues that no woman is a perfect mother, and the sooner someone stands up for Bad Mothers the better.
Ayelet, a 44-year-old lawyer turned writer, lives with her husband, novelist Michael Chabon, 46, and their four children, Sophie, 14, Zeke, 11, Rosie, seven, and Abe, six. She says:
Breaking the ranks of motherhood: Ayelet Waldman says competitive parents overload their children with unfair expectations.
The moment I first realised I was a Bad Mother, I was in the park with my three-year-old daughter. Sophie was sitting on the swing, a huge smile on her angelic little face as she cried out: 'More, Mummy! More!' By then I'd already been pushing that swing for over half an hour. I was sick to death of it. My arms were aching and my brain was crying out for something - anything - more stimulating than this. Glancing at the mother standing beside me at the swings, I moaned: 'Aren't you just bored out of your mind with this?'
The look of stunned horror on her face froze my blood. She couldn't have looked more outraged if I'd confessed to feeding my daughter neat vodka for breakfast. What had I done that was so terrible? I'd simply admitted that being a mother isn't always the greatest job in the world, and that while I love my children to bits, motherhood sometimes bores me to tears.
But, as I gritted my teeth and carried on pushing that wretched swing, I realised three startling truths about being a mother.
Firstly, that - unique to our generation - we are gripped by the terror that we're not Good Mothers.
Secondly, it struck me that so-called Good Mothers can be downright bad for their children. Over-anxious and over-ambitious for their offspring, they risk making them feel like failures. Good Mothers don't just want the best for their children: in their minds, if their sons and daughters are not super-brains with armfuls of certificates, then what have all their maternal sacrifices been for?
The third horrifying truth is that, far from supporting each other, we mothers are always trying to find fault with each other.
We openly police each other - desperate to find a mother who's not as good as us, so we won't feel so bad.
And it's so utterly unfair - because, let's face it, no one hurls criticism like this at fathers.
Go into a pub or the gym and you won't find men agonising with each other about whether they're Good Fathers. After all, what constitutes a good father? Someone who shows up at the birth and is around to read the occasional bedtime story.
So where did it all go wrong? Well, I blame my mother and her generation of feminists. They fed us the belief that we could have it all - and we can't. All we've been left with is a sense of failure.
Does admitting that being a a mother isn't always the greatest job in the world make you a bad parent? Soon after I was born, in 1964, my mother discovered feminism. As a child, one of my earliest memories is of sitting on the stairs and listening open-mouthed as she and her friends - including my schoolteacher - bitched about men in their 'consciousness-raising group'.
Deprived of a career herself because she was at home with the children, my mother raised me to believe that I would be able to work full-time as well as being a mother. After all those marches and all that bra-burning, my mother and her generation were convinced they had sorted everything out for their daughters. We would have it easy. Our male bosses, all raised by feminist mothers, too, would surely be supportive and sympathetic to working mothers.
And that's what I honestly believed, at first.
I studied at the prestigious Harvard Law School. I was even in the same class as Barack Obama. I fell in love and married Michael, who, as a writer working from home, was the perfect partner for an ambitious career woman like me. And then I became a mother - and all my carefully laid plans went up in smoke.
For starters, by the time I hit the workplace, conditions had totally changed. Men used to leave the office on the dot of 6pm and be home for tea. It may be a coincidence, but as soon as women joined the team, the hours became punishingly long.
When Sophie was five months old, I returned - without a shred of guilt - to my job as a defence lawyer, but I soon found I was yearning to be at home with her.
I didn't feel like a bad mother for abandoning her to go back to work. I knew she was having a fabulous time with her father.
Ayelet Waldman (right) became jealous of her husband bringing up their children while she went out to work. The simple truth was that I missed her desperately, and was jealous of Michael for enjoying all the quality time I was missing out on. The turning point came one scorching hot day. I'd been back at work for 12 months and was sitting in my car outside court, gazing longingly at the photo of Sophie I kept in my purse. Calling Michael on my mobile, it was obvious he was too busy for a long chat. He'd just come back from story-time at the library and was about to play in the paddling pool. I realised, in that instant, all that I was missing. That same month I quit my job, and I've worked from home as a writer ever since.
To my shock and horror, though, the feeling of joy at being a stay-at-home mum lasted barely a millisecond. Even though I'd opted to leave my job, I was consumed with guilt. I felt I'd betrayed my mother, feminism and myself. My mother's generation had sacrificed so much to give me opportunities they never had, and I'd thrown them back in their faces. My mother made no secret of the fact that she couldn't understand my decision. She still can't.
But, most unexpected of all, I found being a full-time mother hideously boring!.
And I realised that one of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of some indefinable ideal. A Good Mother is never bored, is she? She is never miserable. A Good Mother doesn't resent looking up from her novel to examine a child's drawing. Career women often want to have it all - but feel as if they are bad mothers for leaving their children while they work. She doesn't stare at the clock in music class, begging to go home. She doesn't hide the finger paints because she can't stand the mess. A Good Mother doesn't just put her children's needs and interests above her own - she actually enjoys doing so. If I wasn't enjoying myself, then I wasn't a Good Mother.
On the contrary, I was a Bad Mother.
I'm convinced that this obsession about being a Good Mother has its roots in feminism. Women of my generation have grown up convinced we'd have exciting careers. But we've realised the workplace isn't conducive to being a working mother. We've either quit to become full-time mothers, or we've carried on with our careers compromised by the pull of children at home. Either way, we've been forced to make huge sacrifices. And so we become eaten up with anxiety. We've given up so much - either by quitting or being torn two different ways - that we feel we'd better jolly well be Good Mothers and have perfect children. Otherwise what was it all for?
To my shame, I've been guilty of trying too hard to be a Good Mother - and overloading my children with my unfair expectations. Our kitchen drawers are brimming over with abandoned learning flash cards; Baby Einstein DVDs gather dust in our television cabinets, and our children's toy chests are littered, at their lowest levels, with educational mobiles, sports gloves and broken violin bows.
Bad mothers? Finding motherhood boring is ok, says author Ayelet Waldman I'm ashamed to admit that when my wonderful, funny, clever, charming son Zeke was diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), I was bitterly disappointed in him. It's one of the ugliest emotions I've ever felt.
Other people's children made their musical debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic. They did quadratic equations in their heads while they were still in nappies. And that was what my children were supposed to be like. Even before I had them, I knew they would be brilliant. They would be plucked from their school rooms and taken to the gifted class.
They would play Mozart at age three. They would shine brighter and do better than any other child. There was no room in my life for something like ADHD.
After Zeke was diagnosed, I became insanely jealous of those smug mothers with super-gifted children. Why couldn't my child be like that? Now, when I look at my lovely son, I feel terribly guilty that I could ever have considered him a disappointment - and of the damage I could have done to him had I not snapped out of it.
The most toxic thing a parent can do is allow their delight and pride in their children to be spoiled by disappointment, by frustration when the children fail to live up to expectations formed before they were even born - expectations that have nothing to do with them and everything to do with the parent's own ego.
Quite simply, trying too hard to be a Good Mother can be bad for our children.
Motherhood has become a hideous competition. Instead of supporting each other, mothers love to beat each other up. We seem to believe that if we can find a mother who's more selfish than we are, that makes us a better mother. What is it about parenting that allows us to be so vicious to each other? Normally, we don't feel particularly threatened about the choices other people make. You live in the country, I live in the town. I might even tell a friend I'd be bored by your lifestyle. But I'd never stop you on the street and tell you to move.
Child's play: Allowing youngsters to be themselves and not being disappointed if they are not fiercely intelligent is key to being a 'good mother'
Seeing another mother's different approach to parenting raises the possibility that you've made a mistake with your child.
We simply can't tolerate that because we fear that any mistake, no matter how minor, could have devastating consequences.
So we proclaim the superiority of our own choices. We've lost sight of the fact that people have preferences.
And since mothers discovered the internet and launched hundreds of 'Mummy Sites', it's open season. In 2006, an academic study showed that women are 25 times more likely to be the targets of malicious online attacks than men. We say things online that we'd never dream of saying to people's faces.
The truth is that all of us have our faults, because mothering is not a perfect science.
Sure, I've made mistakes - terrible ones, from forgetting to invite the Tooth Fairy to visit to failing to turn up at school when the children are putting on a show. But I still believe I'm a good enough mother - and that, honestly, is good enough for my children.
None of them are grand chess masters and they'll probably never win a Nobel Prize. But, when I look at my amazing children, I realise I can't have done that bad a job.
It's time we all accepted ourselves for who we really are: mothers who do our best, and for whom that is good enough. Even if, in the end, our best turns out to be, simply, not bad.
• Bad Mother, A Chronicle Of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities And Occasional Moments Of Grace, by Ayelet Waldman, is published by Doubleday.
