Parenting and Family Life: March 2005 Archives

Phooey, He Said It First!

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I have been wanting to blog on Judith Warner's article in Newsweek, Mommy Madness that Peony mentioned before, for some time now. But I have this baby that will not let me put him down, and kids and life and stuff. Not only that but Greg Popcak beat me to the punch when he said:

But as I read the article above, I realized that "Perfect Madness" is not about being a perfect mom. Its about trying to look like a perfect mom to everybody else. Books like this blame motherhood for a problem that has nothing to do with motherhood. Rather, the problem described by Perfect Madness has everything to do with the idea that "my identity is tied up in getting the approval of my peers for how much I can accomplish." That's not motherhood, boys and girls. That's secular feminism. Or, to be perfectly Catholic about it, its just the plain old sin of pride riding aroud in an SUV.
I know it's lame to say "I meant to say that", but I was thinking the same thing. Oh well, Greg words it better than I ever could.

Like Greg, it took me a bit to put my finger on exactly what bothered me about this article. I know I am somewhat of a zealot when it comes to my "I'm my kids' Mom" philosphy. I guess that's a symptom of being the daughter of a deacon developmental psychologist whose research focused on Daycare Syndrome and Absent Father Syndromeat one point.

So, when I put my militant SAHMism aside and tried to read the article with an open mind, there were some points I agreed with. For example:

Some of the mothers appeared to have lost nearly all sense of themselves as adult women. They dressed in kids' clothes—overall shorts and go-anywhere sandals. They ate kids' foods. They were so depleted by the affection and care they lavished upon their small children that they had no energy left, not just for sex, but for feeling like a sexual being. "That part of my life is completely dead," a working mother of two told me. "I don't even miss it. It feels like it belongs to another life. Like I was another person."

I am sure we can all relate to that. Also being a SAHM is very, very lonely. Many women attempt to thwart lonliness by attending Mom's playgroups and whatnot or simply going back to work. Ms. Warner thinks the problem is a lack in decent daycare or preschools:
We need incentives like tax subsidies to encourage corporations to adopt family-friendly policies.

We need government-mandated child care standards and quality controls that can remove the fear and dread many working mothers feel when they leave their children with others.

We need flexible, affordable, locally available, high-quality part-time day care so that stay-at-home moms can get a life of their own. This shouldn't, these days, be such a pipe dream. After all, in his State of the Union message, President Bush reaffirmed his support of (which, one assumes, includes support of funding for) "faith-based and community groups." I lived in France before moving to Washington, and there, my elder daughter attended two wonderful, affordable, top-quality part-time pre-schools, which were essentially meant to give stay-at-home moms a helping hand. One was run by a neighborhood co-op and the other by a Catholic organization. Government subsidies kept tuition rates low. A sliding scale of fees brought some diversity. Government standards meant that the staffers were all trained in the proper care of young children. My then 18-month-old daughter painted and heard stories and ate cookies for the sum total in fees of about $150 a month. (This solution may be French—but do we have to bash it?)

We need new initiatives to make it possible for mothers to work part-time (something most mothers say they want to do) by creating vouchers or bigger tax credits to make child care more affordable, by making health insurance available and affordable for part-time workers and by generally making life less expensive and stressful for middle-class families so that mothers (and fathers) could work less without risking their children's financial future. Or even, if they felt the need, could stay home with their children for a while.

In general, we need to alleviate the economic pressures that currently make so many families' lives so high-pressured, through progressive tax policies that would transfer our nation's wealth back to the middle class. So that mothers and fathers could stop running like lunatics, and start spending real quality—and quantity—time with their children. And so that motherhood could stop being the awful burden it is for so many women today and instead become something more like a joy.


I don't agree. Not that even I in my total philosophy that mothers should stay home and take care of their kids have a problem with toddlers being at preschool a couple of mornings a week. But part of the problem is being a SAHM is no longer the norm. For example, my mother lives in the suburbs. When I visit and decide to take a walk around the development, it is like a ghost town. Everyone is at work during the day. When you go to a Mom's group, you literally have to seek out bizarre like minded, extreme SAHM people as opposed to just seeing mothers and their children around. Families are no longer together to help. Even when some of us live closer to each other, for example, my mother-in-law was never a SAHM, so there is little back up and support there either. The average extended family is not the support system it used to be.

Not only is physical/emotional support for Moms whaning, motherhood is simply not respected.

Neither do we need to pat the backs of working mothers, or "reward" moms who stay at home, or "valorize" motherhood, generally, by acknowledging that it's "the toughest job in the world."
Actually we do need that. Not as a mission statement, but as a culture. we need an appreciation that motherhood is hard work and that if you support and appreciate healthy, happy mothers, you are supporting the next generation. Motherhood is seen as something that happens when you were too stupid to get better info on birth control devices. Kids are seen as some kind of disease and the end of a happy life. If that were not so, we would not kill them in the womb. Now I cannot change societies perspectives, but I think the perspectives have a lot to do with the problems many Moms have.

The other aspect I think that is missing from the article is the Christian one. motherhood is a work of service. It is the result of love and it is God's work. this is not to deny how hard it is, but the flip side is it brings much joy as well. There are very few things in this world if at all that are worth anything that do not have pain attached. Look at Jesus on the Cross. Labor and birth. Night and day. Again, this is not a solution always, but perspective helps. When you have a better sense of purpose about motherhood being a part of the bigger picture, rather than just simply something you decided to try out, these issues may seem like more of a struggle that you need to work through rather than a hopeless pit of bad choices and despair.


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