On Modern Motherhood
You can call me crazy.
Call me a traitor. Call me barking mad. (Four kids ages 10 and under and a dachshund puppy will do that to a woman.) Certain preschoolers have been known to call me a party-pooping Mrs. Tomato Head, while certain bigger kids prefer "so old fashioned." And you can call me those things, too. But I just don't dog-pile onto this notion that motherhood has to be so hard. This, from someone who makes a living by perpetuating the popular wisdom about how to raise healthy, happy kids. As a longtime magazine writer, I've interviewed scores of experts for hundreds of articles. I've read all their books. I've even authored a few myself. And did I mention giving birth four times in seven years? That's ten years--an entire decade of my life--of continuous diaper changing. If there were a frequent-changer club, I'd be lounging on a tropical beach right now, courtesy of my accumulated diaper points. And I've come to the conclusion that moms are being sorely misled about the whole business. I'll be the first to agree that we do lots of things that aren't fun -- like having to mop up assorted bodily fluids, cork whines, and answer such questions at midnight as, "Why do you get to sleep with Dad but I have to sleep alone?" Pesky, perhaps, but not hard. We do perform a lot of hard labor. Hoisting the dead weight of a sleeping child from sofa to bed comes to mind. As does scaling mountains of laundry. And running marathons of errands (with miles to go before you sleep). All physical jobs, but not exactly grueling. Momming is surely not as hard as other work I've tried--less monotonous than telephone soliciting, easier on the eyes than proofreading, and, well, not too different from my stints as a cafeteria dishwasher or a resident assistant in the wildest freshman dorm on campus. And I certainly had fun applying for parenthood. My memories of the day I finally got the job are fond, too. Giving birth is a great way to get flowers, and there's nothing like that first sip of Diet Coke after nine months of deprivation (though labor, I grant you, does qualify as excruciatingly hard). It's the prevailing expectations about motherhood that wear a body out. Today's diligent mom can't just do the weekly marketing and drop food down hungry gullets. She must buy fresh and whole and often, scanning labels for lethal transfats and the many disguises of "white poison" (the staple formerly known as sugar) in order to prevent diabetes and heart attacks in her children forty years down the road. She must maintain 24/7 vigilance against random toxins and schools with lousy test scores. She can't holler or swat an errant bottom for fear of bruising a tender psyche (or of being arrested). She certainly shouldn't be letting Jimmy Neutron and Master Chief in the front door. And lucky are the 98.9 percent of moms who have a child gifted in music, sports, dance, acting, mathematics, robotics, chess, emotional intelligence, and/or cancer research-or who just want their kid to get into Harvard. Those good moms also get to arrange car pools to practices six nights a week and take out third or fourth home mortgages to pay for the requisite specialty camps and international competitions. All while staying supermodel fit, thin, stylin' and "balanced" herself, of course, in order to be a positive role model. The very verbs of modern motherhood-scheduling, stimulating, supporting, enriching, enrolling, enhancing, empowering, expanding, coaching, advocating-make me want to call everyone together for a big family nap. |
 
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