I have nothing against mothers. I have one of my own, and I love her to death.
Its the new fangled urban educated mommy-blogger types (I am not blind to irony, ok?) that get my hackles up. While its understandable that new moms may want to gush with awe and sound completely incredulously giddy about the fact that they have created something so beautiful inside of their belly. It IS indeed an overwhelming experience, more surreal than anything else you have or will experience, yet ...get a grip! Lets attribute to it its due importance but not lose perspective!
The one refrain I hear, in person and on blogs, is about how being a mom has made them less selfish. How now when she sees war- crimes and child soldiers, she weeps like never before. How collective mommy hearts break when they think of the future of the earth and loss of humanity. Now suddenly, when there is a fair (if distant ) possibility that their precious son will be a child soldier or that their daughter will be molested on the city streets or at a party (very likely), they want to protest? If I hear this "I-am-now-a-more-selfless-person" argument one more time, I will wipe that understanding smile off my face and scream! You have not become less selfish, you have become MORE so! If you hadn't shed a tear thus far at the photo of a child's dead body after a bombing, if you hadn't paused to think about the growing scarcity of water or clean air, if you hadn't questioned the impotent education system or despaired over the state of the world in general. If you waited until you had a personal stake in the future of the world, that's telling of selfishness, not the other way around. What's saddest is that this argument is made by some of the most giving, friendly and kind women I know. I want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them and remind them that they were not selfish bitches but perfectly normal, healthy, concerned individuals in their pre-momy days too!
My purely armchair psychological reading of this need to attribute a "higher" meaning to mommyhood comes from a deep need for validation. For many urban mommies, especially those with college degrees, those who have had strong identities as working professionals and especially those (like me) who are first generation working women in their families , there remain unresolved conflicts over their decisions to become a parent. The emotional and biological tug that brought us to the thresh-hold of maternity is also the one that took us away from everything that we built so far- often purely on our own merit and steam. By the rules of the the world in which we live, we are valued for our contribution as working professionals. We are cheered on as a person who expresses herself on the public stage without fear. Our individuality is appreciated, applauded and sometimes rewarded. Then as suddenly as the backdrop in a stage production, the scene changes. We are now in the same league as the "everywoman", modern yet primitive, struggling to feed the child, negotiating our tired bodies around their timetables. Suddenly there is no one cheering us on as we go, days and nights melting into one. The tired old MBA cliche "paradigm shift" fits so aptly, its disturbing. There are no metrics to measure success as a mother. To our trained and structured minds, this is scary. Its a new game but one that no one set the rules for. We do what we know best, use the rules we had learned earlier to play this new game...and that, we are smart enough to know, will not work either. So we do the next best thing. We take what we have, and give it a new spin. We distance ourselves from the stereotype of the self-absorbed mother, mired in domestic drab, we spit and shine and make ourselves a new image...one that's more "appealing", we shout from rooftops that we are not selfish- we are, as always, ready to take on the world.
Its the new fangled urban educated mommy-blogger types (I am not blind to irony, ok?) that get my hackles up. While its understandable that new moms may want to gush with awe and sound completely incredulously giddy about the fact that they have created something so beautiful inside of their belly. It IS indeed an overwhelming experience, more surreal than anything else you have or will experience, yet ...get a grip! Lets attribute to it its due importance but not lose perspective!
The one refrain I hear, in person and on blogs, is about how being a mom has made them less selfish. How now when she sees war- crimes and child soldiers, she weeps like never before. How collective mommy hearts break when they think of the future of the earth and loss of humanity. Now suddenly, when there is a fair (if distant ) possibility that their precious son will be a child soldier or that their daughter will be molested on the city streets or at a party (very likely), they want to protest? If I hear this "I-am-now-a-more-selfless-person" argument one more time, I will wipe that understanding smile off my face and scream! You have not become less selfish, you have become MORE so! If you hadn't shed a tear thus far at the photo of a child's dead body after a bombing, if you hadn't paused to think about the growing scarcity of water or clean air, if you hadn't questioned the impotent education system or despaired over the state of the world in general. If you waited until you had a personal stake in the future of the world, that's telling of selfishness, not the other way around. What's saddest is that this argument is made by some of the most giving, friendly and kind women I know. I want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them and remind them that they were not selfish bitches but perfectly normal, healthy, concerned individuals in their pre-momy days too!
My purely armchair psychological reading of this need to attribute a "higher" meaning to mommyhood comes from a deep need for validation. For many urban mommies, especially those with college degrees, those who have had strong identities as working professionals and especially those (like me) who are first generation working women in their families , there remain unresolved conflicts over their decisions to become a parent. The emotional and biological tug that brought us to the thresh-hold of maternity is also the one that took us away from everything that we built so far- often purely on our own merit and steam. By the rules of the the world in which we live, we are valued for our contribution as working professionals. We are cheered on as a person who expresses herself on the public stage without fear. Our individuality is appreciated, applauded and sometimes rewarded. Then as suddenly as the backdrop in a stage production, the scene changes. We are now in the same league as the "everywoman", modern yet primitive, struggling to feed the child, negotiating our tired bodies around their timetables. Suddenly there is no one cheering us on as we go, days and nights melting into one. The tired old MBA cliche "paradigm shift" fits so aptly, its disturbing. There are no metrics to measure success as a mother. To our trained and structured minds, this is scary. Its a new game but one that no one set the rules for. We do what we know best, use the rules we had learned earlier to play this new game...and that, we are smart enough to know, will not work either. So we do the next best thing. We take what we have, and give it a new spin. We distance ourselves from the stereotype of the self-absorbed mother, mired in domestic drab, we spit and shine and make ourselves a new image...one that's more "appealing", we shout from rooftops that we are not selfish- we are, as always, ready to take on the world.
2 comments:
Well said PF.
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