Motherhood has always been hard. When I look at maternal and infant mortality rates throughout most of human history, I honestly wonder how women of the past maintained any amount of sanity. Still today, I know there are so many moms in the world who lack basic healthcare and access to safe drinking water. I know that I am living in a time and situation of privilege.
So, what is it about my own experience of motherhood that bothers me? What is it that keeps waking me up in the middle of the night feeling like I need to work for change? I think it’s that so much of my struggle as a mom could have been prevented. So much of it has been unnecessarily imposed from the outside.
The expectations on moms today are higher than ever. One study points out that full-time working moms today spend as much focused time tending to their children as stay-at-home moms did in the 1970s. Psychologists have coined the phrase intensive parenting to describe the parenting style that has become the norm today, that moms will monitor, teach, and entertain their children almost constantly. This change has not decreased the expectation that women will also complete household tasks to the same standard as previous generations.
The way we talk and learn about parenting plays a role in these higher expectations. Mainline parenting advice is oversimplified, strangely moralistic and shaming, and does not factor parental well-being into the equation. The word parent was not even used regularly as a verb until the 1970s. For several decades in the twentieth century, there were essentially two parenting experts with popular books in print, Dr. Spock and Dr. Brazelton. Today, there are hundreds, disseminated online through endless channels, which can lead to confusion, self-doubt, the feeling that you are always doing something wrong. As a mom who hasn’t really slept well in almost 2 years since my daughter’s birth, it is deeply disturbing to me that the parenting shelf at the library has books that say sleep training will permanantly harm my child and others that would basically call me neglectful for not letting my child cry it out.
In response to this onslaught of advice, moms could choose to just ignore all of it and parent their own way, but they will come up against an unprecedented amount of shaming and judgment. Without question, judgmentalism against moms has increased in the past twenty years. If you haven’t yet, go read the New York Times opinion piece Motherhood in the Age of Fear which tells the stories of parents who have been accused of neglecting their children for making perfectly rational parenting choices. A terrifying story was just published several days ago on LetGrow.org about a mom who was investigated by CPS after a neighbor reported her simply because her toddler was overheard crying for an extended period of time one day (the case was later dropped.) It’s not even these extreme cases. A social media post about why kids are spotted without their winter coats on due to changing carseat safety regulations keeps going viral because moms feel such a strong need to defend themselves. My one-year-old constantly pulls off her winter hat and I cannot tell you how many times a complete stranger has said, “Where’s her hat, mom?” or “Shouldn’t she be wearing a hat?” This climate of policing parents really wears on you over time.
The support for moms is also lacking. Where once people had a village of family and lifelong friends to help out, today people move frequently and end up parenting alone with little help. In just a few generations, there has been a shift from parenting viewed as a societal task to an individual one. Childcare costs, which have risen disproportionately to income, also play a big role.
All of this is just skimming the surface of the problems. Shifting values also play a role. Economic changes play a role. Changes in religion and spirituality play a role. All of these factors are ones I would like to explore in the future.
I don’t know if moms are okay. I spend a lot of my days either in conversation with moms or observing them at places like the local library. To be honest, a lot of moms do not seem okay. I see exhaustion, burnout, overwhelm, low confidence, general unhappiness. My conversations reveal that moms feel isolated, misunderstood, invisible. Is this the way it has to be, simply because of the nature of motherhood? I don’t buy it. I think something is off, something that can be fixed.
It’s estimated that today in the U.S., between 10 and 20 percent of moms develop postpartum depression or anxiety, also known as perinatal mood disorders. I am one of those women. It would be convenient to believe this is simply a hormonal or chemical imbalance, nothing more, but I know that would be extremely reductive, at least in my case. I am sure biology played a role, but I also look back and see so many elements of disenfranchised grief, disillusionment, and gaslighting in my story. So many things that could have been avoided or prevented.
The messages are off. The expectations are off. The challenges are ramping up. The support is not there.
I want to change it. I’m not sure how I will, but I’m going to try.
Light Up Moms 