Some Random Thoughts on Being a Mom

[This was not what I intended to write about next, and it is a bit off topic for what I mostly intended my blog to be about. Still, I've been thinking about it enough that I wanted to write about it to get it off of my mind.]

As I recently cruised around the internet, reading this and that, I found a piece someone had written about women who hated being moms, which cited examples from various sites that the author had Googled using the phrase "I hate being a mom." Of course I had to go check it out for myself, since I'm just as much of a rubbernecker as the next person. But I didn't have the heart to read more than a tiny sample of the results--it just made me kind of sad.

Parenthood is hard, and I'd even be willing to go out on a limb and say the kind of stay-at-home parenthood traditionally associated with moms is particularly hard. Kids themselves are demanding, and as soon as you master one phase of development they change on you. I also found that a kind of anti-glamour descended over me when I became a stay-at-home mom (not that I was ever glamorous to begin with)--I could be in a perfectly kid-free situation, not obviously in my role as a mom, but once someone found out that I was a stay-at-home mom, it was as if some mysterious enervating ray sucked out their ability to treat me as a human being. I'd either get the politely glazing-over stare of the person devoting their mental energy to the quickest escape route out of our conversation, or I'd get the overeager condescension of the person treating me as if I were some sort of domestic saint for giving it all up to nurture a child. Meh.

For the record, my decision to be a stay-at-home mom was mostly based on economics and control-freakhood. When I got pregnant with Son #1, I crunched the numbers and figured out that most of my take-home pay would be required to hire a nanny (and other child-care options were, if memory serves, not easy to find where we were living at the time). I also knew that, of necessity, I would be the parent who would be taking off of work to go to routine doctor appointments or to stay home when the baby was sick, since my husband worked across the bay in a far more demanding job than mine. So my circumstances involved a choice, if not a fabulous one--stay at home with the baby and give up work, or try to do both and most likely feel like I wasn't doing a great job at either. More than once since then I've been grateful that I had a choice at all, since I know many moms who have to "do it all," whether they feel like they're "having it all" or not.

I like being a mom, even if I don't like all the parts of it. I'd advise anyone who wants to try it to develop a sense of humor and some thick skin--there is almost no way to get through having your child throw up on the bed you just changed (and the last set of clean sheets in the house) without laughing about it. It also helps to not take it personally. Just as your child didn't intentionally get stomach flu to keep you up at night, much of what they do that annoys you isn't done just to drive you crazy. 

You also have to accept that no matter what you do as a mom, someone is going to think you're wrong. At times it will be your kid, who thinks your "no ice cream before dinner" policy is tyranny, or your husband, who thinks you're too picky because you refuse to let the kids go bath-less three days running in the summer, or your mother-in-law (or maybe your mom), who drops broad hints that maybe your kid is spoiled because you let him have so many toys. It will definitely be the person behind you in line at Target, no matter whether you give in to your kid's temper tantrum over a pack of gum to shut him up or you tough it out over his 75-decibel wails. To take an example from my own life, I know that as soon as my  boys' hair gets long enough for my mother-in-law to think it is cute, my own father will start muttering about how they look like "damn hippies." Again, this is an area in which a sense of humor will really come in handy. 

The part I like the best, however, is going to sound a bit weird, especially given my aforementioned control-freakhood. That is that ultimately, I am not in complete control. I didn't get to decide who my kids are, and their personalities and their actions are often still a surprise to me. Son #1 can dive into a book and read for hours; he likes to write little fan-fiction scripts featuring himself and his friends in whatever game or book is his current favorite. Son #2 has a more artistic bent, which mainly expresses itself in building things out of paper and tape. I got him to finish his mission report in school last year by promising him that he could build a model of the mission after he finished. (Son #1 wouldn't have built a model of his mission if I had threatened him with the loss of his beloved Xbox.) And Son #3 is both charming and confident--he dismissed me on his second day of camp this week as soon as I dropped him off because he wanted to go run and play with the other kids, rather than having me lurking around cramping his style. To learn to be mom to three boys who have as many differences as similarities, I had to learn and grow myself.

But honestly, I don't believe motherhood is for everyone. (Obviously not, if the internet is exploding with testimonials from women who hate motherhood.) And I guess I'm a little horrified at the idea that there are all these moms posting often barely-literate wishes that their children would disappear or hadn't been born. My kids didn't ask me to have them, and if I didn't know what I was getting into (I didn't, even though I thought I did), it wasn't their fault. I guess all I can say without getting judgmental is if you don't have kids and think you don't want to--then DON'T. If you already have kids and aren't happy that you do--then I hope you try to do something about it more constructive than griping about it on the internet.

[To both of my regular readers, thanks for your patience. I'll be back to amusing anecdotes about my domestic disorganization in the next post, I promise.]