Looking more deeply into Motherhood: A Book Review
My friend Aimee was reading this book, I was a really good mom BEFORE I had kids by Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile and honestly, this is exactly what I needed to read right now and can't put it down.
I'm not a huge fan of how to raise your children books. Why, since everyone and their dog who has kids seems to read the latest, trendiest ways to raise your kids and change their sleep patterns and make them magically do things that only that PhD from Harvard who knows how to give you instructions in his 100 page, 20 dollar miracle can do? Well, 1/ There are a lot of trees wasted on that kind of BS when you could just go experience parenthood yourself or look it up on the internet, which is usually what I do- read other mommy blogs and other experiences, which have helped me WAY more than a PhD from Harvard and 2/ Children are not absolute beings and 3/ I think a lot of my parenting style doesn't even really have to do with the child as such, the problem is myself- I clearly love my children to smithereens but they should have hired someone else for the job, in fact, what in the world were they thinking when they hired ME to be mommy? But, that's just the thing, there are no interviews, no trial periods, no sick days, no end of the year bonuses and when you sign up for the job of motherhood, it's a lifetime contract for a job that may or may not suit your abilities.
When it was just Gab, life was good, life was easy. He would sit in the kitchen with me as I did my daily routine, he would let me study and read while playing with his cars, and we would go out to cafés and shopping. Enter the toddler years and life got a bit tougher and enter the toddler years plus a baby sister and life made it a whole lot tougher for me to find my identity in there. Soon, I found myself submersed in mommy stuff ALL the time. Laundry, lunches, diapers, naps, non-naps, spills, tears, cooking, cleaning, one is crying while the other is shouting 'Poop' at the top of his lungs and if I don't take him in the next minute you just don't want to be there. Some days when we are home with the kids, I feel a tension of my will versus theirs and it ends up creating this bubble that is filled with so much stress that at the end of the day, it explodes.
Some women love the job. They fill their days with carefully planned out hands on activities and are able to put their desires aside to consecrate all of their time to their children. But, what about their house and their laundry and the cooking? See, we just cannot get it all done unless we're June Cleaver and let me remind you that she was a FICTIONAL character. And, I am no June Cleaver. Excuse me for being selfish but I did have a life before having children and if I'm frustrated now with motherhood (with the obvious disclaimer that I do love my children), it's only because I am in an uphill battle, everyday, to preserve any notion of my pre-child self that I can still grab before the sticky peanut-butter and jelly fingers of my 3 year old snatches it up for good. Sitting in the bathroom as we speak is a New Yorker from December 2006- I am STILL trying to get through it. And, sitting in a nice, neat stack in our living room is a pile of freshly printed, non-crinkled new New Yorkers received since that date that I'll probably get to in a year. I hate admitting that almost as much as I hate admitting that sometimes, I fail miserably at my job as mom.
Pardon my French but women can be bitches. All I hear at the playground when I complain about our tantrum prone son is "Oh, our little Junebug never throws tantrums, she is the perfect angel" Or when I talk of Gab's most recent dislike for anything green (or orange, or red, or anything that isn't ice cream for that matter), I get "Oh, not little Tommy, he eats everything right up and never even wants dessert and asks for more veggies!" GIVE. ME. A. BREAK. I think these women must have been watching WAY too much June Cleaver and think that they are in a fictional version of life. Under that superficiality, which is justified through society's pressure for a mommy to do her job correctly and be a good mother (tantrums and wanting ice cream both being signs of a bad mother), there is a truth that we all have bad days and that our kids are not perfect and that we don't necessarily have to like our job.
I think women are also afraid to speak up of their own feelings about motherhood in fear that someone will say 'Well, you got yourself into it, so don't complain'. What are we supposed to do, just not be mothers? I have gotten lots of 'Well, you got yourself into this, you had them two years apart' People, I'm asking for support, not judgment!
I love the benefits of those two, beautiful children, but honestly, I am not the perfect person for the job and wish my whole day could be spent loving my kids and satisfying them as well as satisfying my own intellectual curiosity and the person I was pre-mommy days. Instead of reading a book on how to stimulate active thoughts in your toddler with the latest technique in black and white imagery with classical music in the background while getting him to sleep at night with the sheep counting method given by Mr PhD at Harvard, I am going to tackle the problem where the problem is- with myself- and try to confront those things that the June Cleavers out there don't want to confront so that I can be the best mommy I can be for the job.
If you are a mommy, go get the book. If you are a mommy of 2, stop reading, go to Amazon right away. If you are a mommy of 3 or more- why don't you already have The Book and how do you survive?
