The Alien Planet of Motherhood - Families in the Loop

~By Jennifer Edwards, Imperfect Mommy

?You?re MEAN!?

?I HATE YOU!?

?But EVERYBODY else gets to ? ?

?You NEVER let me ? ?

?It?s not FAIR!?

If I had a dime for every time one of my kids screamed these words at me, well, I?d be a whole lot wealthier. Most days, these accusations just roll off my back. On particularly bad days, they leach the joy of parenting right out of me and force me to question my whole approach to motherhood.

I feel like the anti-expert on motherhood. In the professional world, at least you get to achieve expert status after demonstrating remarkable proficiency in some skill. Motherhood is different. I, like most moms I assume, am just making it up as I go.

Parenting is the most important thing I?ve ever done in my life and I want to get it right. But I don?t even know if there is a right way to parent. I want to make the right decisions and raise my kids to be honorable adults. But what if I don?t? What if my kids turn out to be monsters?

Early on in my parenting journey, I sought solace in expert opinions. But for each book I read about the right way to parent, there were several others that advocated an approach entirely different. It doesn?t help that, at any particular moment, there are any number of critical decisions to make: breastfeed or bottle feed, rock to sleep or cry it out, vaccinate or abstain, home school or public school or private school. And there are endless Internet discussions citing endless evidence that making the wrong decision can be detrimental to your child. No pressure there.

I think that all this pressure on parents to make the right decision only feeds into our fears of falling short. It is this fear that can make us intolerant of those who parent differently than we do. For example, if another mom is breastfeeding for 18 months, then I might question my own decision to wean my baby at 6 months (or to not breastfeed at all). Cue the vitriolic mommy wars in which moms attack one another, often anonymously on Internet forums, over the most personal of parenting decisions.

In Why Have Kids? author Jessica Valenti describes how the conceptualization of motherhood as ?the most important job in the world? creates immense pressure for moms to be perfect, the implication being that anything less might result in disaster. This ?oppressive standard? to which moms are subjected, she writes, ?is the breeding ground for more guilt, hopelessness, and unhappiness than comfort among American mothers.? And we seem to be sharpening the arrows of our own suffering into a fine point and aiming our outrage at other moms.

Most of us initially come to motherhood with little or no job-related skills. There are no college degrees in motherhood and no internships. Becoming a mom for the first time feels a bit like being dropped on an alien planet and being required to learn the culture, customs, and language as quickly as possible. At the same time, we are constantly being evaluated and judged on how well we are meeting an impossible standard.

So let?s set the record straight. Parenting is really hard. It?s an unending marathon rife with little failures along the way. I?ve decided that, from now on, rather than aiming for perfection, I?m going to start concentrating on being a mom who?s just good enough. Maybe good enough will be just right.

[Photo Credit: Anekoho/FreeDigitalPhotos.net]

Source: http://familiesintheloop.com/new-and-noteworthy/11513/learning-how-to-be-a-good-mothe/

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