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Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
ON MOMS AND ELECTIONS 2004-10-10 As they do every four years, campaign strategists and television pundits have decided to pay attention to "moms." Four years ago it was "soccer moms." This year, it's "security moms." Of course, all the strategists want is to secure the votes of "moms"; and all the pundits want is to have something to talk about. I don't think either group really cares about "moms" because neither group really understands what it is to be a "mom" and, other than talking about them once every four years, neither group does much to help them. I became a mom for the first time when most moms stayed home to raise their children and the term "stay-at-home" mom was simply a redundancy. In the seventies, with the advent of women's liberation, there was a new focus on moms because women were fed up with their restrictive roles and lack of satisfaction. As dads worked longer hours and families moved away from grandparents and other extended family members, moms became more and more isolated and many felt they were going slightly crazy at home. At the same time, more and more child development and parenting books were coming out with reams of advice. A mom could no longer just follow her instincts, nor the advice of her own mother. Instead, she felt pressure to follow the advice of the "experts." As the amount of do's and don'ts increased, moms became demoralized, feeling less and less competent even as they struggled to achieve motherhood perfection outlined in the self-help books. Then, of course, many moms decided to go to work. The frustration of being isolated with children, working hard to be "supermom," and not getting the recognition (as moms never do), many women opted for the recognition and rewards that only come with a paycheck. Still others found themselves single after a bitter divorce, or unable to survive on just the husband's paycheck, and went to work out of necessity. In either case, for some the job of mom just got more difficult as women struggled to do well at work and make up for time away from their children when they got home. The problem of loneliness may have been solved, only to be replaced with those of guilt and stress. While women may have more opportunities today, ranging from stay-at-home-mom to high powered career woman with or without children (and with or without husband) moms still are largely ignored by society, except when society wants to blame them for the behavior of their children, marketers work to convince them to spend more and more money on their children, or politicians ask them for their vote. Mothers, it seems, are either idealized and put on a pedestal, or demonized by the likes of Dr. Laura who regularly chastises them when they juggle job and home. I say, it's time someone acknowledged just how difficult the job of mother is. It's about time we stopped blaming, pandering, or idealizing. It's time for a little truth. Mothering is the most difficult job in the world, and there is no salary. Oh sure, there are those thrills of hearing first words and watching first steps; the excitement of the first day at school and the first unaccompanied swim across the pool; the joy of a young adult's acceptance into college and of a son or daughter falling in love and getting married. But all of these happy moments must be balanced with the nights spent comforting a colicky baby, the tantrums, defiance, spills, screams, tumbles, accidents, hospital visits, childhood diseases, disappointments, broken hearts, rejections and rebellions, not to mention the expenses that go with every stage of childhood and adolescence. Motherhood is a 24 hour a day job with no time off, unless you go to work and then you only shift from one set of problems to another. With motherhood, there is very little rest and relaxation, sleep, quiet, order, organization, structure, time and tranquility. There is exhaustion, frustration, helplessness, fear, sadness, anger, and constant messes to clean up. Don't get me wrong, I would do it all over again, but it would still be just as difficult. What I would like to see is more appreciation for mothers and less pressure put on them. As a psychotherapist I know that there is a higher incidence of depression in mothers with children under the age of six than there is in any other population. That should tell us something: we are not supporting and taking care of our mothers. We give them one day a year, and then we forget about them unless we want to sell them something or ask for their vote. We write books or articles or produce TV news segments for moms on how to make their own baby food, how to babyproof their houses, how to increase their child's intelligence, how to protect their child from every possible trauma or hazard, how to get their child into the best preschool, how to enroll their children in afterschool activities, how to form playgroups, how to make a playdate.....the list is endless. My daughter took snack to her son's preschool one day last week and she was told to bring something in every food group (give me a break!), so she brought blueberry muffins, celery with peanut butter and the ingredients for smoothies. The muffins fell onto the floor when her son ran headlong into her so the teacher threw them out; the celery was deemed a choking hazard because of the strings; and the kids looked at the smoothies like they were a foreign substance. She had spent a good deal of time trying to come up with something she thought would be appealing to the kids and comply with the food group rule and it failed. All I could think of was how hard it is to be a mother and how much harder it is when you have to follow so many rules. Couldn't the muffins just be brushed off? Would ingesting a little dirt really hurt a three year old who has probably had far worse things in his mouth? Haven't they heard of the "ten second rule?" Kids have eaten celery and peanut butter for decades; when did it become a choking hazard? And why the fancy drink? Whatever happened to milk? For that matter, when my kids were in preschool they had crackers and Kool-Aid and nobody ended up the worse for it. So I'm going to listen carefully to the candidates this year and seriously consider voting for the one who doesn't pander to women just during election season, but instead proposes something outrageous that would make life a little easier for mothers. Here are some examples: a tax credit for every grandparent who travels to spend two weeks helping out a new mom or an old mom who is at the end of her rope; a "babysit America" program where teenagers and college students get tuition credits for helping out a beleaguered mom; "family leave" time for mom where the government pays a trusted relative or friend to care for her kids so she can "leave" one day a week; and two weeks paid vacation every year to the tropical island of her choice. I know; it will never happen. But I can dream that one day this country will stop the sappy worshiping of motherhood in the abstract and start realizing that this culture is not very mom-friendly. The bottom line is this: mothering is, in my opinion, the hardest job there is, and all mothers - the working ones and the stay-at-home ones - could use a little help, a lot of understanding, and a few less experts telling them what to do. |