Natural Born Mothers

Lately I’ve been sensitive to this sort of back-handed compliment, “Wow, four kids. I’m sure I could never do it, it would make me crazy. You must just be a sort of natural at it.”

It’s not just the assumption of what four kids is like — I think that as we are reaching certain hallmarks of self-sufficiency — all of them able to eat by themselves and out of diapers, getting closer to the fourth being able to dress himself (and brothers able to help him through the tough spots), two of them able to do their own laundry, prepare lunchboxes, read out loud to the younger ones — and their all getting along pretty well most of the time, well able to entertain one another, this is the least work I’ve had to do since starting the whole parenting gig (hence even the attempt to write regularly!)

More rigorous self-scrutiny. I’ve wondered if this comment bugs me because it re-opens old wounds of feeling like people are putting me in this “other” category so they don’t have to address me as a person, can dismiss my feelings. Many years ago I took a prenatal yoga class which involved a lot of support/sharing before we got into the moving our bodies — and I remember talking in the group about flylady.net, which, I told another overwhelmed expectant mother, may look like it’s packaged for someone you’re not, but contains tools, like building routines, doing things fifteen minutes at a time, breaking overwhelming jobs into small steps, that are useful to anybody trying to maintain a home. Two years later I was back in prenatal yoga, the teacher had suddenly become all evangelical about the flylady, and she as much as told me that when she’d first heard about it she’d assumed it was for people like me, you know, housewives, and she had dismissed it.

But you know what? I’m over that, actually. If this were all the “you must just be a natural born mother, unlike me” comment was, I’d just file it under the “dumb, insensitive things people say.” Yeah, they’re missing a whole lot of who I am, my other talents and abilities and interests. Their loss. I am proud of the job I am doing and believe that it does matter. A lot. And it feels good to write that because one of the ways I would magically change the world is to make the idea that the work of making new people and keeping households running matters universally acknowledged and so fundamental to everybody’s world view that it started affecting national policies and the way we run our society. And I realize that I am starting to truly internalize it, the way I want to internalize the “health at every size” ideas so eloquently set out at Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose. And internalizing it is, no doubt, necessary before I can do anything to make it real in the world.

So I hate the idea that motherhood is this in-born, natural capacity one either has or one doesn’t. Because it gives people who are finding it hard an out — an excuse. Maybe the most useful aphorism I’ve gotten from my twelve stepping friends is “You cannot judge your insides by somebody else’s outsides.” I’d like to suggest that a little intimate conversation would quickly reveal that we all find it hard, though we are encouraged to make it look easy and natural and not let the fraying seams show.

If I consider myself a pretty good mother, most days, it’s because I’ve done work at changing behaviors of my own that weren’t working, done work at finding models of connecting with little kids and gently getting them to do the things you need them to. I’ve read carefully, and, dammit, I’ve practiced and practiced and practiced.

Have I experienced some ‘natural’ advantages? My parents were pretty good models, though I don’t do things exactly the way they did. I’ve been pretty confident about the whole project, some lucky combination of faith and temperament. I’m married to someone who is supportive, and shares my vision of how our family is going to work, most of the time. That all helps, along with the willingness to look for the resources we need. But I think the single thing that made a difference was a sense of the importance of it. You meet people all the time who are great parents even though their own were everything from apathetic to abysmal, people who seem to have been told by the whole world that their efforts are worth little, people who haven’t had a lot of models for the kind of parent they want to be, people with crappy partners or no partners at all, but they’ve decided that bringing up their kids well is the most important thing they can do, and they work to do it well.

I am surprised, writing this at the size of this soapbox I’ve climbed up on. I don’t think of myself as a judgmental person. All the issues that news stories and magazines have told us divide mothers, work or stay home, breast or bottle, co-sleep or cry it out, I advocate for people figuring out what works for them. I think it’s really arrogant to presume one solution would work for everyone.

If a friend wants advice, I usually ask a lot of questions, trying to figure out what their own gut feeling is, because trying some solution because somebody else tells you should even when you’re not sure is generally courting disaster. If it’s something like “How long should I let a baby cry before picking it up” you can get “expert” answers from all over the spectrum, but the baby will pick up on ambivalence if you’re feeling conflicted about the answer. Honestly, lots of different approaches work, but they work best when you’re confident and consistent in them.

I try to be a friend the way I try to parent, calling out the strengths, the things I appreciate, because if we build each other’s confidence we are bound to be better parents, better people. And I don’t really believe in criticizing or pointing out failings, because people are aware of those themselves when they’re ready to deal with them. So it is startling to have this judgmental thing bubbling up. I feel strongly about people who just give up on themselves, on their kids. There is no such thing as a natural-born parent, and if you are finding it difficult, if you are having issues, it is your responsibility to start looking for some answers.