The Struggle

Everyone once in awhile I read something that just clicks.  It resonates somewhere in my brain or soul or experience.  Someone has put words to something I have been trying to describe or explain.  It’s a great feeling, not only because it means that someone else out there is thinking the same way I am, but also because it allows me to start to put the pieces together, to construct the narrative that had previously been so elusive.

This happened for me today when I stumbled across Jessica Gottlieb’s blog, and her most recent post.  Here is what she wrote:

The really bad moms seldom doubt their actions.

My friends and I, on the other hand, are swimming in self doubt. That’s why we connect online and in person to share struggles and strategies, we educate ourselves, we keep up on the latest research and we take that mixture of academia and practical experience, twirl it around and the result is homespun wisdom. Though mothering can be challenging, most often it’s wonderful, and though it can be isolating, we still have that isolation in common.

Yes, I too have written about the concept of the bad mother, and my own struggles to make sense of it.  What makes a bad mother?  Am I one?  Am I a bad mother some of the time?  A lot of the time?  Isn’t everyone?  How bad is really bad?

As a social worker, I think in terms of context and nuance.  Although part of me is, without doubt, quick to judge, when I can slow my brain down and actually get some perspective, I am usually able to understand a person’s actions in terms of their histories and challenges and relationships and all the other realities that complicate our lives and make it hard for us to function at our best.  (Having said that, there are some decisions that mothers (and fathers) make that are just bad, regardless of the context – I’m talking about abuse and neglect here, but that’s another topic for another time.)

Most of what I see, in the day-to-day of my privileged life as a white woman living in a safe, clean suburb is pretty banal.  Dirty clothes, McDonald’s for lunch, the occasional raised voice, blah blah blah.  It may not be cloth diapers and homemade puree, but it sure doesn’t qualify as bad mothering.  (At least not in my book.  And no, I don’t use cloth diapers nor did I make my own baby food.  Just so you know.)  Yet I still struggle with this concept of the bad mother, and what it means to be a bad mother.  Actually, I should say, bad motherING.  I don’t generally believe in the all-good or all-bad person, but rather bad decisions and bad moments.  But what are those?  How, and when, do we draw the line?

Jessica’s statement that “The really bad moms seldom doubt their actions” made a lot of sense to me. I don’t think bad mothering is about any one decision or action (unless you are beating your child, or something similar).  More often than not, it’s about what we do with, how we understand, and how we move forward with the choices we have made in the past.

It’s about the struggle. 

The word “struggle” generally carries pretty negative connotations, and it often feels that way to me.  I struggled with the decision to leave school after my daughter was born, and then go back several months later, and the process didn’t feel good.  I wasn’t proud of myself for not knowing, for pestering my friends and family, for obsessing over the choice.  And that’s just one example.  Every day feels like a struggle, deciding how to best use each moment (as I write that I realize that my goal should be how to live each moment, or be in each moment, but that’s a struggle too!)  whether I’m with my daughter or getting work done.  Just yesterday I was trying so desperately to work on comps, but just sitting down at the computer was a challenge. Yes, I wish I could extend those moments when I can sit back, enjoy the moment, and just. be.  They happen, but not often enough.

What was I saying?  Oh yes.  It’s about the struggle.  Right.  The extent to which I think about, talk about, doubt myself, constantly revisit my decisions as a mother reminds me how much I care.  How much my daughter, and my family, mean to me.  How much I want to get it right (whatever that means!).  From the little choices (How often should we bathe her?) to the big ones (Daycare?  How many days a week?), the process of making the decision is as important as whatever we ultimately decide. 

A willingness to engage, over and over again, with the daily struggles of motherhood, is, I think, one of the hallmarks of a good mother, of good mothering.  We don’t get it right every time, and maybe not even most of the time, and the process can be damn painful sometimes, but we’re still here, still struggling to do better.