Monday, July 31, 2006
Mommies at War
This came up in one of the groups I'm in. It came about from an article I had shared concerning a magazine cover for a parenting magazine. This magazine cover featured a child nursing from his/her mother's breast. This cover created a HUGE uproar. A lot of people were very offended by this cover. My interest in it had to do with another article in Mothering I had read concerning the huge bottle culture in this country. I felt that there is a bit of an anti-breastfeeding vibe here in the U.S. and I felt that the article concerning people's reaction to this cover really showed that. Someone took offense to that feeling that people in the group were against HER because she would not be able to breastfeed. But that's not really what I was concerned about. I was concerned with the fact that parents are not able to parent their children the way they want to. People just cannot mind their own business. Then a member named Barb posted and her post was exactly how I felt. I asked her if I could put her post on this blog and she said that would be okay so here goes:Honestly, I got it from both sides, being a mom who both nursed and
bottle-fed formula. I had plenty of friends who claimed to be in
support of breastfeeding, but wanted me shunted off to another room
when I did it. Since I had twins, that meant even when we went to
visit friends, I spent a large chunk of my time in somebody's office
or spare bedroom awkwardly trying to do something I was still
struggling to do well at home. I had other friends who looked aghast
when I said I was breastfeeding and asked questions like, "But don't
you feel like a COW?!" And then, although no one ever said anything
(probably because I had twins), I often got "the hairy eyeball" from
other people if I shook up a bottle of formula for my kids.
Which, to me, serves to illustrate that the real issue isn't how moms
choose to feed their babies, but the fact that women in general and
mothers in particular are held is such low esteem in our culture that
perfect strangers feel justified in judging us for the decisions we
make, no matter what they may be.
Our media is no help, with their frequent reports about the so-called
"Mommy Wars", wherein we moms are supposedly fighting mama-y-mama over issues like breast vs bottle, working vs stay-at-home, co-sleep vs
cry-it-out, cloth diaper vs disposable, and a host of other issues.
And hey, even the news these days is a business, so I understand that
making the news as juicy as possible helps their bottom line.
But it hurts us moms something awful. Instead of rightfully getting
angry at the sheer audacity of someone who has never met me before,
and who has observed me and my children for as little as a minute or
as long as a whole hour, deciding they know better than I do what is
best for me, my children and my spouse without ever asking me a single
question, it's all too easy to take out my frustration and anger on
other moms.
If we're all angry and feeling unsupported and placed in untenable
situations, perhaps it's because we /are/ unsupported and placed in
untenable situations.
A mom I know was at the grocery store once with her toddler, and by
the time they made it to the check-out, her little girl was getting
fussy. The clerk gave the mom a knowing look and said, "Stay-at-home
mom; she's too used to you being around all the time." The mom
replied, "Actually, I work." And the clerk pulled a 180 and said, "Oh,
she misses you because she's at daycare all the time."
Clearly, no matter what this mom's situation, her daughter's fussiness
was not due to the little girl being bored of being stuck in a cart
and ready to be done with that whole "grocery shopping" business, but
rather because of some deep failure of the mother as a parent. Do our
children's fathers get this kind of treatment? I know mine doesn't.
When my grandmother died a little over a year ago, my boys were 9
months old. I attended the funeral mass and burial with my sister and
her family, while my husband stayed at my dad's (my family lives down
in the Chicago area) watching our boys. After the burial, my husband
drove the boys out to meet me and the rest of the family for a
post-funeral luncheon. He was delayed a bit, and so we'd all already
been seated and ordered our lunches when he arrived. When our server
found out my husband was late because he had spent the morning
watching our boys, I swear she wanted to have him bronzed.
The disparity was amazing to me.
Not that my husband doesn't deserve kudos, because he does - he's a
great dad and a wonderful husband. But really, nobody was looking at
me like I was some rare and precious creature because I stayed at home
with twin boys five days a week - mornings /and/ afternoons. Rather, I
was being alternately accused of "spoiling" my kids by being there for
them "too much", or asked condescending questions like, "So how long
do you think you can manage to just keep doing nothing like that?" As
if keeping up with the needs of twin nine-month-olds is "nothing" -
snort!
Sorry, I digress.
The point though, really, is that as moms, we're all damned if we do,
damned if we don't. If we work, people ask why we bothered to have
children in the first place. If we stay at home, we're freeloaders
and/or '50s-era throwbacks. If we breastfeed, we're "cows", with all
the bovine docility that word implies; if we formula-feed, we don't
care about what's best for our children.
No matter what decisions we moms make, and no matter how carefully we
make them, it's not good enough. Perfect strangers feel absolutely
justified in coming up to us and telling us how we're doing our jobs
wrong. Yes, sometimes those strangers are other moms, but plenty of
the time they're not.
Our culture, for all the lip service they pay to mothers doing "the
most important work in the world" and for all the iconic images of
mothers and motherhood we seem to worship, does not trust mothers to
do what's best for our children.
If we're mad (and I believe we have every right to be mad), that's why.
Because here's a funny thing I've learned, thanks to being a mom to
identical twins: every child is different. What works with one child
doesn't always work as well for another, even if those children were
born to the same parents on the same day through the same birth canal
with the exact same DNA. Our children are unique individuals, and we
moms have to treat them as such.
With my boys, the big surprise was co-sleeping. We never coslept as a
"rule", but there were plenty of times when one or both boys would
wind up sleeping in bed with my husband and I. Honestly, we were so
overwhelmed during those first few months, we all slept where we
landed, within reason, and we didn't much care whose parenting
philosophy approved or didn't approve. By the time my boys were six
months old, Ben had reached a point where he could not fall asleep
with another person with him (with the single exception of nursing to
sleep in our recliner on my lap at bedtime). Meanwhile, Henry often
slept better with someone else (the boys had shared a crib for the
first four months of their lives), and so he went a few months of
starting the night in his crib and switching to our bed when he woke
up for his mid-night feeding (Ben was already skipping that feeding by
that point). At two years of age, Henry still likes to sleep with us
every so often, whereas Ben still simply cannot sleep with anyone
else.
So clearly, if my identical twin boys had such different needs (and
sleep wasn't the only one, it's just the easiest to describe and hits
one of the big "Mommy War" platforms), then doesn't it stand to reason
that kids of different parents in different homes with different
routines are going to have different needs?
It's arrogant in the extreme for anyone to say they know what a child
needs better than that child's parents do. Admittedly, there are
things all children need - shelter, sustenance, love, security. But
beyond that? I defy even an "expert" like Dr. Phil or Dr. Sears or any
of these other people to look at my two identical boys and be able to
tell me for sure which one prefers to cosleep and which one doesn't.
We moms do the best jobs we can with the resources we have, whatever
resources those may be. We read books, magazines, websites; we watch
TV programs which claim to want to inform us; we talk to other
mothers, our mothers, our grandmothers, our neighbors, and we make the
best decisions we're able with whatever information we can find,
wherever we can find it.
The simple truth is, we moms are all on the same side. We love our
children. We want them to grow up happy, strong, smart and kind. I
mean, does any mother /not/ want those things for their children? I
haven't met a single mom yet who wants her children sad, weak, dumb
and mean. It's absurd.
The problem is not other moms, because honestly? Our culture doesn't
"put its money where its mouth is" when it comes to valuing ANY
mothers. There aren't any moms out there who have it easy, whose
choices are truly accepted by our society. We're all criticized for
whatever we're not doing, and those who appear to be doing it all?
They get criticized for trying to be "supermoms" and told they should
"relax" and not try so hard.
We have a right to get mad - we're being placed between a rock and a
hard place every day. Our decisions and our ability to make them are
constantly being undermined and second-guessed by people who have no
clue what our individual situations might be.
We're right to be angry. We've got a lot to be angry about.
But we're wrong to take our anger out on each other.
If you'd like to read the article that started it all, go here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14065706/
And please, feel free to share your feelings on this; that's what the comments section is for!
| posted by Janeen at 12:04 AM
-
had this to say:
I completely agree with you. I'm very pro breastfeeding, and always have been, but wasn't well educated with my first 2 and formula fed them. I believe each mom should be eduacted on bfeeding, but shouldn't be told she's a bad mom if she doesn't. I've felt the guilt, I assure you.:P
