Navigating the hellscape of 21st century mothering: where expectations are at an all time high and support is at an all time low. Let's stop blaming the micro for a macro problem.
I LOVE everything about this article and can't wait to share it with all of my mothering friends. This community and support is what we all need, even our children, and we've been sold a bill of goods with nuclear families and "independence." 8-15 extra care givers a day? What?! Free, dependable, high-quality childcare with the opportunity to go back to school for free?! I wonder if our issue is really motherhood in our country or just flagrant misogyny.
Oh misogyny is the undercurrent. With a dash of flagrant obsession over making money/capitalism as top priority. But even so - our policies speak volumes about how our country doesn’t value women
This was a really thorough breakdown and I felt so seen reading this. I feel so deeply in my soul that need for a village and for community and I’m struggling with how to make it happen. I know other parents and especially moms feel this too, but then everyone is always “too busy.” Sigh.
Yessssss! I feel the deep soul need for community as well. And I know other moms feel it too- other moms that I know! Which makes it so frustrating when community building efforts fall flat - like we know we need it- why not so hard to prioritize???
Yes! I’m trying to build a community very deliberately and people are just “too busy”. And they are! So on top of mothering and working and housekeeping I’m trying to community build and it’s wasted effort because it doesn’t work but also essential because without we go insane… aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!
I did try to reach a neighbour with the idea that she can just pop over and leave her kiddo with me if I’m in the yard with my kiddo- kids love gardening - and it’s no more work! But she didn’t take me up on it until about a week before she moved. It was a smash success! Happiness all around! But then she moved so… gah! But covid, ticks (we have lyme disease here), and an absurd “text before you drop by” culture (fuck that - we need easier social connections not ones screened by screens first) complicated an already complex problem. It’s. So. Effing. Hard. Even. When. It. Works.
I feel this. More expectations, less community support and help. And the need for women to work has increased but support for the whole family in the US has decreased. What is happening?!?! 😭 Do I need to move to Sweden? 🇸🇪
Holy Smokes where have you been all my life?! hahaha...
I wrote an entire manuscript in '09 after my "white-picket-fence" dream blew up. Never published it because, well, it was too scary and raw to share. I've just recently started poking around again to see what I may be able to use from it...anything that could be helpful and supportive to others--but either way, I'm so grateful to have found you!
I am a step-mum, raising an autistic girl who is with my partner (her dad) and I 50% of the time, and I felt every word of this. Thank you for writing it. It's bookmarked and I'll be coming back to it when I need a reminder that I'm not failing her.
My kids are now 51 and 53… born in the 1970’s. We lived in rural Indiana where I had fairly close neighbors that provided similar aged kids as playmates and parental supervision other than my own. Even so, the daily frantic pace of just running a household and toddler supervision made me fantasize about running away. My husband wasn’t much help…went gleefully off to work each morning and returned often late at night, all the while, urging me to get a teaching job. He never changed a diaper…we only had cloth at that time. I have to admit, I still bear grudges against “the system” and him. But I’m now approaching 80 and the memories that you bring up have softened some by the years. My kids turned out well, as have their kids. Maybe I did do some things right. Hang in there…find a friend and let the tears flow. Then get back to the job at hand. There is light at the end of the tunnel and it is not a train🤗
It’s actually really validating to hear that even 50 years in hindsight you remember how hard it was- like we are not making it up. Thanks for your validation, your encouragement and your wisdom Leila!
Celeste, I can’t tell you the ripple effects this piece is having in my friend community. My wife and I feel all of this… and technically we are *both* the default mama parent! We’ve cried to each other about the isolation we didn’t expect to feel. I’m setting up a bicoastal Zoom call soon for mamas to discuss your article/collectively cry. Thank you thank you thank you
Even though I knew a lot of the broad strokes here, I cried cried cried seeing it all together like this. I’m starting to see how I internalized these messages about having to do it on my own and I really, really did. Sometimes I count how many people I interacted with in that first year of my son’s life and it’s shocking.
I feel this all so deeply in my bones, both as a mother myself and as a perinatal therapist. I’ve been sharing your article with my clients all week (👋🏼). Thank you!!
Behold, "the mother of all collective action problems", as I like to call it. Of course, the right-wing reactionaries' "solutions" really only trade one problem for another, curtailing women's individual rights without actually solving anything. It is important NOT to romanticize the bad old days, even if there were perhaps some bright spots. The Nordic model, or at least something shaped like it, is probably the least worst way forward until something better can be devised, IMHO. And with a UBI added to it as well. But decades of neoliberalism have reduced the citizens of the Anglosphere, particularly the USA, to begging for mere crumbs from the oligarchy and accepting that as normal.
I feel so, so much better after reading this…relieved, really. I’m 35, mom to a 4 year old and a 4 month old. I feel embarrassed that we live with my mom, and that the three of us share one room. I feel deep shame about how stressed I am, about how I get so overwhelmed by my 4 y/o daughter who laughs in my face when I ask her not to do something, or by the baby only wanting to be held all day long on some days. I feel embarrassed about the things I am not capable of doing. The reasons for being unable to do most things I can’t do are things that are mostly out of my control: Major depression that I’ve battled with since I was a preteen; ADHD that was finally diagnosed when I was 31 after 13 years of misdiagnosis; concussion #4 that I sustained last summer before recovering from the prior one; untreated sleep apnea (plus more sleep disorders); the physical pain that I’ve lived with since the age of 19 that’s gotten drastically worse with time (I need surgery on both hips and also have symptomatic joint hypermobility—literally every single joint in my body hurts daily); chronic illness (ME/CFS, MCAS, chronic gastritis, IBS combined type, vertigo, migraines, etc etc). And more but this is already a novel here. Essentially, every day feels like the day after being in a fender bender, my brain is scrambled eggs on a good day, half the time I can’t remember my own name or anyone else’s…and for some reason I feel SHAME and EMBARRASSMENT that it’s exceedingly difficult for me to have both the kids by myself from 7am to like 3-4 pm.
Oh man that’s so hard Karen. It’s not the same but I feel a similar way about the years when mine were babies and toddlers- like I almost have PTSD from that era and I’m not over it and don’t know what to do about it. Those years were so hard .
Karen, I feel so much reading the honesty of your words. I wish I could find something profound to say but all I have is your rage is valid and you deserve feeling like your life is yours, even when it seems truly impossible.
I LOVE everything about this article and can't wait to share it with all of my mothering friends. This community and support is what we all need, even our children, and we've been sold a bill of goods with nuclear families and "independence." 8-15 extra care givers a day? What?! Free, dependable, high-quality childcare with the opportunity to go back to school for free?! I wonder if our issue is really motherhood in our country or just flagrant misogyny.
Oh misogyny is the undercurrent. With a dash of flagrant obsession over making money/capitalism as top priority. But even so - our policies speak volumes about how our country doesn’t value women
Indeed it is a toxic mix of the same old misogyny, only with neoliberalism added now as well.
This was a really thorough breakdown and I felt so seen reading this. I feel so deeply in my soul that need for a village and for community and I’m struggling with how to make it happen. I know other parents and especially moms feel this too, but then everyone is always “too busy.” Sigh.
Yessssss! I feel the deep soul need for community as well. And I know other moms feel it too- other moms that I know! Which makes it so frustrating when community building efforts fall flat - like we know we need it- why not so hard to prioritize???
Yes! I’m trying to build a community very deliberately and people are just “too busy”. And they are! So on top of mothering and working and housekeeping I’m trying to community build and it’s wasted effort because it doesn’t work but also essential because without we go insane… aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!
I did try to reach a neighbour with the idea that she can just pop over and leave her kiddo with me if I’m in the yard with my kiddo- kids love gardening - and it’s no more work! But she didn’t take me up on it until about a week before she moved. It was a smash success! Happiness all around! But then she moved so… gah! But covid, ticks (we have lyme disease here), and an absurd “text before you drop by” culture (fuck that - we need easier social connections not ones screened by screens first) complicated an already complex problem. It’s. So. Effing. Hard. Even. When. It. Works.
Great post. Learnt a lot. Makes me think mothers are probably the most gaslit subgroups on the planet!
children too. As I walked my two young ones to school today, I noticed they look like people who are being gaslit or abused.
Indeed. Gaslit, as well as ghosted, benched, and breadcrumbed to one degree or another by the system of neoliberalism.
A balm to my soul as I drove away from daycare drop off this morning crying about what a shitty mom I am.
I feel this. More expectations, less community support and help. And the need for women to work has increased but support for the whole family in the US has decreased. What is happening?!?! 😭 Do I need to move to Sweden? 🇸🇪
Pretty sure Sweden would solve all my problems 🤪
Holy Smokes where have you been all my life?! hahaha...
I wrote an entire manuscript in '09 after my "white-picket-fence" dream blew up. Never published it because, well, it was too scary and raw to share. I've just recently started poking around again to see what I may be able to use from it...anything that could be helpful and supportive to others--but either way, I'm so grateful to have found you!
I am a step-mum, raising an autistic girl who is with my partner (her dad) and I 50% of the time, and I felt every word of this. Thank you for writing it. It's bookmarked and I'll be coming back to it when I need a reminder that I'm not failing her.
My kids are now 51 and 53… born in the 1970’s. We lived in rural Indiana where I had fairly close neighbors that provided similar aged kids as playmates and parental supervision other than my own. Even so, the daily frantic pace of just running a household and toddler supervision made me fantasize about running away. My husband wasn’t much help…went gleefully off to work each morning and returned often late at night, all the while, urging me to get a teaching job. He never changed a diaper…we only had cloth at that time. I have to admit, I still bear grudges against “the system” and him. But I’m now approaching 80 and the memories that you bring up have softened some by the years. My kids turned out well, as have their kids. Maybe I did do some things right. Hang in there…find a friend and let the tears flow. Then get back to the job at hand. There is light at the end of the tunnel and it is not a train🤗
It’s actually really validating to hear that even 50 years in hindsight you remember how hard it was- like we are not making it up. Thanks for your validation, your encouragement and your wisdom Leila!
Celeste, I can’t tell you the ripple effects this piece is having in my friend community. My wife and I feel all of this… and technically we are *both* the default mama parent! We’ve cried to each other about the isolation we didn’t expect to feel. I’m setting up a bicoastal Zoom call soon for mamas to discuss your article/collectively cry. Thank you thank you thank you
Oh wow!! Thanks so much for telling me! I’m thrilled!
Even though I knew a lot of the broad strokes here, I cried cried cried seeing it all together like this. I’m starting to see how I internalized these messages about having to do it on my own and I really, really did. Sometimes I count how many people I interacted with in that first year of my son’s life and it’s shocking.
I feel this all so deeply in my bones, both as a mother myself and as a perinatal therapist. I’ve been sharing your article with my clients all week (👋🏼). Thank you!!
Behold, "the mother of all collective action problems", as I like to call it. Of course, the right-wing reactionaries' "solutions" really only trade one problem for another, curtailing women's individual rights without actually solving anything. It is important NOT to romanticize the bad old days, even if there were perhaps some bright spots. The Nordic model, or at least something shaped like it, is probably the least worst way forward until something better can be devised, IMHO. And with a UBI added to it as well. But decades of neoliberalism have reduced the citizens of the Anglosphere, particularly the USA, to begging for mere crumbs from the oligarchy and accepting that as normal.
Thank you so much for this!🙏🏽😭💛
I feel so, so much better after reading this…relieved, really. I’m 35, mom to a 4 year old and a 4 month old. I feel embarrassed that we live with my mom, and that the three of us share one room. I feel deep shame about how stressed I am, about how I get so overwhelmed by my 4 y/o daughter who laughs in my face when I ask her not to do something, or by the baby only wanting to be held all day long on some days. I feel embarrassed about the things I am not capable of doing. The reasons for being unable to do most things I can’t do are things that are mostly out of my control: Major depression that I’ve battled with since I was a preteen; ADHD that was finally diagnosed when I was 31 after 13 years of misdiagnosis; concussion #4 that I sustained last summer before recovering from the prior one; untreated sleep apnea (plus more sleep disorders); the physical pain that I’ve lived with since the age of 19 that’s gotten drastically worse with time (I need surgery on both hips and also have symptomatic joint hypermobility—literally every single joint in my body hurts daily); chronic illness (ME/CFS, MCAS, chronic gastritis, IBS combined type, vertigo, migraines, etc etc). And more but this is already a novel here. Essentially, every day feels like the day after being in a fender bender, my brain is scrambled eggs on a good day, half the time I can’t remember my own name or anyone else’s…and for some reason I feel SHAME and EMBARRASSMENT that it’s exceedingly difficult for me to have both the kids by myself from 7am to like 3-4 pm.
I want to move to Sweden, who’s coming with?
Oh man that’s so hard Karen. It’s not the same but I feel a similar way about the years when mine were babies and toddlers- like I almost have PTSD from that era and I’m not over it and don’t know what to do about it. Those years were so hard .
Karen, I feel so much reading the honesty of your words. I wish I could find something profound to say but all I have is your rage is valid and you deserve feeling like your life is yours, even when it seems truly impossible.
Karen I have an 18 and 22 year old and feel this deeply. Honestly, it’s still hard with young adults!