Performing motherhood

TRIGGER WARNING: Body policing, motherhood policing

Hey! Did you hear the news? Victoria Beckham is a bad mother. She carried her child in her arms while walking in stiletto heels. Some commenters think that women shouldn’t wear shoes like that when they are pregnant. Some commenters think that walking in those shoes could cause her to trip and drop the baby. Some commenters think that there weren’t enough blankets wrapped around the baby. Therefore Victoria Beckham is a bad mother.

Hey! Did you hear the news? Sarah Palin is a bad mother. Someone told Joe McGinnis that she can’t cook and someone else said they went into the kitchen once and there was burnt mac and cheese on the stove and the girls were trying to open a package of ramen noodles. And do you know where Palin was? She was upstairs in her bedroom. Therefore Sarah Palin is a bad mother.

Hey! Did you hear the news? Emily Deschanel is a bad mother. She won’t give up being a vegan and start eating meat again now she is pregnant. Many commenters insist that although Deschanel looks radiantly healthy and has consulted top nutrition specialists, she shouldn’t be allowed to risk her unborn child’s health by eating differently than do they. Therefore Emily Deschanel is a bad mother.

Hey! Did you hear the news? Katie Holmes is a bad mother. She let her five-year-old daughter walk from the car to the door of the school wearing red lipstick. Some commenters also thought the little girl’s clothes were inappropriate for her age or for kindergarten. Therefore Katie Holmes is a bad mother.

Hey! Did you hear the news? Angelina Jolie is a bad mother. Some commenters think one of her daughters dresses too much like a boy. Some commenters don’t like the way another daughter wears her hair. Some commenters think Jolie only takes her children to parks, movies and museums in order for the PR. Therefore Angelia Jolie is a bad mother.

Hey! Did you hear the news? Every women is a bad mother. Either she is too fat or too thin. She either holds her child back or forces them to grow up too quickly. She is feeds them too much or too little. She doesn’t encourage them enough to pursue their talents or she is a stage mother living out her ambitions through her children. Therefore if you are a mother, you are doing it badly.

NOTE: The author is not interested in reading anyone’s opinions about any of the women mentioned in this piece. The point of this piece it is draw attention that to the fact that all mothers, everywhere, are constantly being scrutinized and judged by everyone.

--mmy

---

 

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Comments

[Kit Whitfield]

Hey! Did you hear the news? I'm a bad mother. After twenty-four hours of induced labour, I asked for and received an epidural, thus rendering my son's entry into the world a medicalised and non-participatory experience. I felt the pain was unbearable, but some people feel that it's selfish to accept pain relief and despite the lack of evidence that epidurals pose a risk to the baby, a good mother refuses to have one.

Also, I let anybody who wanted to hold him from birth. Although this never distressed him and at one year old he's an extremely confident and outgoing boy who loves his mother but shows very little separation anxiety, some people feel that too much handling by too many people confuses and stresses young babies.

Also, I let him sit in a bouncy chair rather than holding him constantly. Although I was right beside him, responding to whatever needs he expressed, and although the bouncing action soothed him more than cuddles, some people believe babies should be held right next to the mother's body constantly when they're young, and anything else is neglect.

Also, I feed him pureed food. Although the food is home cooked and nutritionally balanced, and although he's growing at a perfect rate, is strong and healthy, and already using his mouth to say proto-words, some people believe that pureed food is an unnecessary Western intervention and that babies should be given exactly the same food as adults.

Also, I breastfed him while taking anti-depressants. Although medical research has determined that the medication I take does not harm breastfed babies, and although I began the course when he was six months old and partially weaned, and although he shows no ill effects, and although prior to the medication I was very sick indeed, some people believe that breast milk must be absolutely free of medication.

Also, I haven't put him in a nursery. Although nurseries are prohibitively expensive for someone earning at an unreliable rate, and although I take him to activities, and although he's sunnily sociable with everyone he meets, some people believe that failing to put babies in a nursery damages their social skills and denies them opportunities to get along with their peers, while also showing a deplorable lack of initiative on the mother's part.

Also, I let him watch television when I need a break from caring for him on my own during the day. Although I deliberately choose to have him watch CBeebies, an educational, non-violent and progressive channel, and although his speech development is slightly ahead of the curve and his problem-solving abilities are very sound, some people believe television stunts babies' brains.

Also, I sing him songs. Although this is supposed to be good for his social, verbal, mathematical and musical development, apparently I sing the wrong ones, according to the man in the park who berated me for teaching his son 'terrible class ideas' when I sang my son a music-hall ditty called 'Burlington Bertie from Bow' and 'The lady goes a-pace a-pace'. (He then requested me to sing 'See Saw Margery Daw', which was bizarre on two levels: first, if you have a go at someone, they're probably not going to take requests, and second, you really think 'Johnny shall have a new master / He shall have but a penny a day / Because he can't work any faster' is teaching a kid better class ideas than a song written for a working-class audience that parodied a song about rich people?) But no: apparently I am not just a bad influence on my child, but on other people's children as well.

Also, I'm the primary caretaker. While my husband works in an office and I work from home, making this the most practical arrangement, some people feel that this models female servitude and will teach my boy to be a sexist.

Also, I let him play with any toy that interests him, which means not snatching away a 'girl's toy' if he picks one up. While it's my personal opinion that if he's interested in it, he can learn from it, that his gender identity won't be affected by toys and that it's my job to love him whatever it turns out to be anyway, some people feel that if you don't masculinise a boy from birth, he won't grow up to be a proper man.

Adding them up, I'm too neglectful and distant, and also too clingy and home-dependent, and also isolate him too much, and also expose him to far too many people, and also expose him to bad influences no matter how I entertain him, and also model both sexist and feminazi ideas, and also am far too old-fashioned while also being corrupted by decadent Western society.

What can I say? I'm a bad mother.

Now push off and let me get on with caring for my son.

--

In other news: people have finally found a good mother. (TW: tragic death of parent in earthquake):

http://www.orthodoxmom.com/2011/09/mothers-love.html

This story is circulating the Internet at the moment and seems very popular. It's gotten loads of Facebook forwards, and everyone loves it.

Rescue workers in Japan found, following the earthquake, the crouched body of a dead woman. Beneath her, protected by her hunched pose, alive and asleep, was her baby son. She had with her a mobile phone on which she'd texted 'If you survive you must remember that I love you.'

And everyone is passing this story round like it's heartwarming.

Basically, the poor woman died a lonely and frightening death, not knowing whether her little boy would die an even more lonely and frightening death after she was gone, and now he has to grow up without her and has nothing left of his mother's love but a text message. This is a horrible story. The happy story would be that they'd both survived and she'd been around to bring him up, and she'd done it imperfectly and they'd quarrelled sometimes and she'd made mistakes but she'd been there and they'd done their best and they'd had a normal life together. That would be a happy ending.

Instead, I think we've discovered what you have to do to be considered a good mother by the Great General Public. You just have to die protecting your child from an act of God that you can't possibly be blamed for. And if you do, then everyone will share the story of your death and feel all warm inside.

People expect an angel mother. Living women can't possibly measure up.

[Coleslaw]

I have to admit, I saw a lot of this judging on my own part and that of my coworkers in 36 years of working with children with disabilities. I frequently had to remind myself that I don't know how much better I would have done if I had been in the same situation as many of the parents we complained about. It was easy for us to say, "Your child won't make progress if you don't do the stretching/mouth exercises/handwriting practice/30 minutes of reading a day at home", but we often didn't know how many other demands were being placed on parents at home from schools, coaches, elderly relatives and employers.

[Mmy]

My sister is a single mother who soon learned that everyone felt they had a right to criticize how she parented. If she kept her child in indoors she was stunting his social and physical development and if she let him outdoors and he fell and skinned his knees then she was either abusing him or neglecting him. People felt free to interrogate everything from his table manners to his diction.

[julezyme]

Nope. You can't win. The minute you start thinking, maybe it's kinda working out here for us, you can be sure some Dr Phil clip or urbanbaby post or Sunday Styles piece will circulate telling you that you're doing it wrong. Better grab a bigger slice of privilege so you can stay home and also work in order to buy that new model plastic accessory which will turn your baby into the next Richard Feynman and/or a meth addict, while cultivating a shameful but compulsory eating disorder, and also all the other mommies are making festive seasonal cupcakes, but no pressure.
Motherhood in popular culture: The glimmering capstone on the hulking great pyramid of ways you can't win.

[Amaryllis]

It doesn't stop, either...Hey, have you heard the news? I'm a bad mother, because my 21-year-old child has done things with her time and her money that, whether or not they're in her actual best interests, she didn't ask my opinion beforehand.

Or maybe I'm just a bad mother because I didn't teach her better when I had the chance, or something.

the man in the park who berated me for teaching his son 'terrible class ideas' when I sang my son a music-hall ditty called 'Burlington Bertie from Bow' and 'The lady goes a-pace a-pace'. (He then requested me to sing 'See Saw Margery Daw',
* jaw drops *
I don't know whether to scream or giggle (but not having to listen to him myself, I'm inclined to giggle).

So let's see, what shall we sing instead?
As I was going to St Ives... nope, endorses polygamy.
How many miles to Babylon... nope, unrealistic about travel logistics.
Wee Willie Winkie... of course not, can't have children running around in public in their nightclothes.
Pat-a-cake... Shouldn't you be baking your own cakes, instead of harassing the baker's man?
Pease porridge hot... are you trying to give the kid food poisoning? "Nine days old," indeed!

It's a puzzlement.

[cjmr]

And if you're really really *really* lucky, it will be your mother-in-law who thinks you're a lousy mother and tells you at every opportunity, not just strangers from off the street judging you.

[Rodeobob]

Psst.... hey, did you hear about that one bad mother? You know, the one who's child died, and she got a tattoo afterwards, and there were pictures of her out drinking and partying? I heard that child died of suspicious circumstances! I mean, I know she wasn't found guilty of anything in the legal sense but she must have killed her child because she's obviously a bad mother!

Or hey, a couple of years ago, a kid vanished on his way to school. The kid is still missing, but at one point, after months and months of searches and media interviews, that mom went to the gym! What a bad mother! I bet she was involved in his disappearance somehow!

You think it's ugly when people criticise mothers when things are good, just watch how vicious they get when there's actually something blame-worthy going on!

[Mmy]

@Rodeobob: You think it's ugly when people criticise mothers when things are good, just watch how vicious they get when there's actually something blame-worthy going on!

The thing is that people don't actually wait for something "blame-worthy" to happen. There are mothers out there right now who are being threatened with the loss of their children because someone doesn't approve of their mothering. Mothers who are denied access to medications because someone 'thinks' that by taking them would make them bad mothers. Mothers are being arrested for the "crime" of not mothering the "right" way.

[Literata]

To which I would add: a mother having her newborn taken away because the mother ate a bagel with poppy seeds on it...nope, can't win.

[MaryKaye]

Not to mention that the flood of totally unreasonable accusations is no help at all in the cases when something bad *is* going on. If you react to ordinary parenting with cries of abuse, what do you do when you encounter actual abuse? You've destroyed your credibility.

My older-child adoption hasn't produced as much of this as I think parents of younger children get. But our first pre-adoption social worker laid it on REALLY THICK. We didn't eat at McDonald's enough, I kid you not. But of course if we'd eaten at McDonald's all the time that would have been bad too!

As a parent of a teen, what I hate the most is when people say stupid things like this in front of my son. Teenagers need to develop the capacity to see the difference between "You require me to shower four times a week" and "You force me to do half of the dishes" on the one hand, and "You treat me as if I'm worthless" or "You beat me" on the other. This essential task is made much harder by adults who can't seem to tell the difference themselves.

How in the gods' names can we both be so good at cutting parents down, and so bad at spotting and stopping actual abuse?

[cjmr]

"Mothers who are denied access to medications because someone 'thinks' that by taking them would make them bad mothers."

THIS.

One of my high school friends has a chronic pain condition. Her twins were born with opiates in their systems--because of the prescription drugs she had been taking, *with* her OBs approval. CPS has been 'graciously allowing' her to keep her children as long as she jumps through all their hoops, and takes random drug tests for opiates. This means she can't take the only truly effective drugs to manage her condition, and is in pain more days than not. The twins will be three soon, and show no long term effects so far, but she hasn't been 'released' from monitoring.

[Mmy]

@MaryKaye: How in the gods' names can we both be so good at cutting parents down, and so bad at spotting and stopping actual abuse?

Perhaps <cynical mode> because many people are more interesting in policing motherhood than in actually protecting children </cynical mode>

[Ruby]

Rodeobob: Psst.... hey, did you hear about that one bad mother? You know, the one who's child died, and she got a tattoo afterwards, and there were pictures of her out drinking and partying? I heard that child died of suspicious circumstances! I mean, I know she wasn't found guilty of anything in the legal sense but she must have killed her child because she's obviously a bad mother!

Actually, in the legal sense, she was found responsible for over $200,000 for leading law enforcement to believe that her child had been kidnapped by a non-existent nanny.

Because, in the legal sense, she was found guilty of lying to law enforcement personnel. Four times.

It doesn't do anybody any favor when we pretend that bad people don't exist at all.

[Leum]

Because "lying to a police officer" totally isn't a trumped-up charge that probably wouldn't pass constitutional scrutiny if we had an unbiased Supreme Court.

[Ruby]

@Leum--What does the Supreme Court have to do with the Anthony case right now?

As well, do you think the jury was correct to find Anthony not guilty of so much as child abuse, but, in the same case, incorrect in finding her guilty of "trumped-up" charges? If so, why would they do that?

[Mmy]

Nudge, nudge -- let's not derailed with the specifics of a particular court case.

I would agree that much of the verbiage that was flying around the coverage of the case was about the performance of motherhood--which is separate from the verdict on any of the charges.

[Froborr]

My mother was* neglectful, vengeful, and emotionally abusive... but what actually got her marked as a "bad mother"? What the court actually based their decision to remove my sisters on? At 16, 14, and 11, we knew how to do laundry and cook (though the 11-year-old wasn't allowed to do the latter unsupervised).

*Verb used advisedly. She's acknowledged it and made a real effort to improve in the last decade or so.

[RodeoBob]

I hinted at the Anthony case exactly because much of the discussion I encountered was not about evidence or facts, but judgement of "appropriate mother-behavior". In the local case of Kyle Horman, people actually were critical of the mother because after two weeks missing, nonstop media coverage, and multiple interviews a day with reporters, his mother went to the gym, and this was reported on as a suspicious/negative behavior.

[histrogeek]

As I have often said, the greatest problem for parents, especially mothers, are nagging scolds who give impossible advice. Yes parenting is important and there are some really crappy parents out there (even the non-abusive ones). However, there are way more useless scolds.

[Leum]

@Ruby: I don't think "lying to a police officer" should be a criminal offense and I don't believe making it one is Constitutional.

[Amaranth]

It's worse when your child has some sort of chronic illness or condition. My five-year-old was recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and believe me, I find myself doing the "I'm such a bad mother" number to myself all the time.

I've been told over and over again that it *isn't my fault*, that I didn't do anything to cause it and there isn't any way I could have prevented it, but still...and the list starts. I should have taken better care of myself when I was pregnant. I should have eaten less fast food. I should have breast-fed longer. I should have pureed my own baby food, instead of buying Gerber. I should have brought organic. I should *made* him eat more vegetables. I should have eaten more vegetables myself (tough for me, because I can't stand the taste of most of them). I shouldn't have vaccinated, or I should have waited to vaccinate, because I mean what if there IS something in those things that causes auto-immune diseases?? I should have seen the signs before he got sick enough to need hospitalization. Should've, should've, should've. (Intellectually, I *know* that nothing on that list caused my son to get diabetes, but...I still wonder.)

And because he's so young, I'm the one managing this disease. If his sugar gets high...well, it means *I* shouldn't have given him that ice cream, or *I* forgot to check the sugar, or *I* didn't do the carb calculation right. And the more I slip up, the worse his overall sugar average is, which in turn increases the chances that he'll have eye, foot, kidney, and other complications when he gets older. I mean, if I was a GOOD MOTHER, I could keep him healthy. And it never stops, every day, on top of worrying about how much TV he watches or how he's been on this bout of lying to me or how he behaves at school or why they expect kindergartners to know how to friggin READ already, I have to watch the damn sugar. Because he could go blind if I don't.

I'm lucky. I haven't encountered any external judgment (yet) from this. I think it's because most people don't know much about type 1 diabetes, and those that do know understand that it's just something that happens and it's not anyone's fault. But I fear the day some terribly uninformed person will exclaim "But only unhealthy people get diabetes! What on earth have you done to this child??"

It's like being pregnant again...everyone thinks they know better than you how to "take care of" your child, and any time the disease manifests itself it's because you, as a mother, have not been doing your job. Or at least that's what it feels like some days.

[Mark Temporis]

About the 'wrong songs', until they understand language, what does it matter? Just sing what makes you and baby happy. I don't have any memories until the age of three, so I can't see how baby could get any ideas from a song, right or wrong.

The one time I had to improptu sing to my nephew when he was still a baby, I did "Angels are Weeping" by Nox Arcana since it had just come up on the fuze. It worked fine, but it's about as subversive as you can get.

But I'm a guy, so it's just nice and sweet that I'm not actually trying to eat the baby.

[Kit Whitfield]

About the 'wrong songs', until they understand language, what does it matter?

According to that guy, I was teaching his five-year-old bad values. And evidently it was my job to change repertoire rather than his to make a teachable moment for his son or go to another bench.

Whether he would have assumed the same thing if it had been my husband singing is, of course, another question.

[Nick Kiddle]

//Teenagers need to develop the capacity to see the difference between "You require me to shower four times a week" and "You force me to do half of the dishes" on the one hand, and "You treat me as if I'm worthless" or "You beat me" on the other. This essential task is made much harder by adults who can't seem to tell the difference themselves.//

That one really hits a nerve, because social services are doing their own variant. When they talk to xCLP about what's going on at home, he complains of being hungry. To a not-quite-six-year-old, this just means that when he fancies biscuits and chocolate in between meals, I say no, and if he suddenly decides he's gone off rice after it's cooked, I don't jump to offer an alternative. To social services, it apparently means I'm starving him.

Other reasons I am a bad mother: my settee is covered with stuff, xCLP's bedroom was until recently a mess, xCLP is not interested in joining the Rainbows and doesn't play regularly at other people's houses, I'm openly trans in front of xCLP, I'm getting married next year (I kid you not, I had to be interrogated about how we were handling step-parenthood as though millions of families haven't already done it successfully)... Interestingly, although I'm legally male, I still get the "bad mother" stuff, probably because everyone involved still considers me to be female.

[Julezyme]

Amaranth, as a biologist I have to point out that type I diabetes is different from type II, which is the kind that can come from (but not always) diet; type I is a possibly an autoimmune problem triggered by some combination of genetic factors. Short of keeping you baby in a bubble, you could not have done anything to *cause* it.

[kisekileia]

//Teenagers need to develop the capacity to see the difference between "You require me to shower four times a week" and "You force me to do half of the dishes" on the one hand, and "You treat me as if I'm worthless" or "You beat me" on the other. This essential task is made much harder by adults who can't seem to tell the difference themselves.//

There's a lot of stuff in between those two categories that makes things complicated too. Where does "you treat me like my disability symptoms are my fault, and attack my character because of them, and you nag me about said symptoms in ways that make them worse" fall? Maybe it's just because I'm so close to the situation, but I still have trouble figuring that out for sure.

I do worry, when I see stuff about how society puts too much pressure on mothers, that it'll lead to giving people a free pass to abuse their kids. It still seems to be pretty socially acceptable to yell at and berate kids, even in circumstances that don't really warrant it, and corporal punishment is still widely socially accepted in many places even though almost all the scientific evidence shows that it has significant negative effects. It seems like even though in some ways mothers are pressured too much, in other ways people still justify unacceptable parental behaviour.

[Kit Whitfield]

It seems like even though in some ways mothers are pressured too much, in other ways people still justify unacceptable parental behaviour.

In some cases, yes. But today we're talking about how the problems of parents, not children, and it would be nice if the conversation didn't get turned round into an attack on parents.

[kisekileia]

Fair enough. Sorry.

[Kit Whitfield]

That's okay; I know it's an important issue for you, and in other threads, problems people have had with their parents are a perfectly legitimate subject for discussion. It's just that parents get treated badly too, and one way of maintaining some balance between those two truths is to take turns.

[kisekileia]

Okay. No problem. :)

[Mmy]

@Amaranth: It's worse when your child has some sort of chronic illness or condition.

When I was diagnosed as a child with celiac disease my mother not only had the "did I do anything when I was pregnant/she was a baby" guilt she also on the receiving end of a lot of the "well it must be something from YOUR side because no one in OUR family has ever had that problem."

Over the years more and more of my dad's family got diagnosed (about 1/3 of my generation and 1/2 of dad's.) I asked mom whether any of the people who criticized and needled her every came back years later and apologized.

You can guess the answer to that.

[Amaranth]

@Julezyme: Indeed, and intellectually I know this. What I think I'm doing is a case of "my baby fell and skinned his knee = I am a bad mother for not preventing this", only writ larger. Because although most days I have a pretty good grasp on "this is not my fault", part of me will still wonder if perhaps I should have, in fact, kept my son in that impossible bubble. :P

[cjmr]

@Kit I googled the lyrics to Burlington Bertie. That's a great song! I'm sure your 'gentleman' would not approve of some of our sing-a-long choices, either. Lots of Weird Al.

[Tonio]

People expect an angel mother. Living women can't possibly measure up.

Where does that expectation come from?

[Kit Whitfield]

@Kit I googled the lyrics to Burlington Bertie. That's a great song!

It's got a good bouncy rhythm too, which is why I sing it to him; it's a good dandling song. You can see Julie Andrews singing it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOJp_oJgMTM

It's not the only music-hall song I sing him. Frankly I don't see why I shouldn't; they were written to comment on society from below and they're part of his cultural heritage.

[Ross]

@Tonio: Society has always needed little enough excuse to find fault with women.

But I imagine that insofar as there's a specific cause, it probably has something to do with the fact that most people who have memories of their own mothers have memories which antecede them developing a sense of perspective and the capacity to make reasoned judgments. Not everyone, but enough for it to drive the public consciousness.

[Tonio]

Ross, that makes sense. Just once I'd like to see a mother deliver a righteous rant against these judgmental people, telling them to mind their own business.

[cjmr]

@Tonio: Mostly I do that (righteous ranting) in the privacy of a locked post on my own blog, but I have let my mother-in-law (and my own mom) have it more than a few times.

[sarah]

[[MaryKaye: Teenagers need to develop the capacity to see the difference between "You require me to shower four times a week" and "You force me to do half of the dishes" on the one hand, and "You treat me as if I'm worthless" or "You beat me" on the other. This essential task is made much harder by adults who can't seem to tell the difference themselves.]]

Heh. When my middle brother was a teenager, he had an argument with my dad and yelled that he was going to call DSS (Dept of Social Services, though I think the name has changed in Mass since then) on my parents. My dad, who's a social worker and has had lots of contact with DSS, picked up the phone, dialed the first 9 digits and said, "The last number's 9. Go for it." My brother, of course, backed down. But as kids, we also had enough contact with the people my dad worked with to understand the difference between "I'm having a fight with my parents" and "my parents are abusing me."

[Kit Whitfield]

Where does that expectation come from?

Two things, I think.

1.

Women are traditionally restricted to motherhood. Sexists have had such an investment in keeping us in that role and that role only that motherhood has been talked up as an ideal by way of pretending that being denied a life outside the home doesn't deprive you of anything - to the extent that now none of us can measure up.

2.

Mothers always had had and always will have far too much power over the feelings of their children.

We always need our parents' love and approval no matter how old we are, and any frictions between us are magnified in proportion to that need - which is huge. As mothers are usually the primary caretakers, it gets magnified even more. No woman can possibly be as good a mother as a child needs her to be. Every mother makes mistakes, every mother has faults, and they hurt the child.

My hope for my child is that I won't hurt him to the point where he becomes unable to heal his own wounds. My fear is that my faults will loom as large to him as my mother's did to me in my most angst-ridden, cabin-fevered, family-argument moments, and that he'll stay that angry permanently. (This was one of the central beliefs of my postnatal depression.) It's my belief that one of the main reasons parents want their kids to have kids of their own is that it makes us realise what our own parents were up against and forgive them a great deal. We start to understand, on a visceral level, that our parents really are human beings and not titanic figures. It's something that's easy to understand intellectually and very difficult to understand on an emotional level.

But the fact remains that I'm not perfect and as far as my relationship with my son goes, I will doubtless get on his nerves and hurt his feelings sometimes. Because I'm his mother, that will be a big deal for him. In order to spare him that pain, I'd have to be an angel mother.

And I wish I could. But I can't.

And that, I think, is the other foundation stone of the angel mother. We all want an angel mother because human mothers do things we don't like, and because the relationship is so important and begins in such utter inequality of power, those things get magnified. The fortunate thing is that most of us want our actual mothers more than we want an angel mother, even if the lady herself does sometimes get things wrong. It's one of those relationships where the conflict is often proportional to the love. But I think the notion of the angel mother partly resides in what we all want our mothers to be - or perhaps to what our mothers were to us when we were tiny babies too young to identify their faults clearly, when they really did seem benevolent giants.

The angel-mother is a child's conception, not an adult's. But adults will use it to infantilise women nonetheless. I don't blame a child for being mad that his or her mother isn't perfect, but I do blame a society that can't move beyond that conception.

[cjmr]

*watches video*

I figured that had a lot of schtick to go with the lyrics! I thought I'd seen every musical Julie Andrews has been in, apparently I missed this one.

*adds to queue*

[groundedchuck]

People expect an angel mother. Living women can't possibly measure up. Where does that expectation come from?

I think it also comes from the same place as bullying: The social pressure of perfectionism weighs on everyone, but many people feel they can build themselves up by pushing someone else down. "If you're a bad mother because of X, and I don't do X, then I'm a better mother [parent] than you!"

Also, the "angel" thing figures into other aspects of human relationships as well. 100% of marriages end in either divorce or death. My wife is keen to point out whenever someone criticizes divorce that apparently the only "successful" marriages are the ones where somebody's died.

[Tonio]

We start to understand, on a visceral level, that our parents really are human beings and not titanic figures. It's something that's easy to understand intellectually and very difficult to understand on an emotional level.

I like to think I've come to understand that more, and I sometimes reflect on that in the way I parent my own children. No matter how controlling my own parents have been, they were trying to do their best as parents as they understood it.

One of my siblings seems to think that it's natural for adult children to have adult relationships with their parents. I've tried explaining to the sibling that I'm not sure such a relationship is possible with our parents, for two reasons. One is that they don't respect my boundaries, something I've discussed here before. The other is from my own perspective that approval and disapproval from parents have inherent power and authority. Their criticisms and condemnations hurt more than if these came from someone else - the child has an emotional vulnerability in the relationship that outlasts childhood.

[Lonespark]

This is a good thread. I don't think I can get past the triggery nature to write much. *poutface*

I kind of want to hyperventilate and run away screaming because sarah typed "DSS." (And yeah, it has a new name now. There's been consolidation of state agencies. I know the environmental/transportation ones, and that happened recently so everyone is still getting the terminology and phone numbers wrong. Also TANF is no longer TANF but we can't remember what it's called, and foodstamps is SNAP but I never remember what that stands for...)

[Lonespark]

the child has an emotional vulnerability in the relationship that outlasts childhood.

I think this is a YMMV thing. I have a lot of issues with not wanting to piss off my parents and at the same time wanting them to tell me if they're upset so I can deal with it...but that's because we live in their house. I'm acutely aware that we are hugely dependent on them in a way I haven't been before as an adult. And the relationship is more frought with emotion than another landlord or roomate relationship would be, but that's because of the situation and our finances far more than any automatic value their approval would have.

[Literata]

Expecting angel mothers is also, in my mind, a kind of inversion of the communal child-rearing structure. It may not take a village to raise a child, but the whole village gets to tell the mom how to do it.

[Lonespark]

I really want to rant about what happened at the mall, but I keep crying and having to erase the post.

I went to buy suits. My daughter was in the fitting room but then she ran out and I didn't see; I thought I was still between her and the door. She decided she wanted to play hide and seek, and that the best place to hide was the total opposite side of the department store. So she ran over there, ducking behind clothing racks and giggling. She's fast.

I couldn't find her in the fitting room, so I got security and a salesperson on the other side of the store already had her. The whole incident was in the range of a few minutes. A grandmother-aged lady on the other side of the store went on, and on, and on about how I was a horrible mother and keeping watch on a two-and-a-half year old who loves to run and is very independent and self-assured is easy, or at least, not hard enough that there could ever be any kind of excuse... I was really worried that she was going to call social services, and then what would they find? Would they take her first and ask questions later? How would I pick up my sonf from school if I had to go answer questions? Would I then be doubly neglectful? OMFG, what if someone comes to inspect the house?

[Tonio]

but that's because we live in their house.

Yes, I can see how that would raise the emotional stress in the relationship. When I lived at home after college, and took a job that involved irregular hours, my mother was upset that I wasn't always fulfilling my responsibilities with household chores. But even today, two decades later, when my children don't put away their things, I cringe a little at what my parents would think. And in particular, what they would tell the rest of the family, because I can easily imagine them going on about how we're not strict enough and so forth. My parents used to say the same things about other families.

[Mmy]

@Literata: Expecting angel mothers is also, in my mind, a kind of inversion of the communal child-rearing structure. It may not take a village to raise a child, but the whole village gets to tell the mom how to do it.

Exactly.

I was about to add one of my theories to the board -- which is that by off-loading responsibility and blame on mothers the rest of us get to walk away from our own civic/social responsibilities.

My next door neighbour's children, and the children down the street, will be the people who determine what type of world I live in during the years to come. They are people who will work, pay taxes, run for Parliament. They are the doctors and the garbage collectors, the lawyers and the safety inspectors. They are the future and they will determine MY future.

I should consider their safety and health part of my responsibility since I will benefit from their good citizenship. By berating their parents I evade my responsibilities and offload them onto someone else.

After all, it was someone else's child who helped minister to my mother as she lay dying. It is someone else's child who helps me see that my father's needs are met.

In my opinion, you don't even have a right to enter the conversation unless you are actively helping--if only by supporting systems which provide parents with needed resources. And by actively helping I don't mean telling other people what to do I mean asking other people in what way you can help them. Then doing what they ask.

J K Rowling wrote that while she was a single mother trying desperately to survive on limited funds she actively thought about stealing to make ends meet. Do you know what she was tempted to steal? Nappies. Diapers. No one has the right to criticize the choices a mother makes unless that person has made sure that the mother is not over-tired, over-worked, stressed, worried about present and future expenses--and even then they don't have the RIGHT to do so.

[Lonespark]

...whereas my parents are all about the clutter, and the hand-me-down clothes and furniture found on the side of the road. I was completely unaware of how bad the "thrifty" approach looks when you are being evaluated for fitness as a parent by social workers medical staff who have been informed by the social worker that you are dangerously crazy.

Sometimes a dirty house is a sign of neglect and poor health, and usually it's a sign of people who are very busy and spend a lot of family time doing things besides cleaning up. I just don't see how going after a bunch of things at once makes sense. If you're worried about a parent's mental health or a kid getting lost in a store, why bring household cleanliness or what the kid eats for breakfast of where their clothes were bought into it immediately...

(Ok so I am getting in to rambliness that mostly equates to sympathy with Nick.)