Tag Archives: motherhood

Are your kids on your Facebook profile pic?

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And does it matter?

It does, according to American academic Katie Roiphe, who wrote an article called Disappearing Mothers in the FT last week. It’s deliberately provocative, and has stirred emotions sufficiently on my Facebook page for me to want to examine it more comprehensively and thoughtfully here.

The central gist is that women who choose photographs of their children to represent themselves instead of their own image are victims of a societal attitude which places the child at the forefront of the family, to the detriment of the mother’s identity as a separate individual.

It’s a flawed article (I’m not convinced that the child’s squeaky shoes she mentions are evidence of anything other than the fact that a lot of kids’ stuff is annoying – Hello Puppy, anyone?) – but I do think her main argument has merit.

I think the way you feel about being a mother has a lot to do with your own childhood, the way your parents treated you, and the role you held within the family unit. Parents have always reacted to their own upbringing and, consciously and unconsciously, this colours their parenting of their own children. If you were brought up in a very strict, hostile environment you will (hopefully) want to bring up your children in a more loving manner, putting their needs first. In the same way, those who were given plenty of freedom may crave structure and discipline.

Societal trends about parenting also fluctuate. From the austere, “seen but not heard” attitude in our grandparents’ day, to the “anything goes”, pleasure seeking instinct of the baby boomers, there tends to be a characteristic parenting style of each generation. And of course, many other factors influence this such as the economics of the day, levels of employment, whether the country is at war, etc.

Thanks to increased understanding of developmental psychology and scientific advances that enable us to see exactly what goes on in children’s brains, we have more information than ever about parenting. And, with the advance of the internet, we can not only access this information, but also share it, opine about it, etc. Alongside these developments we have witnessed an increasing fetishisation of mothers in Western society. Celebrities, once interviewed about their acting roles or meanings of their songs now gush about how nothing is more fulfilling than motherhood. (It’s also a cunning way of stopping them getting too big for their boots and getting really good jobs at the highest level, but that’s for another blog.)

Motherhood is big business. Those of us in our thirties and forties who have become mothers in the last decade are surrounded by a barrage of information and expectation. Now we know what could negatively affect our child, we have to make damn sure we don’t do it. Stay at home or go to work? Sleep with your child or do controlled crying? Encourage lots of activities or let them do what they want? Screens or books? Whatever our choices, there is someone wielding a study that shows we have probably damaged our children and will pay the price in bad behaviour/ low achievement/poor attachment, etc.

The majority of mothers I know are doing the absolute best they can for their children and their families  under a huge amount of pressure. Everyone has an opinion on our parenting, from what we feed the children, to what they can or can’t watch on TV. Amongst all this noise and decision-making, it can be very easy to lose sight of the people we are. We spend so much time “outside” ourselves, meeting the needs of others (be they our boss or our children) that we can forget we have a few of our own.

Of course I’m not saying we should neglect our children – their needs, especially when they’re small, will always and instinctively take priority. But even when they are young, we need to carve out space for our own lives as well. Not only for us, but for our children – it’s important that they see we have other interests and opinions, and they are not included in all of it. They need us to see us as mothers, but also acknowledge we have a role as partners and as individuals.

For this to happen, we need to give women more options when they become mothers. A good place to start would be more highly subsidised childcare, and of uniformly good quality (we also need to pay our early years workers a lot more than they are currently getting). We already enjoy a good, long maternity leave in the UK, but I would also be in favour of introducing a “papa” day, as they have in the Netherlands, where men are legally allowed to work a four-day week and spend one day looking after the kids.

Not all mothers want to work when the kids are small, and my point is that there should be genuine choice. Make it viable for women to work if they choose – more part-time jobs, more job shares. If not, no problem. But lets acknowledge that there’s more to being a woman than being a mother. It might be the most important thing, but it’s not everything. And being aware of our external representation of ourself (a Facebook profile pic or something else) – if only just to make us question how “mummified” we’ve become – is a good place to start.

Trying to be a different kind of mother

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Today started badly. The baby had been up all night and the only way to get him to sleep was to bring him into our bed. So no sleep for me. I deal badly with no sleep – as I know many others do – but it makes me feel particularly inadequate and sensitive.

After way too much CBeebies in the early morning, I decided to make a cake with my son. This was the kind of rainy day fun people love to do, all wholesome and domestic. Except I hated it. The mess, the tantrums. I’m a reluctant baker at the best of times, but it was all the worse being ‘helped’ by a toddler and a teething baby screaming on the floor below.

Then I tried to encourage some arty activities. Making cards, doing stickers, drawing with felt tip pens. The whole time I felt pulled between the toddler wanting to do things he can’t, and the baby furious at the lack of attention. Not to mention the bombshell of the house.

This afternoon we went out. Took a train to Lewes and back. T (the toddler) loves the trains and it was lovely to see him transform from demon into interested human. It’s such a cliche but getting out does help, even when you’re knackered and the kids are narky.

I’m just not a bakey, crafty kind of mother. I’m not a bakey, crafty kind of person, so why I thought I might be different after having children, I don’t know. I guess I thought I would instinctively want to do ‘making’ things with my children. But I like taking them to things, and for as long as trains are interesting, I’ll go with that.

I do sometimes ask myself, ‘how would a real mother deal with this?’. I guess I still don’t feel like a bone fide parent, still struggling to deal with the child I feel I partly am. But I realise increasingly that I need to play to my strengths, and baking just isn’t one of them!

On a related theme, I tried to do the Flylady babysteps but I have a lot of ambivalence towards what is, essentially, the guide to being a Stepford Wife. I do need to gain control of my home, declutter etc. But at the expense of feeling like a 1950s housewife?

Some thoughts…

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When I went to see my GP in June I began with a very rambling and stream of consciousness rant about how I was feeling. I was tearful, I explained, and exhausted. Anxious too – and even when my children did give me a chance to sleep, I was too wound up to drop off. I felt angry, irritable and pretty fed up with my life.

‘The thing is’, I said, ‘I am extremely sleep deprived, my baby has been an inpatient in hospital for a month, he cries all the time, my toddler is very jealous – it’s no surprise I’m feeling rubbish. Maybe it’s not depression after all. Just a reasonable response to circumstances’.

‘Does it matter?’ he replied. ‘Your symptoms exist, regardless of what you want to label it.’

He was right. I had been in this situation before, almost two years to the day, when my first son was 6 months old. I went to the GP, feeling a failure for not dealing with motherhood as well as I should. For not being grateful enough to have a child at all, when so many women struggle with their fertility.

On both occasions I was prescribed the anti-depressant, Sertraline. And both times, after about a week, I began to feel much better, more human. I remember the first time being terrified of what might happen to me. I was afraid I would be unable to feel anything, or turn into someone else.

As it happened, I just ended up feeling strong enough to start looking at my situation and trying to do something about it. I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about medicating PND, or are very anti, but I can safely say that both times I have hugely benefitted. As the doctor said, ‘they won’t change your situation, but they’ll make you a bit more resilient’.

Although the ADs have been fantastic, they are only part of the picture. So much about my feelings is mixed in with other issues: my identity, my child’s health, sleeplessness (of lack of it), work, and the very fact of being a mother in 2011, and what that means for my role in society.

I want to use this blog to explore these different issues, and to see where I can help myself. Some are existential, and can’t be altered (such as the fact of my being a mother) but others may be more practical.

I love solutions, lists, exercises – doing things. That’s why I subtitled this blog ‘doing something about postnatal depression’. Because I want to help myself through it, and hopefully others too.