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What Are You Saying?
Summer descended in Manhattan with quite a thud, judging from the sweaty foreheads and patches of sudden sunburn that can be seen all over the place. This seasonal shift brings with it a new set of little parental anxieties, I suppose, and a catchphrase with which I'm familiar, but now find really annoying.
In the course of a block, I ran into three different neighbors, all of whom have young babies, all of whom expressed some concern about the sun on their kids (despite having taken a wide assortment of precautions) and all of them said: "I feel like a bad mother."
This sort of proclamation always tweaks me. Of course I have no trouble hopping in and saying "Of course not. My kid hates hats and I spend blocks chasing them down the street until I give up making him wear them. It'll be fine." But these statements always give me that old locker room feeling where your very slim friend sighs: "Oh I feel so fat." And there you are, growling behind your towel while stating the obvious: "No, no. You look fantastic."
Disingenuous self-deprecation is rampant in the maternal arena where people can wear their sleepless eyes like trophies and glorify suffering. I have a handful of I-Have-It-Worse relatives to whom I happily bow whenever there is a complaint. But why does it have to come down to being a Bad Mother? Do people just assume their friends and neighbors are so horrible that they have to debase themselves first before getting criticized (for taking the kid out while the sun shines)? Or is this just a weird conversational gambit- just the chit-chat of shame?
Why does this bother me? Perhaps I'm irked because I lack the Small Talk Gene that would make so much of life easier. But I fear I'm bothered because I take my own failings too seriously to voice them even so slightly lightly, even as a joke with people I don't know so well.
Though honestly, I'm not so worried about the hat.
posted by Elise at 1:47 PM
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