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Mothers Who Hate?
So the Guardian in the UK came out with an article that discussed a conference that went on today in London about bad mothers. The event, "Bad Mothers?: A Day of Talks Exploring Maternal Complexities and Conflicts, In Literature and Life" which was held at the Woman's Library (and one can't help but find it a little amusing that this was scheduled so close to Halloween).
The day broke down into a series of talks, some about literature, some involving literary readings, several historical talks, but the whole event had a bang-up kick off with Rozsika Parker's eleven am talk: "Torn In Two: The Unacceptable Face of Motherhood." Parker wrote a book, which first came out in 1995, also called Torn in Two: The Experience of Maternal Ambivalence.
She's a psychotherapist who has observed in herself and in her patients extreme maternal conflict: mothers who experience true love and true hate for their kids- and their kids for them. Parker believes that the heart of a solution to this extraordinary, potentially extraordinarily damaging and painful dialectic, is acknowledging the variety of feelings mothers have towards their children and working on ways to accept and acknowledge these things before guilt and it's companion resentment become overwhelmingly destructive.
I suppose this makes sense to me, but this notion of the Bad Mother (so infinitely less sexy than the one of the Bad Girl) seems rather fresh in people's minds. Where does the standard come from by which people measure themselves, their love, their feelings and find themselves eternally, horribly wanting?
What is wrong with accepting that children and their activities can be kind of tedious or mean and even unappealing? I think about this every time I see this one advertisement for Volvo cars that is in heavy rotation. In it, a little chatterbox child blathers on and on while her father, hesitant to interrupt straps her in and drives her home. It makes my teeth itch, but I can't begin to really say why, and it seems like an extreme reaction to what is supposed to be a cute or appealing scenario. I know there will be times when my kid will make me insane. But there are very few people who don't try my patience occasionally and I can accept this unfortunate truth about myself.
It does bother me deeply though that I fail at some horrible external standard that shifts all the time. The competition for good mother-ness is horrible. Someone I know lorded the fact that she had the "perfect birth" over me, when I had considerable amounts of intervention. . . to the same happy end, and I still feel a little irritable about that conversation. Or why do pregnant women feel obliged to call themselves "bad" for having a cup of coffee or for hating playdates or for not relishing their children's infancies? Why is it such a reflex to fall upon the sword of badness instead of accepting that goodness and badness is going to shift around always, often many times in the course of a day or an hour?
Since I had Felix, I've had plenty of moments of boredom and anger. I've been abandoned by a few friends, which is sad, and I've made numerous adjustments and accommodations, some of which have bothered me, but none of which have bothered me so profoundly that I have felt obliged to hate anyone.
Where do the incredible intolerance and the impossible standards come from?
I know they're there and like all the other monsters, I'll do my best to keep them out.
posted by Elise at 5:02 PM
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Trope said...
Thank you.
I'm expecting in a few months and this seems like the first honest reaction I've heard.
Again, thank you.
11/07/2006 3:18 PM
said...
Thank you.
11/28/2006 3:56 PM
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Trope said...
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