They tell you when you’re pregnant that you’ll experience love you’ve never felt before. Even in “Friends”, when Rachel is pregnant and afraid, Ross tells her, “in about seven months you’re gonna have something that you’re gonna love more than any guy you’ve ever gone out with. Just wait. […] wait until the first time your baby grabs your finger. You have no idea.” If i’s in Friends, then you know it’s part of the culture… 😉
And you probably did feel this incredible love, but also many negative feelings that were much more difficult to talk about, and most of all, the big no-no, regret.
For me, regretting having kids is my Number One Burnoutmeter.
I know that I’m sliding when I start going around in circles in my brain about why I ever made that decision to become a parent. I think the big problem is that women, waaaay more than men, tend to take everything that’s going wrong in their families as their fault. It’s so ingrained in us that women are solely responsible for the well-being of their children, and the cleanliness and order in their homes, of course, that at least around me, my friends and I, even though we know that this is bullshit, are having a hard time breaking out of these stinking thinking patterns. Your kid is overweight? It’s your fault, you’re obviously too focused on your career to cook wholesome meals and instill good eating habits. A kid is not doing well at school? Your fault again, you didn’t read enough to them, didn’t spend time with them on their homework, didn’t recognize the learning disability early enough. Your home looking like an Ikea truck exploded in it, with lots of dirty laundry and unwashed dishes sprinkled around like glitter? Of course it’s your fault. You’re just a shitty mother. And a shitty homemaker to boot, even though you never wanted to be a “homemaker”, never thought of yourself as one, (thought that word died in the late 50’s actually) and hoped all your fancy degrees meant that homemaking wasn’t even remotely a scale you’d be measured on. Not so. You suck.
The men around me can be cognizant of those issues, of course, and even care about them very much. They just never seem to make the (il)logical leap to blaming themselves and thinking that they are terrible dads.
My big claim — and I intend to write about it at much more at length soon — is that it is this particular blow to self-confidence that women suffer once they become mothers, and not just the logistical issues of working and parenting, that really hurts mothers in the workplace.
But that’s a somewhat different topic. Back to my Burnoutmeter.
So when I start feeling overwhelmed, it’s these dark thoughts that pull me spiraling down. All the things I’m doing wrong as a mother, how I’m hurting my children by just being me, a person not quite devoted to mothering, and the remorse immediately turns into regret, for why I brought them into this world when I’m clearly not the right person to be raising kids. And that, my friends, is something that our culture does not allow us to think, let alone say out loud. So maybe I’m the only freak mother on this planet and I should be put away in an asylum, but I have a feeling that there are many of us out there… Not daring to speak. Do you ever feel something like this? Shitty thoughts, feel terrible, right? Do you even have someone to share it with or do all your friends respond like this:
In my head, I have these conversations with my friends where I try to explain myself to them. In all of them, I come out as this robot with no heart, incapable of emotion, really broken. The good thing about these imagined scenarios, is that they take this to the extreme. I know I’m not a robot, I know I have feelings, even for my children… 😉
If you’re like, though, remember that like any thinking pattern, this one, too, can be broken. Yes, these thoughts do come up. However, if they bring you down, there are things you can do.
The first thing I noticed was that I’m much prone to negative thinking in general, but to these thoughts specifically, during my period. Now, I hate admitting that there’s anything wrong with me during my period. I hate that “Is it that time of the month?” culturally-accepted ridicule and misogyny. Can’t stand the jokes. Detest the insinuations that women become emotional and crazy a week per month, and throughout pregnancy. It has been used as a tool against us for so long! But unfortunately, I noticed this to be true about me. Luckily for me, I suffer no physical symptoms during my period, so for years, it’s been quite easy for me to just ignore them altogether. I think that’s also why I hated the “time of the month” put-downs so much, because I never felt them myself, so they seemed like pure chauvinism. But after becoming a mother, I became more moody during my periods, and because I assumed I’m period-proof, it actually took me years to recognize that.
But now I know, and the fact that these thoughts are affected by my hormones is a good sign that they are not necessarily The Truth.
Another good reminder is that when threatened, our brain goes back to its “safe mode”, even if that means a lot of self-doubt and self-criticism. If your go-to thoughts are negative, then that’s what you’ll return to, as unproductive and depressive as that may be. And unfortunately, like negative body issues and so much self-doubt about femininity and motherhood, these negative thoughts are not just your idiosyncrasy, but an orchestrated, powerful, well-funded steamroller of stereotypes that you’ve absorbed almost your entire life.
So that’s something that really helps me overcome this thinking. Knowing that so much of my personal self-criticism is something that was taught to me, even if no one around me ever meant to do me harm. It’s in the culture, the books, the sitcoms, the jokes. They all tried to teach me a certain ideal of what being a good mother should be, from the first doll that I received as a toddler, and that ideal serves others. It serves lots of guys who feel comfortable being the main breadwinner at home and being less available for their kids, it serves employers who can give women lower pay for the same work and justify it by saying that as mothers, they are less devoted workers, and it even serves your kids, who get automatically prioritized, often at the expense of your well-being.
You know who it doesn’t serve? You. You and me.
So when these thoughts come up, (or any other self-doubting thoughts if parenting-regret is not your particular flavor of negative,) ask yourself – are these mine or imposed upon me? And if there is any shred of evidence that you might be thinking something that some smug chauvinist asshole in an advertising agency was trying to make you think to make his world a better place, then a big “F you!” is in place, and kick that thought out of your head!
What really helps me when the burnoutmeter points to misogyny is to think of any wonderful female role model I can think of, whether she was a mother or not, and how she didn’t let anyone tell her whether she wasn’t good enough.
I am good enough, you are good enough.
For as long as we think we aren’t, there will not be true equality. It’s our responsibility to fight these thoughts and alter how our brains automatically fall into these traps. For ourselves first, but also for our daughters. Let that be our legacy.
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