I am not a bad mother but I have felt like one.
Motherhood is forever. When I first signed up to mother, I understood that my life would change but I did not know how lost I would feel. It was not out lack of information. As a matter of fact, mothers are bombarded both in the home realm as well as out in society by parenting books, well-intended professionals and all forms of media with advice that are really standards of “good mothering.” I was lost because every time I tried to be a “good mother,” I was left disappointed in myself and others. A tired mother is not only an under resourced mother as I once thought, it is a mother mothering under the thumb of a social structure that depletes; physically and psychologically isolates then turns around and blames the mother when she fails.
Failure as a mother is possibly one of the most painful emotions I have experienced and yet I have (present tense) to learn to continue to fail at the “good mother” complex. A complex is something with many interconnected parts, making it difficult to understand, analyze or solve (Cambridge Dictionary). In the book Fruto by Daniela Rea, she speaks of this complex when she refers to sociologist Orna Donath’s work on Regretting Motherhood, “the ways in which Western societies treat women-or, better yet, mistreat women-are what hovers around these feelings of regret, Enmeshed in social and historical contexts that have pushed us to give birth over and over again in societies that absolve themselves from the work of raising children, mother regret, is a warning sign to rethink the politics of reproduction and the ideas around the obligation to be mothers.”
Rethink the politics of reproduction and obligation to be mothers. When I have felt like a bad mother, which has happened more times than I could have imagined, I knew from a deep knowing that I needed someone else to see past my delusion and remind me that despite all, I was not a bad mother. It is not about ignoring my mistakes or errors, I can own that and need to. It’s that I knew I was being set up by something outside of me that lived now in me, patriarchy, classism and whyt supremacy.
When we analyze and examine the “good mother” complex, it comes by no coincidence what mothers are seen as meeting the standards; mothers with financial means (which sets a hierarchy), mothers with help (the help at times being other mothers who have to leave their children to care for financially privileged families), mothers with good values (Here, centers Christian-Judeo values), mothers that prioritize their children (which is usually subtext for shaming working and professional mothers), mothers in a two parent household (upholding the husband-wife family unit as the gold standard, marginalizing queer identity) and mothers who raise good citizens (if a mother or child do not conform to the respectability norms, there is societal isolation).
As a therapist, I often talk about small and big picture perspectives. In the small picture, we view mothering through an individual lens. We don’t particularly see anything wrong with wanting to be a “good mother” and raising “good children.” I, myself, can understand this desire, it gives us a sense of safety and accomplishment. I argue that this sense of safety, is survival rather than choice and complicity rather than accomplishment. I am not devaluing mothers’ accomplishments rather I am inviting mothers to mother-give care without shame, in community, and with collective humanity. The big picture includes all of the “good mother” standards that are set for all mothers collectively. The big picture perspective, shows us the patterns and purpose.
In the book Revolutionary Mothering written by a collective of mothers whose voices have been disenfranchised, they write “we put our bodies between the violent repetition of the norm and the future we already deserve, exactly because our children deserve it too.” Being a mother is not a moment in time, it is a lifelong commitment to our children, the children we birth, the children we care for and if we really commit to being mothers, it is a lifelong commitment to all children everywhere.
This is an open invitation to let go, let go of fitting into the “good mother.”
