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| Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety by Judith Warner. |
I've been occasionally having what I call "stress dreams". They always involve forgetting Seeley or not knowing where she is. It's awful! I wake up tense and terrified. And angry. I can't even escape all this responsibility while I sleep? I know I'm not alone in feeling Mommy Stress and I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse.
I've just finished re-reading the book
Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety by Judith Warner. She hones in on "The Mess" that so many mothers deal with and are consumed by:
"These problems are really not so trivial, despite the trivializing forms we give them in our minds. They speak to serious issues: if you don't obsessively campaign to get your child into the ideal preschool, there is no adequate daycare in your area; if your toddler doesn't go to Baby Music Class and pre-pre-Olympic tumbling and Mommy and Me, you will go insane because you are at home all the time and your husband works till 8:30 at night...If you don't read every baby book cover to cover, scour the Internet for information, obsess on food labels, and put a cordon sanitaire around your child, you will wallow in ignorance and potentially allow your child to come to harm, since your pediatrician doesn't take phone calls and won't waste your ten minutes of appointment time answering questions. Because you have no family nearby...because you want to do things better than your family did, anyway...because the responsibility for absolutlely everything is on your shoulders, and this responsibility is so overwhelming that you have to shut the awareness of it down...The Mess steps in."
There's such a loss of control when one becomes a mother. I feel fortunate that most of the time I am able to relax, let go and enjoy and care for Seeley in a way that feels right for me. But that feeling of being totally out of control is never far away. And according to Warner, control is a huge issue for American mothers. The control we lack in making decisions about going back to work when affordable, quality childcare is so hard to find, in trying to find some kind of life for yourself and achieve personal and professional goals when staying home, is manifested in the efforts to become perfect mothers. We let motherhood become soul encompassing. This isn't necessarily a bad thing until we stop taking care of ourselves and start pressuring our children to make all the sacrifice "worth it". If you believe your kids are your "life's work" any flaws or disappointments they experience can feel like personal failure.
"By making them [children] the be-all-and-end-all of our lives, by breaking down the boundaries between ourselves and them so thoroughly, by giving them so much power within the family when they're very small, we risk overwhelming them psychologically and ill-preparing them, socially, for the world of other children, and, eventually other adults."
We live in a society where we have to be the very best. No longer is it enough to put a roof over your head and raise generally happy, well adjusted kids. The quest for perfection has been wreaking havoc on American women and is destroying one of the most wonderful roles life offers: motherhood. I sincerely believe in the adage "happy mother, happy baby" and I believe that with support from spouses, family, friends and community there can be a happy medium where you can give your best to your child
and yourself.
