I was talking to a first-time mom recently who was sure that certain things her little one is struggling with are, somehow, her fault: perhaps she didn’t play with him enough, she suggested, or spend enough one-on-one time with him. Mind you, her son is barely more than one; she and he are just out of the intense newborn/infant/first year time when there’s little else parents do than spend time with their baby.
During that same conversation, another mom joined us — one whose kids are in college — and, though she didn’t know what we’d been talking about, she was eager to talk about motherhood with us because of us all having children. She mentioned something about how she’s sure she made so many mistakes when bringing up her kids, but they don’t seem to be “broken,” as she’d worried they might be.
A colleague of mine recently retired; I met her twenty-five years ago when she went back to work after raising a large family (her youngest was three at the time). Because of the number of kids she had, my friends and I looked to her as all-knowing about mothering, so it really made an impact on me when she replied to a coworker’s comment that she’s an expert on motherhood with, “You never become an expert.”
I’ve spent a lot of time on motherhood-focused social media and web sites over the past nineteen years and, if they are to be believed, the world is rife with mothers who don’t think they know what they’re doing, who are sure they’re doing it wrong, who are sure they’re ruining their kids somehow. Even those moms who seem super confident about their opinions and decisions struggle with this — you might not see it, but I can almost guarantee that it’s there. I’ve suffered from this quite a bit myself — there are so many things I worried about in the moment when my big boys were little (too much TV), things I wish I had given to my kids throughout my motherhood (cleaner house), and things I currently wish I could do (be at everyone’s game even though they’re all at the same time at different places).
Though there are certainly things that mothers shouldn’t do, and legitimately bad mothers do exist, I thought that an article I read recently called “For Moms Who Worry a Lot” (2011) by Elliot Cohen, Ph.D. on the Psychology Today web site gave a good perspective: he pointed out that if you are a mother who worries, it is because “you are a very caring human being. You want to do the right thing. You want to be there for your children.” How lucky your children are to have a mother who cares about them so! He also noted that a strategy that might help if you’re feeling overwhelmed with the certainty that you are a terrible mother is to “distinguish between morally responsible decisions and ones that aren’t. In general, the former are more caring, beneficial, and respectful than the latter.” I liked this a lot, because it might help weed out worry about whether or not to introduce a sippy cup, or whether or not to sign your child up for T-ball, or whether or not your children will be traumatized by having to share a room — in general these kinds of decisions wouldn’t fall in the “moral” or “immoral” category, and I find that a very helpful way to recalibrate my thinking and reduce my worry about possibly making the wrong decision.
I read another article called “You’re Doing It All Wrong” by Natalie Nevares on the Mommywise site, which presented a helpful perspective in an ironically stern way. She wrote, “You’re wrong to expect that you’ll ever be perfect. You’re wrong to feel guilty for anything you’re not doing right. You’re wrong to think that there is any right way to mother or parent. You’re wrong to believe that self-flogging will serve you or your family in any way. The media gives you trillions of reasons to feel like a bad mom, or not good enough in myriad ways. But that doesn’t mean it’s true, or that you’re failing at anything. You’re doing your best. You’ve got a hard job, but you’re showing up every day. The only thing wrong you’re doing right now is being hard on yourself.”
I thought these were perfect reminders for all mothers of all-aged children on Mother’s Day! As my own mom always says, “Pray and do the best you can” — it’s really that simple! I hope you all have a wonderful Mother’s Day!
