Motherhood Mystique

While nursing, or holding a sleeping baby, I have read two books on motherhood lately. Both of them frustrated me in different ways - one in the information it excluded, and the other in the truths it told.

IBM provides the book This Is How We Do It: A Working Mother's Manifesto as part of the motherhood kit of goodies you get when you enroll in their parenting lifeworks program. The book made me SO frustrated. The fact that it has manifesto in the title, and an angry looking woman in careerwear on the cover should be a clue. Contrary to what the title would lead you to believe, it does not tell you how exactly it is working mother's do it. It is a whole book filled with guilt-inducing information about how many women work successfully and build amazing careers while being mothers. It paints the picture of a bunch of driven women just MAKING IT WORK. It ignores how we are supposed to do it, and how to make sure you aren't killing yourself doing it. Also, IBM is mentioned a zillion times, including programs I have never heard of, and certainly aren't mentioned in any of the HR information I have reviewed. They talk about a Phase Back plan where you come off maternity leave first two days a week, then three, then four, etc. I am sure if I wanted a plan like this, I could work it out with my manager, but only because she is a very accomodating, great manager. As a manager myself, I know it wouldn't be easy to work out the pay details of such a plan, and there is nothing official in place to make it simple.

Then I read Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. The author became a parent while in France, where she spent 5 relaxed days in the hospital, and was helped to select a nanny from a government agency before she left at the cost of $150/mo! The daycares and early education are the pride of a nation. She felt supported in all ways as a parent. It was expected that she would still be her own person - work, go out for a drink, take her kids to daycare, take them to a park, etc. Then she moved back to America and realized what enormous pressure we have to take all aspects of our children's well-being into our own hands. Mothers are told they have so many choices, and are so lucky; however, the pressure to be able to DO IT ALL is crippling families. Childcare costs are ridiculous, and the care is subpar. Mothers are expected to act as educators and pediatricians. They need to diagnose their own child before taking them in for care, they need to spend hours a day in developmental activities, construct playgrounds and art studios at home, coordinate play dates and lessons, manage dinner parties for other parents, have a loving relationship with their spouse, and also build successful careers. How society allows us to talk about how hard it all is, as martyrs for our families, but not how it isn't really possible - how it means sacrificing things and parts of yourself that you aren't okay with. The book was bang-on, and made me want to move to Europe. It made me think about how the other book is really part of the problem.

Telling women they can do it all is really doing us a disservice. What we should be saying is that it is okay to decide which things we want to do, and which we don't. Some things will fall off when you become a mother, and the parts that fall off shouldn't be the bits that make you who you are as an individual. I will still get pedicures, and I will let someone watch the baby while I read a book that ISN'T about motherhood ;-)