Then there was a backlash. We got sick of it. We wanted the world to know that every second of every day is not giggling children blowing bubbles and picking flowers (as our Instagram feeds would have us suppose). We got tired of mom-blogs that posted pictures of an apple picking outing and the homemade apple pie that followed ("which was a great way to use up all the butter that I churned last week!"). So someone or other wrote a post about what she called REAL parenting. About late nights and early mornings and Little Johnny puking on the cat. Initially, I was relieved. I wasn't a failure, I wasn't the only one who was tired and couldn't spend my whole days blowing bubbles and baking apple pies. The problem is that it's the tiniest sample of the parenting experience and therefore is about as realistic as the perfect mom end of the spectrum (does Little Johnny puke on the cat EVERY day?). It's also not helpful. There was recently viral video (which admittedly I have only heard about second hand) that depicted motherhood as a 135 hour per week job during which you could never sit down. That only those with a number of ridiculously specialized skills could do it and even then they must be suffering martyrs subjecting themselves to a lifetime of grueling and thankless work.
I'm sorry, but that's just not accurate either. I sit down. I'm sitting down right now. I'm not simultaneously trying to clean or cook or wipe vomit off of the cat. I'm spending nearly an hour doing something I enjoy while I have one kid snuggling on my lap and two more cutting pictures out of old National Geographic magazines. This isn't every moment (apparently there are also the moments they're unattended and mostly naked)
.jpeg)
but just as much as it's not helpful to guilt-trip mothers by giving them a window to that small slice of your life that is picture perfect, it's not helpful to strike fear into mothers (or mothers to be, or women who might be mothers one day providing you stop belabouring how miserable motherhood is) by only giving them a window to the opposite.
But now that I think about it, women have been doing this since long before the internet. I can't count the number of times that women tried to strike up conversations about how miserable I must be as a mother of young children. "You must be exhausted with such a little baby!" Well yes, I am a little tired, but he does sleep 14 hours a day...I can usually stay caught up. "You must be tearing your hair out now that they're in the terrible two's." No, not really. See, you say "yes" to them when you can and you stick with your "no" when you have to use it. They catch on pretty quickly. "Well just you wait until they're teenagers!" Umm...ok. Thanks...I guess?
I mean is that supposed to be encouraging? Motivating? I'm not sure I understand the purpose. I used to coach basketball and I'm trying to picture calling my team in for a time-out and trying to get them pumped up by asking them how miserable they are. "Are you exhausted yet!" Well coach, we're actually doing pretty good, we can keep this up. "But they're REALLY GOOD, I'm sure their full court press is going to make you TOTALLY fall apart." Well, we've got a pretty good pressbreaker, I'm sure if we keep executing it consistently..."Nope. You just you wait until the 4th quarter. You'll see. You guys are gonna get SLAUGHTERED. Ok. Team on 3."
So why in the world do we do this to each other? What could we do instead? And what's our comeback for "just you wait..."?
