I Used To Be A Good Mother, But Now I’m Bad

I read a lot during my first pregnancy. I was learning about fetal development and the stages of labour and the mechanics of breastfeeding, sure. More than that, though, I was reading arguments about how to be a good mother. The only thing attachment parenting has in common with Ferberization is a conviction that it is the right way to care for a baby and that the other ways are wrong. I chose my camp. Attachment parenting, after all, was a much better accessory to my midwifery care and natural birth plans. I absorbed all the arguments and how-to’s and I believed in them.

I was already on a slippery slope, though. This was an unplanned pregnancy (no pre-conception check up – yikes) and I was a smoker and a bartender. I quit smoking and drinking and got a day job pronto. I couldn’t give up caffeine altogether, though, because hadn’t I done enough? I put on 15 pounds more than the recommended 20 – 35 and gave in and asked for an epidural when my cervix failed to dilate fast enough. My baby got jaundice because I couldn’t get him to latch on his first day which then meant that my milk didn’t come in fast enough, so we had to feed him (gasp) formula for a couple days. Still, I persevered. I breastfed and wore him around and gave him all my attention. I didn’t even listen to my ipod while pushing him in a stroller because that would be hogging the music.

Damn if I wasn’t a good mother. But then he was still night-waking at a year and I realized that I didn’t want a family bed for years and years. Horrible sleep-training ensued. I didn’t go back to a full-time job after my maternity leave and kept up a regular library and park and drop-in centre and play date routine for months. I even did housework. Still, things were sliding. He started to become more independent and I was the only mother catching up on some reading at the drop-in centre. I referred to myself as unemployed rather than stay-at-home because it wasn’t like I was leaving behind a rewarding career for this mommy gig. I stopped buying organic milk. I turned on the tv. I just didn’t care as much.

Ayelet Waldman’s new book, Bad Mother, discusses the impossible standards of good mothering and our cultural infatuation with bad mothers. Consider the public spectacle that was Britney Spears’ mis-steps at mothering or that we are still arguing about whether it is best for women to work or stay home. What used to be a question of women’s rights now revolves around woman-as-mother. Bookstores are brimming with volumes advising women on how to be better, more attentive and more devoted mothers. And some mothers, some women, are saying enough already. I’m not a good mother. In fact, I’m a bad mother and that’s alright.

The good mother pipes up now. We all make mistakes, she says. We disagree about what’s best, sure. But don’t call yourself a bad mother. Think about what you are saying! Here I imagine her eyes bulging out of her head as the image of a bad mother is called to her mind. You writerly types are just trying to make a point, but you don’t really mean it. Your children are safe and well-loved and you are good mothers. We can’t say that it’s alright to be a bad mother because what about those women who neglect or physically abuse their children?

As though those women are even paying attention. When has the standard of good mothering ever been skirting the periphery of criminal negligence? Those women are a sub-set of bad mothers. They are worse mothers, or unfit mothers, and they clearly need some intervention. That does not make it less valid for women like Waldman to brand themselves as bad in contrast to the lofty pieties of  the good mother. Her Bad Mother has been hacking away at the righteous platitudes of motherhood on her blog for years and has recently written the Bad Mother Manifesto in which she completely rejects the notion of the Good Mother.

The Good Mother – the idea of the Good Mother, the theoretical and aesthetic model of what it means to mother well – is the true spectre, the spectre that has haunted mothers since God first smacked our hands for being too graspy and ejected us from the Garden and hollered at us to go forward and to give birth in pain and alone and to mother in anxiety and alone and to basically just angst out for every second of our lives.

I now have two kids and even though I don’t subscribe to any particular good mother type anymore, I try my best. I know that I sometimes (often?) let my kids do things that are bad. I don’t like how much tv they watch and I wish I cooked more and better food and I really wish they didn’t have to live in such a filthy home. I know there is more to life, more to parenting, than dedicating your every waking hour to your infants and toddlers. There’s being a role model and introducing them to experiences not found at the local daycare. But, really, I don’t like tv or fast food. I don’t like the number of bashes to the head that Young C’s had and I don’t like that L’il I’s first solid food was picked up off the floor. Those are bad things and I don’t like them and I feel guilty over them. BUT they’ll be okay, right?

So when I say that I’m a bad mother, when I take up the banner of bad motherhood proffered by Her Bad Mother, it is not just semantics. It’s not a celebration of the bad things that happen to children, either. It is an admission that I can’t always do things the right way, the good way. It may be a celebration of imperfection. And it sure as hell is an attack on anyone who would deign to tell mothers that their best efforts are not good enough.

And to those who have dismissed this bad mother label by calling it nothing but self-deprecating humour, I must admit I don’t see the problem. What’s not to love about self-deprecating humour? Just because this shit is real doesn’t mean it can’t be funny. Self-deprecation is the only therapy I have.

It’s bad mother week here at the Playground Confidential. Starting yesterday! (Because I’m a bad blogger, too, and couldn’t get this post up in time.) So go back and read the Daily Snacks and stay tuned for more badness.

(Image courtesy of Aaron Escobar on Flickr.)

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