Color me impressed
YOU: with your tall, red boots and low-slung
jeans so tight I cannot breathe
and your hair cut just so –
creating that fabulously, special look we all know.
You breeze in with that radiant smile;
your two-year-old twins in matching argyle
and bouncing baby on your hip,
so effortlessly not letting anything slip.
We all turn green with envy;
try not to make being mean an art—
suddenly, I wonder when it is
that you fall apart.
By Annette Gagliardi
I was a ‘good-enough’ mom. I made mistakes – lots of them. But my kids have turned out pretty well and I’m proud of the strong, intelligent, beautiful, kind women they have become. (Oh and they multi-task really well) I have heard many times over the years that I should lower my standards but I was never able to do that.
I did press the girls school uniforms for all the years they went to Catholic school. I also pressed the table clothes and pillow cases, and my husband’s shirts and dress pants. I made homemade bread , jams and jelly. I still sew and garden. My sisters, friends and many of my cousins do all those same things. Our generation is well-versed in all the domestic arts. That was the multi-tasking done in previous generations.
I probably made myself most crazy with my own expectations for myself. I didn’t have high expectations for others, so much as for myself. We are our hardest critics and mothers are the queens of high self-expectations. Beginning when we bring our babies home, we want to be the calmest, most resourceful, best mother in the world. We want to respond instantly to our babies and do whatever it takes to keep them happy.
My second child had colic. For some of you, I don’t even need to go on. You know how painful that is. She cried most of the night, and I cried too. I was lactose intolerant, yet the doctors had advised me to drink milk. My child was also lactose intolerant, so we were both in pain. Finally, after another visit to the doctor, they suggested soy formula. She was a different baby in three days. Yes, that formula was so expensive we called it ‘liquid gold’, but it was worth every penny.
I didn’t want to fail as a mother. Providing my infant with food that didn’t make her cry was a big deal – really one of survival for both of us.
Carla Naumburg says, “It is, quite simply, not possible to do better than good enough. Perfection is not an option.” Because every parent knows (eventually) that it’s just not possible to meet every single one of our child’s needs. It’s not even possible to keep up with cleaning up after them. that doesn’t mean we don’t make an effort, but not expecting perfection will keep us sane and allow our kids to learn disappointment and how to fail.
@FRUTSOFMOTHERHOOD says
“If you’re going to do nothing during nap time, don’t torture yourself while doing nothing. Just do nothing. Your mind needs a break too.”
Remember that ad in the seventies
“Cause I’m a woman. I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, and never,
ever let you forget you’re a man.” The perfume, Enjoi lasts a full 24 hours!
“I can work til 5:00, come home to read ‘tickity tock’ “(a man’s voice says:
Tonight, I’m gonna cook for the kids) “and if it’s lovin’ you want, I can give you’re the shivering fits! cause I’m a woman. W-O-M-A-N.”
It was for Enjoli – the perfume meant to last through your working day and beyond. Because women don’t stop.
“I’m not a fan of the ‘multi-tasking goddess’ image that we’ve created for moms. Yes. We are amazing, and we get shit done. But I shouldn’t have to take a conference call while feeding my kids while mopping the floor while changing a diaper while dealing with the cable guy. @momming_glory
Women were expected to do ‘everything’ even before that ad. But, I want to ask you, dear reader to think about the expectations for women. In your life time, how many times did you NEED to multitask? How much did it just come naturally? And how proud are you of yourself, when you got a hundred and three things done
before 10 am? Well. you should be proud of yourself. But if you didn’t multi-task twelve or thirteen things, just let it go. It’s really okay.
My mother canned, baked 14 loaves of bread a week, cooked our meals, maintained a garden, kept our clothes clean and pressed, sewed some of our clothes, while she raised us eight kids. Yes, we helped her clean the house and do the laundry, which was what mothers were supposed to teach their kids in the 50’s and 60’s. She taught us manners, sewing skills, gardening, canning. There was always something to do. She worked a lot. When I was in ninth grade, Mom took an evening class and then went to work as a key-punch operator to help Dad keep food on the table.
Even before she went to work outside the home, she had a full-time job. Raising us kids was a 24-7 career. When she got her job, we older kids had to step it up and help by making supper and watching younger siblings.
The word multitasking first appeared in 1965 IBM report talking about the capabilities of its latest computer. That’s right, it wasn’t until the 1960s that anyone could even claim to be good at multitasking.
Writing for The New Atlantis, Christine Rosen notes that in the late ’90s and early 2000s, “advertisements started celebrating the use of technology for doing lots of things at once,” and multitasking became a defined skill on resumes
(https://www.forbes.com › carolinebeaton › 2017/01/27)
“Multitasking with technology has become so engrained in our work processes that it’s bewildering we ever did anything without it.” (Caroline Beaton)
Ms. Beaton continues to discuss multi-tasking as “rewiring our brains, enabling “multiple tasks to be processed in more rapid succession”. But, it is not so good because in the same time, it reduces our ability to problem solve.
I’m sorry, Ms. Beaton, have you met a mother? A mother with a preschooler who needs to problem solve while multi-tasking, just to get said toddler/preschooler out of bed, dressed and fed.
I remember my mom called me one day when I was in the midst of raising my babies. She asked me what I was doing. And, I hesitated. I didn’t really want to tell her how I was multi-tasking. But today, mothers are not ashamed to say they are nursing their child . . . while sitting on the toilet. Hey, if the baby’s crying and nature calls, what are you gonna do? Yes. I had put conventional ideals of toileting and nursing aside to multi-task. And, I’m not afraid to say it.
I spent years providing child care (and keeping house) all day, putting supper on the table, then going to class to complete my college education. When I came home at 9 pm, I’d get to finish the dishes and get some homework done before going to bed at midnight. I’m not complaining, because I’m surely not alone. Women everywhere are carrying heavy, heavy loads. they are multi-tasking. And they are creatively problem solving how to get their jobs done – those inside their home and the one they get paid to do.
I work hard. but I’m not superhuman. This narrative that society sells through rose-tinted glasses is problematic because it glosses over the real struggle that is motherhood, rather than clearly showing its harsh, often unfair realities. @Scarymommy
One of the big things I observed after I retired was, I get to breathe. Literally, there is time to sit around and think, “Okay, what’s next?” I mean, being able to go at a pace that allows oneself to breathe, that allows oneself to process what is happening, is heaven. Okay, okay, it’s retirement. I love it. I wish this pace for all the people everywhere.
Erin McGuire Olson @e_mcguire says: “The challenge I’m doing this month is called October and it’s where I just try to get through every day of October.
I know that if you are a working mother (Okay, this is a redundant term). If you are a mother and if you hold a job outside of the house, I have always recommended that you have help in some form or another. Perhaps your spouse shares household duties. Perhaps your parents or other family members help with child care, cleaning, taxi service, meals etc. Perhaps you get to have a cleaning service, a taxi service, an in-home mannie or nannie. Good for you.
If you are lucky enough to be a stay-at-home mother (that means you don’t have a job other than parenting and spousing), you still have one of the hardest jobs there is. And an added bonus is that you are not reimbursed financially for parenting. You will need to do more self-care because you won’t get many kudos for what you do. Re-read the paragraph above about how you could get your spouse to help, hire a cleaning service, ask for help from a retired person.
“I think at the end of the day mothers and wives are begging someone to notice that the floor was mopped, the form was filled out, the weird crevice between the sink and wall was vacuumed, the favorite snacks were bought, the appointment was made, the day was planned and everyone had everything they didn’t know they needed.”
My husband used to do a cheer with the kids after supper. “One, two, three. Thank you for the food, MOM!” – I loved it. He didn’t always notice when and where I had cleaned, but he did notice when the house was not cleaned up.
“We are asking for our work to be acknowledged, because if it isn’t, it’s like what we spend our lives doing doesn’t matter. Caring for the people we love brings so much joy, but the weight of all these small things is unbearable when unnoticed.” from @scarymommy
I remember when my mother-in-law went to work, after all her kids were in school. She said she needed to be able to talk about something other than that she had cleaned the toilet. She needed to have interests other than house cleaning and laundry. The kids were great, but when they went to school, she knew she needed more. She was okay with being a good enough mom and she wanted the kids to become self-sufficient. I think it worked.
Resources
@scarymommy quotes From https://www.instagram.com/p/CVgIi2LAD-9/
The Millennial Workforce: How Multitasking Is Changing Our Brains by Caroline Beaton, Jan 27, 2017, Forbes at:
The gift of a good enough mother by Carla Naumburg in Seleni
at: https://www.seleni.org/advice-support/2018/3/14/the-gift-of-the-good-enough-mother