More on "Motherhood is Easy" ...

In today's Sunday Life magazine, Mia Freedman gave a measured response to Jacinta Tynan's piece from a few weeks ago that caused such an uproar. I generally like Mia Freedman's column and was hoping she would provide a response, given that readers had made over 1000 comments about this issue on her website recently. Her response was carefully non-critical, although she did point out some flaws in the original argument: for instance, Jacinta's point that mothers never used to complain about their lot in life. This, according to Mia, was not necessarily a good thing:

There were no outlets for mothers to express negative feelings or admit their fears, frustrations and anxieties. So they drank. Or took Valium. Or became depressed. Or suffered in silence. Sometimes they harmed their children, harmed themselves or just walked out.

My great-great-grandmother walked out. Her daughter – my grandmother's mother – was apparently scarred by this abandonment. This would have then affected her own experiences of motherhood and my grandmother's upbringing. My grandmother herself had five children within seven years, lived (and worked) on a farm and did not drive. I often wonder about how she coped. Life would have been so difficult for her. And of course my grandfather would not have been particularly supportive or understanding. My grandmother is not a happy person, and I don't think she feels she has had a good life. Personally, I think it is good that today we recognise how hard motherhood can be, that mothers are able to talk about it and not feel ashamed of asking for help (although of course we still do feel ashamed).

Mia's main point is that all experiences of motherhood should be voiced and heard, the positives as well as the negatives. It seems that many feel Jacinta Tynan was being vilified for talking about her positive experience. I would like to think that is not actually the case. Personally, I was angered by the judgemental tone in her article, the implication that those who are finding it hard should just put up and shut up. And that is not helpful: we need to be able to ask for help sometimes.

Multiple identities

It was not a good week. One of the kids had diarrhoea on and off for several days and I spent a great deal of my time cleaning up little (and big) accidents. It was not pleasant and by the end of it my back ached from spending so much time doubled over, cleaning up. The worst of the accidents happened while we were out shopping and it is probably best that I don't say too much about it as the details are rather unpleasant, but it did involve me on my hands and knees with a packet of wipes cleaning the floor in a crowded shopping centre. My poor little boy was absolutely mortified by the whole experience (“this has been my worst day ever”). I have to remember that while it was pretty unpleasant for me it was far worse for him. And thankfully it is all over now, and I now have a new parenting experience to add to my growing list!

But I have not chosen to blog about this little episode to add armour to my side of the “motherhood is easy” debate. No, as I was heading back to work this week I thought about what I would say to my colleagues when they asked, as they often do, “How has your week been?” Do I tell the truth? Do I tell them it's actually been pretty shitty (literally). Or do I brush it off and say, as I normally would, “it's been okay”?

Of course it doesn't really matter what I answer. The details about the sick kid aren't pleasant and probably wouldn't be appropriate for workplace conversation. But it did get me thinking about how different my work life is from my home life. How much do my colleagues really know about me? I consider them to be good friends and we do know a lot about each others' lives – details amassed over years' of casual conversations over coffee. But my life outside work is so vastly different from my life inside work that I sometimes wonder if I am leading a double life. What would my colleagues think of me if they knew what I was really like at home, if they knew the details of what goes on in the “real” world for me? At work I sit in a quiet office, I get to wear nice (clean) clothes, I write, I talk to adults, I am asked what I think and my opinion is (usually) respected. At home, on the more challenging days, I get yelled at, I rush around attending to multiple demands, I cook, I shop, I hang out the washing, I clean (sometimes). And sometimes - on the REALLY bad days - I spend hours on end cleaning up poo.

And at home I am a totally different person. I have no patience. I yell a lot. At work I am calm. I am quiet. I have never yelled at anyone at work.

Thinking about this reminded me of a book I read a few years ago, called “The Bitch in the House”. Edited by Cathi Hanauer, it's a collection of essays written by women about a range of feminist issues to do with modern families, modern life, modern marriages: “26 women tell the truth about sex, solitude, work, motherhood, and marriage”. It features an essay called "Attila the Honey I'm Home" by Kristin van Ogtrop about her double life as a calm, rational, highly successful professional, and a frustrated, angry mother. She compares the words people at work and home use to describe her. At work they say she is “unflappable” and “straightforward”. At home they say things like “you're too mean to live in this house and I want you to go back to work for the rest of your life!” The life she describes sounds infinitely more hectic and pressured than mine but I can certainly relate to this description.

I should add, of course, that I do love spending time at home with my kids. I do have fun with them. I crawl around on the floor playing with cars. I have wonderful conversations that I love relating to my husband at the end of the day. I play endless games of snakes and ladders and pretend to be excited when I win. Don't get me wrong, I love being at home with my kids. It's just that the two worlds – and the two versions of “me” - are so completely different.

And it's not just those of us with young children who lead double lives. How much do we really know about the people we work with and what they're like at home? Last year when I was talking to a colleague, our conversation somehow turned to a news report about an unidentified body and a missing tourist. The parents of the missing tourist were in denial that the body could be their daughter's. My colleague said: “They don't know what they're talking about. I found my mum when she'd been dead for a week and she was unrecognisable.” Needless to say I was shocked. I had no idea that this person, who I had spent a fair bit of time with over the last year or so, had been dealing with something so traumatic.

I think we all, to some extent, lead double lives or have multiple identities. And for many of us the work/home dichotomy is just the tip of the iceberg. There are, for instance, the secret lives that people lead when they're having extramarital affairs. Some of these secret lives are more extreme than others. Remember the case of the missing millionaire Herman Rockefeller whose identity as a swinger only came to light when he died? And there was the recent report from the US of a woman who discovered her husband had “married” his lover when she found wedding photos on the lover's Facebook page. Social networking must make it more difficult for people to lead secret lives and it can certainly blur the boundaries between our personal/work/other lives. Personally I have chosen not to use Facebook to connect with colleagues. I see my colleagues at work and I can call or email them if I need to. I am happy to share personal details with them, which I choose to share at my discretion. But I don't necessarily want to give them all the gory details about my life – like how I found myself cleaning poo off the floor in a crowded shopping centre last weekend.
 
So yes, I think I prefer keeping my work and home identities separate. How do other people feel about this?

Easy Peasy

For the past few days I have been fuming about an article I read in the Sunday Life magazine, titled "The Big Easy". The author, Jacinta Tynan, who appears to lead a charmed life, argues that from where she stands "motherhood is a cinch" and she "can't see what all the whingeing is about".

I am pleased to see I'm not the only one who was infuriated by this article. There have been other blog posts and commentaries in the past two days (see Not Quite Crafty and Chalet Girl for instance).

Funnily enough while I was fuming about this article and composing a response in my head I was breastfeeding my tired toddler and waiting patiently for him to fall asleep so I could sneak off to the computer and write it all down. But he did not fall asleep. So I did not get to write it down and was irritable and snappy with the kids for the rest of the day. What was it Jacinta said about the lack of "me time"? Quit moaning about it.

The article is written from the arrogant perspective of a woman who is in the first year of motherhood with an easy baby. She did balance her commentary a little with acknowledgement that yes, she has a baby not a toddler (not even a crawling baby) and an easy one at that. But she was so smug – as so many women are about this stuff – that I feel compelled to respond. By writing about how wonderfully easy it all is, she makes all women who have ever complained about motherhood feel even more inadequate.

Five years ago my second child was born a month early. He was a hungry unsettled baby and I survived for the first six months on four or five hours of (broken) sleep a night. I had zero patience with my two-year-old, and I blame that period of time on his subsequent self-esteem issues. One day during that time my sister-in-law, who was basking in the love and joy of her first baby (an easy settled child, of course) took my husband aside and said to him “why isn't she coping? Other women cope with having two children. What is wrong with her?” I have often reflected on this incident not only because it provides evidence of my in-laws' incredible propensity to judge other people, always negatively (but more on that another time). I have often thought: why didn't she offer to help? Why did she just point out how inadequate I was, how there must be something wrong with me if I couldn't cope? If she was finding life so easy and I was struggling with a hungry baby who did not sleep well and an attention-seeking toddler, why not offer to take her nephew off my hands for a few hours, or provide some freezable meals now and then? But no – practical help was never offered, just judgement. Until you have been in that situation (and yes my sister-in-law did eventually find herself there) you have no right to judge. Yes, you can say that you are enjoying motherhood but don't suggest that those around you who are struggling have the wrong attitude or are not approaching it in the right way.

Jacinta Tynan suggests that because she loves her baby and feels grateful to have him, caring for him is a cinch: "soothing a crying baby who won't sleep for love nor money is a privilege, not a hardship". And motherhood is not hard because she loves it - "hard? No. Exhilarating and rewarding more like it." Well, Jacinta, I'm sure most mothers love their children and have plenty of moments when they find it exhilarating and rewarding. That's why we stick at it, day in and day out. But you are confusing ejoyment with ease. They are not the same thing. Does the fact that I love being a mother make it easy to survive in a sleep-deprived fog for months on end? Does it make it easy to deal with a four-year-old who is screaming so loudly in the supermarket that the manager threatens to call the police? (yes, this really happened: the manager threatened my son but did not offer to help me, despite the fact that I obviously had my hands full with two other children and a trolley load full of shopping). Does loving your child make it easy to battle day after day when he refuses to eat? Does it make it easy to get your oldest kid to school on time when the youngest has a tantrum just as you're heading out the door? Does it make it easy to stay calm and level-headed when your kids are trying to tear each others' eyeballs out because one sat on the "wrong" chair? Does it make it easy to cajole a reluctant learner to do his homework, or to help a child with poor self-esteem who is struggling in the playground?

We complain about motherhood, Jacinta, because it IS hard work. Yes, it is fun and rewarding. But it is hard too. And sharing the load helps. Knowing you are not alone helps. And sometimes we complain because we are really asking for help. But does it help to hear another mother gloat about how easy she finds it? No, it does not.