Month: June 2009

Categories
Fulfillment

Motherhood: it’s not about you

Ever notice when someone says you’re being selfish, what they really mean is “You’re not thinking about ME?”

Yeah. So, while we talk a lot and focus a lot here (and lots of other places, naturally) on what it means to be a mother, how hard it is to be a mother and so on and so forth, somehow, we often seem to miss the real “why” of motherhood.

I know this is pretty obvious, but we’re mothers because we have children, and because we care about them. That’s the long and the short of it—that’s why it’s easy (they’re ours), and that’s why it’s hard (we care).

Now, I know when I say this, many of you will think, “Oh, but kids already think they’re the center of the universe. They need to see that they’re not!” I agree—children, especially those with SAHMs, grow up with someone around who might seem to them to exist only to fulfill their nutritional and entertainment needs.

But when I want to demonstrate, for example, that they’re not the center of the universe by taking excessive time for myself to their detriment, am I really teaching them not “You’re not the center of the universe,” but “I am?”

I don’t know. It’s a hard question to even state, since that’s seldom the problem with me time (usually the problem is that we martyr-mothers don’t take enough). And certainly there are other, better, healthier ways to teach our children to respect and value other people and their time.

What do you think? Are children too much the center of a mother’s universe? Which is the lesser of two evils: focusing too much on our children’s needs or focusing too much on our own? How do you find a balance?

Categories
Fulfillment Faith

You are true nobility

knightly_helmetAs I pondered a title for this post, I thought I should come up with a definition of nobility—and the first thing that popped into my head was that nobility is the opposite of playing the martyr.

I think if any of us had to draw a picture of nobility, we would show someone with their head held high. We think of knights and soldiers in acts of bravery; we think of true martyrs who sacrificed all that they had, even their lives, for their faith; we think of true saints who dedicated their living hours to those around them.

We don’t think of mothers. (Remember? Most moms are the bad kind of martyrs.)

This is especially interesting in light of the quotation that inspired this post:

The noblest calling in the world is motherhood. True motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. She who can paint a masterpiece, or who can write a book that will influence millions, deserves the admiration and plaudits of mankind; but she who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters, whose immortal souls will exert an influence throughout the ages long after paintings shall have faded, and books and statues shall have decayed or have been destroyed, deserves the highest honor that man can give, and the choicest blessings of God.

—David O. McKay in Pathways to Happiness

Being a mother is the most important thing we can do. On this note, I do want to note that most of us are doing well at the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. This doesn’t mean we have our families on home-grown organic raw-food vegetarian diets that we spend six hours a day planning, preparing and tending (the garden). It doesn’t mean we have our children in every single conceivable extracurricular from archery to zoobotany club. It doesn’t mean we subjugate our every desire to every whim of our children’s.

It means, as Jane put it so well today, that:

being a good mother takes two things: 1) the desire to be a good mother. . . . And 2) the will to do those things that she determines to be important for the well-being of her children. Even those that require sacrifice, change of habit, or a lot of w-o-r-k.

And that work—as deeply challenging as it sometimes feels—is a beautiful art that, no matter what else I write or do or say, will be my magnum opus.

What do you think? Will your profession as a mother be your magnum opus? How do you strive to perfect your motherly art? Are you a “good” mother?

Photo by salssa

Categories
Fulfillment

Of martyrs and mothers

Mothers have a reputation (especially in movies and television!) for being martyrs. “Oh, I’ve given you so much—life, food, everything you ever wanted,” a mother moans, “and now you won’t even come to Sunday dinner! I see how you repay working my fingers to the bone, my 352 hours of laboring with you, the 15 years of bedwetting, I see what that all meant to you.”

523790_regretAs children of mothers, naturally, just about everyone hates these characters. Yeah, we laugh, but it’s a knowing laugh. We’ve seen mothers or perhaps even had our own mothers act that way—woe is me, I reared you, it was hard and you’re ungrateful.

And I think we’ve had such a strong reaction to this cultural archetype of the mother as martyr that any complaining about how hard it is to be a mom makes some people say (or at least think) “Oh, quit being a martyr.” (I also like the backhanded compliment, “Glad you got over being a martyr.” Thanks.)

Another stereotype in the media (that’s gotten to be passé, but still persists) is the mom who does everything for everyone all the time (except herself) and is smiley and happy and overjoyed. This one, I think, is even less rooted in reality, unless you’re stuck in 1957. Oh, and TVLand. (Or, like in this archive photo, it’s your first baby’s first birthday.)

Although that image isn’t portrayed as often these days, it’s still ingrained an impossible standard that persists today—if you don’t love every second of motherhood, you’re a bad mother, you must hate your children, and you’re just voicing your discouragement because you’re a helpless martyr (who was, apparently, too stupid to realize that you were never meant to have children in the first place).

This lie is insidious. Pernicious. As a society, we have subconsciously accepted this expectation for years—decades. A good mother is always happy, and it is only a bad mother who ever complains (and then, she’s trying to emotionally blackmail her grown children into her outrageous demands—which just goes to show how bad she is.).

But acknowledging our struggles with motherhood doesn’t make us less of a mother—or more of a martyr. It’s okay to acknowledge that my ten-month-old has been grumpy and fussy for five days and by the time my husband gets home I can hardly stand to hear her and I really not into playing trains. It doesn’t mean I’m not right where I belong or that I hate my children or even that I hate motherhood. It just means that it’s hard for me—and that’s okay.

So go ahead and vent: here, on this post, and always. There are no judgments or competitions here—and there are no bad mothers or martyrs.

What are you dealing with right now?

Photo by Dez Pain

Categories
MetaBlogging

Google’s Blogger: Search Box for All

blogger_logoLast April, I wrote an open letter to Google Blogger users, asking you to please use the header navbar because that was the only way most people could search your site. (Personally, if I really, really wanted to link to or comment on an older post on your site, I do know a few tricks, but it’s still extra work for me—and do you want to make me work more when I’m trying to link to you?)

Well, even if you didn’t listen (for shame!), Google did. I mentioned almost a year ago that Blogger in Draft had added two cool, user-friendly features for Blogger users to try out: a comment form right on the post page and a search box gadget (AKA widget). However, to put those features on your blog, you had to move your blog from regular Blogger to Blogger in Draft.

Then last October, Blogger moved the comment form to regular Blogger, meaning you can put form on your post pages for people to leave comments, just like WordPress and Typepad blogs. And yesterday, regular Blogger finally got the Search Box Gadget!

To add a search box to your Blogger sidebar, go to Layout>Add a Gadget. Select Search Box from the list. Then you get a list of options:

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Here you can set the title for your search box (I don’t think you really need one, but “Search this blog” is fine, too). The check boxes allow you to choose what tabs you want to see in your final version.

Here’s a look at the search results:

google-blogger-search-big

See how it says “This Blog,” “Linked from here,” and “The web” across the top? Clicking on each of those reveals a different pane of results for the same search term. Also note that these search results are inserted right above your blog content.

So help out the people who want to read and link to your archives today and add the Search Box Gadget!

Categories
Kids/Parenting

Summertime!

When we were preparing to potty train Hayden, I tried to think of a big incentive for him once he was all done potty training (back when I was dreading a months-long battle toward the potty)—and I found it.

Swim lessons

Hayden latched on to that idea like no other, even though when I first mentioned it, it was the middle of winter. And from the day we potty trained him, he hardly let a day pass without asking if we were going swimming.

Like the mean mother that I am, I made him wait three whole weeks until lessons started at the city’s outdoor pool.

I think it was worth it:

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Rebecca spectating

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Does he like it?

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Oh yeah!