Whole books could be written on the expectations of a mother, or a woman or a father or a man. The list is long. Yet I wonder where these expectations come from, where they are rooted and how we have come to feel them heavy upon us like the waking sun.
It wasn’t until I became a mother or was expecting our new baby that I started to feel the expectations of being a mother seep in from all around. My mother and grandmother had certain beliefs on what a good mother was, as did my mother in law, sister in law, sister, and friends. They all came to me without meaning to, silently waiting in expectation to see what kind of mother I would become.
Now here is when you could say, “who cares what everyone thinks, you be you, and be the mom you want to be.” This is true, but whether or not I took on this attitude or not, I already had the knowledge of what the women in my life that I loved and respected thought to be true. I mean, they were the reason in some aspects I am the woman I am today. I was and am influenced by them. We are influenced by others everyday whether we want to be or not. Unless we live apart from civilization, we will unwillingly be influenced. And today, we are influenced beyond imagination.
I remember being young and seeing someone at school or in a magazine have on a cute something, be it a pair of jeans, shoes, earrings, nail polish, whatever. And it would spark an interest in me. The next time I went to the store I would be on the lookout for something similar, because that was so cute and I wanted to have one too! I remember that being fun. It is not fun anymore. We are influenced all the time, everywhere, and it’s different now. Instead of it being the girl the grade ahead of me or someone I saw on tv, now it is on a real mother like me, with her real you tube channel, telling me with utmost certainty that this is what I need. This is too hard.
I think of Caroline Ingalls (“Ma”) from Little house on the Prairie, or my own great grandmother or other women from a different time. They were influenced of course by the women in their lives, but there was no television, very few magazines, or photographs. They had their own minds with their own thoughts uncluttered by the world of influence. Of course they had other women they interacted with, um Harriet Olsen for example. Those interactions though were few and far between, with enough space I imagine to not let those feelings simmer for too long.
As a mother today I feel expected to
- be available all the time
- be a good cook
- be a good housekeeper
- budget well
- eat healthy
- be thin
- be fit
- be a good party planner
- look nice all the time
- have well behaved children
- have a nicely decorated home
- be the maker of fun
- be on time
- make all appointments without forgetting
- make homemade food
- keep up on laundry
- teach my children
- remember all family members and friends birthdays
- to charge every device
- remember all school events/activities/teachers/class schedules for all children
- remember everything!
This is just the tip of the iceberg on expectations I feel as a mother. Some are probably put on myself by myself, but many are just what I feel from every outlet around me.
I do know there are no two mothers alike. We all have different lives, very different lives. We have different children, spouses, support, homes, schedules, jobs, health issues, etc. So why are we letting influencers all around us make us feel like we need to grab onto what they are doing to be better at being a mother, or a homemaker or a wife? How absurd is this?
If we really broke it down mother to mother, it is never apples to apples. Sure I have friends who have similar lives to me, but the dynamics of our families are still so very different that our struggles and our challenges are never going to be exactly the same. I remember watching a you tube mom channel, because yes I do still enjoy seeing how other mothers are getting along. She had four children and she talked about laundry and how it was never really an issue for her. Easy peasy that laundry. At the time, laundry was a real struggle for me. But then I thought about it. Her children were of different ages than mine and they had different sleeping schedules. Her laundry room appeared to be on her main living floor, my laundry room is in the downstairs cold garage/basement. Just those two things alone changed our feelings and our reality about doing laundry.
While I would like to say we are only as influenced as we want to be, to an extent that is true. But it’s not true either. I try hard everyday to be the mother I want to be, to make decisions based on my own thoughts and beliefs and to live my unique life, not someone else’s.
So here I go, keep on keeping on.
“Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action we do.”
Mother Teresa
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