Fellow mothers, please listen to me. I have something that you need to hear.
Yes, you.
Being a mother is not easy. It is wonderful, joyful, a tremendous privilege, even fun sometimes; but it is not easy. Soon after my first son was born I discovered what felt like no-win situations suddenly cropping up in every area of my life. With each additional year of motherhood, they multiply.
Maybe it’s just me. In that case, hear me out, if only so you can understand me better. I know you have it all figured out. You know what’s best for your family, and you always do it. But me? I’m not a perfect mom. Sometimes I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I choose to do something that you think is dangerous, harmful, careless, stupid, or just plain wrong. Unfortunately, you don’t all agree on what those things are. I can’t ever make you all happy.
Sarcasm aside, there are ever-so-many situations we find ourselves in as mothers where we must make a choice, and sometimes no matter what choice we make, someone is going to think it was the wrong one. I honestly can’t even fairly divide myself between my two children and my husband. Sometimes one child has to cry because I can only carry one at once. Sometimes my husband has to wait for an answer to an important question, or for his dinner, because a little person needs to nurse, be changed, or go to sleep. I have no hope of ever making the mommy-police happy!
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about! You can just tuck your advice back where it came from. I don’t need you to tell me about scheduling, or sleep training, or baby wearing, or floor time, or anything else. In all reality, even with that wonderful solution you’ve found, admit it; you can’t do it all either.
We aren’t meant to.
And yet there is tremendous pressure on us, as mothers, to do it all. To be perfect. To have all the answers, to not be weak. To be right. I don’t understand it all; but I do know it’s a nasty, self-perpetuating cycle. I feel I must defend my parenting choices – for you, or to silence the doubts in my own head, I don’t know. But what I do know is that my defense of my choice makes you feel that you must defend yours (if it is different) or join me in condemning others who haven’t chosen to do it the way we have. It makes us feel good. It doesn’t make them feel good.
The issues are endless. They start before the baby is even born. Doctor or midwife? Hospital or home? Medicated or natural? Or (tongue-in-cheek horrors!) a c-section?
There’s what we feed them. Breast or bottle? Formula or goats milk? Baby-led weaning? Early solids? Organic? Fruits or vegetables? Vegan, vegetarian, gluten free? Homemade or store bought?
Do you vaccinate? Cloth-diaper? Co-sleep? Infant potty-train? Yes? No? Then good, you’re in! Or out, sorry. You must not love your children enough.
Sometimes our decisions are based on much research and what we feel is best for the health of our family. Sometimes they are based on cost, convenience, or environmental factors. Almost always we have a good reason for the choices we’ve made. I don’t freak out about my children getting dirty. I agree with recent research (rare occurrence!) that strong, healthy children need to be exposed to dirt and germs in order to develop a healthy immune system. I’m also not going to spend my very limited energy stressing out over keeping my house spotless and my two active toddlers out of the mud! But see that mom over there? Yeah, the one with the obsessive hand-sanitizer habit. Did you know she has a child with a compromised immune system who lands in the hospital every time a simple cold comes through her family? No? I wish you had before you gave her that lecture about super-bugs and how she’s making the world a dangerous place for all of us!
The choices multiply as the children grow. In addition to food and health issues, there are matters of discipline – (Your children don’t say yes ma’am? Gasp!) and education (Public? Private? Home? Classical? Unschooling?). There are different ways of handling peer friendships, adolescent freedoms, and individual likes and dislikes. You don’t allow picky eating? Good for you! (Did I ask?)
As if that all isn’t enough, we must needs judge each others’ house keeping skills too. And how much we do ourselves – you can? And sew? And cook from scratch? You garden? Raise animals? Make your own soap? I’m so glad you don’t expose your family to harsh chemicals! And have you ever seen that McDonald’s burger after a year…?
Now, for some of you, I know you have the luxury of always being able to choose the ideal in every situation. But most of us poor mortal mothers occasionally do something just because it works for us.
I know women who would love to breast feed their babies. But for whatever reason, breast feeding, for them, involves hours of pumping and supplementing and working with a bad latch or a low milk supply. And guess what? Some decide it’s well worth it. They put everything on hold for six months in order to give their baby the benefits of breast milk and nursing.
Good for them!
But guess what else? Some decide that it’s more important to make sure their baby is fed, their other children have a mother who isn’t always attached to a pump, and they stay sane. They let go; they choose to bottle feed. And you know what I say?
Good for them.
Friends, it’s just not always as cut-and-dried, as black-and-white, as we’d like to make it! Why do we give each other such a hard time?
Is it because we are so used to having to defend our parenting practices to our critics? Do we not realize that we are doing the same thing to other moms that hurts so when people do it to us? Isn’t there a better way to relate and encourage each other than this constant berating that sends us all home in tears over our perceived failure to be supermom?
Here’s what the apostle Paul had to say about these things.
“Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.”
“If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations-’Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’ (referring to things that all perish as they are used)-according to human precepts and teachings?”
“Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.”
I don’t think I’m misusing these verses. If we are not to judge each other in unspecified matters of religion, how much less in things that pertain only to this world? Let us encourage one another to love and good works, and where we differ in these non-essentials, let us learn to shut up.
Amen.
