On Motherhood: A Confession (Part I)

So, it seems to be that time.  That time for Peter and I to start thinking seriously about reproduction.  So, I’ve been thinking.  Seriously, about reproduction.

And I just don’t know what to think.

Years of soul-searching and counselling have not led me to any profound realization about why I feel so ambivalent about being a mother.  Nonetheless, that’s precisely how I feel: ambivalent.  Sometimes, when I see a cute baby behaving itself, I admire from afar and appreciate the cuteness.  But, the minute that baby starts to fuss or cry, my admiration abruptly cuts off and turns to annoyance.  ’Ugh,’ I think, toward the parent, ‘Control your kid.’  (God, I feel like such a BAD WOMAN for confessing this).

When I was younger, I only babysat a handful of times.  I never enjoyed it, and I was never very good at it.  I remember once having a babysitting job with my older sister.  We were supposed to take care of five siblings for an entire day, and by the middle of the day, I wanted to shoot myself.  I was bored beyond belief, I felt more awkward and uncomfortable than I usually did (which is saying a lot for a teenager), and I ended up just behaving like another one of the kids for my sister to look after.  (God bless her… Though, believe me, she didn’t take too kindly to my negligence).

I never felt very natural playing “House” as a little kid.  When my sister and my friends wanted to play with baby dolls, I played along, but only because I wanted to spend time with my friends and do whatever they were doing.  I never volunteered to work in the nursery at church, and the sound of a child crying in the middle of a service or a movie or a mall grated on my nerves like nails on a chalkboard.  Even when I was a child, I remember thinking that children were weird: we were far more likely than the grown-ups to have snot dripping out of our noses or dirt underneath our fingernails or cough-germs that we were spreading to the surrounding world in lieu of covering our mouths like decent human beings.  My parents remember fondly my kindergarten graduation, when all of the little graduates were seated in a row on a stage as we awaited our name being announced.  I was (unfathomably) seated next to a punk of a little boy who insisted on making a scene throughout much of the ceremony.  And with photos to prove it, my parents laugh and laugh about the death-stares I was shooting at the boy throughout the whole ridiculous event.

Growing up, I never really thought much about having children myself.  A mother was someone old and, often, fat and boring.  Or worse, a mother was someone who seemed to live her entire life devoted to her children, and not in a way that I found admirable.  She seemed to forget about herself, her own needs, her own dreams, her own life.  And what troubled me the most was that it was precisely this total neglect of self-hood that seemed to be most lauded by others as the essence of motherhood.  Meanwhile, I observed these women in their unhappiness:  I watched as friends’ mothers entangled themselves in the lives of their children, desperate to see their dreams lived out in the lives of their offspring.  I observed the mothers who pushed and pushed their children into various activities with a vice-like grip: you WILL be a world-class volleyball player, you WILL be an actress, you WILL be a pastor.  And then, even more insidiously, there were the mothers who pressed further: you WILL be popular in school, you WILL have the dream boyfriend, you WILL be the envy of all your friends, WE WILL WIN THIS GAME!

Of course, there were, thank God in heaven, the exceptions.  There was Becky, who ran her own business and helped with the youth group and gave her own children space to develop into who they wanted to be.  And it is one of the insurmountable blessings in my life that she let me watch and observe and absorb an alternative.  And there was Jenny, who laughed even more than her joy-filled daughters and who seemed to be having just as much fun with life as she could.  And one of the warmest places on earth is being in her presence.

Still, the odds seemed stacked against mothers these days.  If they are pursuing their careers to the nth degree, they are unhappy to be away from their families so much.  And if they are with their families all the time, they are unhappy allowing that long-sought-after college degree to sit in a corner, collecting dust with the rest of their ambitions.  And if they let on that they are unsatisfied with either of these alternatives, then they are labelled as whiners or femi-nazis or anti-feminists or spoiled brats or bad mothers or … whatever other unholy thing can be said about a woman (the list is disturbingly extensive).

But some strange things have happened in my life over the last few years.  First, I met a young man who was different from nearly every other young man I knew.  He didn’t make demeaning sexual comments or laugh when others did (which, let’s be honest, put him in a category of an alarmingly small group of young men).  He didn’t judge other people or assume the worst about them and their motives (which, let’s be honest, set him apart from, well, me…).  And he carried himself in a way that demonstrated a quiet confidence in his own identity without ever needing to be arrogant or boastful, on the one hand, or needy and insecure, on the other.  And so, I fell in love and waited for him to discern if marrying me was something God wanted him to do.  (I know this sounds anti-feminist, but it is really how it went down.  I knew that men like him were few and far between, and I wanted this one.  So, I waited.)

Three years after our first date, we got married.

And now, it’s been a little over three years.

Obviously, to complete the Trinitarian structure, it is now time for us to start thinking seriously about reproduction.  (I only sorta kid…)

I came across this article recently, and, while I may not hold the same theological presuppositions as the author, I really resonated with a lot of what she has to say.  As it happens, I graduated from my (Catholic) college with this author.  I didn’t know her very well, but I can vouch for the fact that she was one of the journalistic superstars at the school.  (As the article demonstrates, she is clearly a phenomenal writer).

While this is just Part I of a few posts of my wrestling with this subject, I want to know what other women (or men, I suppose) have to say about all of this.

Why be a mother?

(Discuss.)