Make Motherhood Lame Again

Plus: the Kate Middleton debacle should serve as a litmus test for your conspiracy susceptibility

This one is going to be short, because in addition to writing this newsletter, I’m trying write a novel. These two tasks — to finish my sophomore novel and to write a bi-weekly newsletter — are in constant conflict. Because I’m also a mother. And while motherhood is a life stage that I longed to step into for many, many years, I also had no idea once I got here just how overwhelming and demanding the role would be.

First, consider the job itself. A helpless creature enters the world, hungry and thirsty and tired, in search of comfort and nurture, and you are the sole provider of that child’s physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. If you’re lucky, you have a husband that shares the burden of these responsibilities (and I am very lucky in that department), but the number of single mothers is on the rise. Many women are facing these tasks alone — either by choice or by default — and the needs only grow as the child grows. You must teach the child how to crawl, walk, and run without busting his knees open. Potty training is a poo-smeared nightmare. Good luck finding day-time child-care. Last night, I interviewed an 18-year old college freshman for a 2-hr weekly gig (so my husband and I can attend church small group). Her rate: $25 per hour.

“Twenty five,” I repeated, aghast.

“Yes,” she said, (pronounced yay-us). Her Southern accent was as sweet as lemonade on a hot day as she gouged me. “Twenty-five, yay-us may-um.”

Babysitter-inflation aside, motherhood has always been challenging, isolating, and expensive job. What’s different now, I would argue, are a second set of unspoken and constantly increasing expectations — and these don’t come from our children (or babysitters) — but from culture at large.

Maybe it’s just Nashville. Maybe it’s living in an affluent zip code in a city that’s rapidly outgrowing its britches. Or maybe it’s this endless barrage of videos I watch of other mothers on social media posting highlights of life with their (better behaved) children. Is it just me? Or have we stumbled into an era of performative motherhood that shows no sign of slowing down?

I want out.

Make motherhood lame again.

I long for the era of lame motherhood. And when I say lame, I don’t mean stupid or ineffectual. I mean motherhood that cooks hamburger helper and mac-and-cheese and bag salad and kicks the kids out of the house and locks the doors and tells them to drink from the hose if they’re thirsty. I mean motherhood that cuts my hair off short and doesn’t spend a dime to dye it. I mean motherhood that hosts a fun and age-appropriate birthday party that costs $50 in cupcakes and candles, not $500 in pony-rides. I mean motherhood that is free, unhurried, un-pretentious, un-status-oriented, un-tethered to our phones, un-materialistic, and liberated from the weight of my own expectations and that of the psychologists I follow on social media.

No offense, but I don’t want to attend to a themed birthday party that requires me to find (or purchase) a specific costume for my child.

I don’t want to pay for a thousand summer camps, all of which leave my kids overstimulated and lacking the healthy summertime experience of utter boredom.

Books, podcasts, and videos with parenting advice abound. The Anxiety-free parent. The worry-free mom. Dr. So-and-So, coming at you from whereverthehell. I tune in and then tune out, overwhelmed by all the free advice I never asked for, constantly pumping through my phone speakers and screen and into my eyeballs. If my child throws a fit about what I’ve served for dinner, I am supposed to get on my knees, validate my child’s feelings, apologize for the world, and help them to de-escalate, regulate, capitulate, fumigate… etc. etc. When, pray tell, am I supposed to be having this conversation? While the food is burning on the stove? While it congeals, cold on the table?

Is this a pressure I’m only putting on myself? Or is this really what feminism has morphed into, fifty years after the second wave? Not only should you have a budding career, and a bevy of un-sugar-addled children, you must appear beautiful as well. To look like a gracefully aging mother in the world, it’ll cost you $3,000 a year in lasers, botox, and sculptra injections. My heart tells me not to fall victim to this kind of thinking, but gosh, it’s hard not to be swept up in vanity’s relentless rip-tide. I mean, have you seen the pore-size you can have, if you’re willing to pay good money? Run yourself ragged, the prevailing wisdom goes, and all you have to do is pay a nominal fee to un-do the effects of living in a constant state of anxiety and overwhelm. Just $20 a unit! Only, when I pay to feel pretty, I end up feeling pretty empty.

Put all this together, and I’m left staring at an unscalable wall of motherhood — of femininity — a mountain too high to climb.

Even as I write all this, I think — maybe it’s just me. Maybe my capacity is simply lower than other people’s capacity. Maybe I just need to get off Instagram, and all this would be solved. Maybe I’m just falling victim to the old “comparison is the thief is joy” thing. And maybe that’s all true. But another voice inside my head tells me that I’m not wrong about this because motherhood is a team sport.

An example: if I want to kick my kids out of the house and let them go play outside all afternoon, there will need to be other kids outside waiting to play with them, and that can’t happen unless other mothers are kicking their kids out of the house, too. That can’t happen if everyone on my block is working until late, or their kids are in pee-wee Squash or little league Frisbee golf until 7 p.m. It only works if we all agree that kids having independent un-supervised play is a social good.

Childhood is impacted by a child’s parents and their parenting style — of course. But a person’s childhood is also influenced by the prevailing culture and historical era in which they are raised. In other words: the efficacy of my motherhood is determined, at least partially, on how my society chooses to “mother”.

If you haven’t already, I implore you to read Jonathan Haidt’s searing essay for the Atlantic, “The Terrible Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood.” In paragraph after horrible paragraph, he lays bare the damage phones are doing to our children. As I read, I couldn’t help but see all the same negative effects on me, too. There are terrible costs to phone-based motherhood, too.

Am I whining? Yes, I suppose I am.

Is this annoying you? Maybe so.

Maybe I am just a little brat who lives in a big fancy city and I would solve all of my problems by throwing my phone in a river, buying a piece of land out in the country, and raising my children on a farm with a few cows. But I don’t want to be a farmer.

I just want to make motherhood lame again.

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A glorious moment of lame motherhood. Making chocolate chip cookies in December.

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Recent Favorites

Read: Slow Noodles by Chanta Ngyuen and Kim Green. I knew this book was going to be amazing — and STILL, I cannot put it down. It tells the harrowing true story of Chantha Ngyuen, a surviver of the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, who spent the next twenty years as a refugee in Vietnam and Thailand. Intertwining recipes and memories, Chantha and Kim tell a tale of courage and fortitude, faith and resilience. I am in awe! Read it with me!

Purchase: Speaking of Slow (and Fast) Recipes — have you ever tried the bake-at-home mini croissants from Trader Joe’s? I used them this past weekend for a brunch I was hosting for a friend, and they were a BIG hit. I will now be keeping them in my freezer constantly. 30 minutes from frozen to perfection. No proofing necessary. YUM.

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One More Thing…

Did you get caught up in Kate Middleton conspiracy theories? I am ashamed to admit it, but I did. Her announcement last week about her recent cancer diagnosis was deeply sad, moving, and convicting. Yes, she is a public figure whose life is lived on display. Yes, the photo-shopped Mother’s Day picture and other botched publicity stunts only led to stoking the flames of conspiracy. But the truth is: there are a hundred thousand million more important things in the world than falling down the Reddit rabbit holes about the Princess of Wales. This debacle served as a litmus test for my susceptibility to conspiracies. Turns out, I’m pretty susceptible.

XOXO,

Claire