11-5-10
Mother Love,
Bullying, and
The Big Decision
I was struck with “Mother Love” the moment I saw my blue bundle of joy. How, I thought, after forty-four hours of labor can you experience anything but love – when the baby starts crying and has almost perfect APGAR scores, even though she is a month premature. Mother Love is an amazing aphrodisiac that lets us coo at a newborn – even one vomiting all over you. Mother Love gets you up at 3 a.m. to change a diaper or quiet an anxious baby.
I thought that every new mother had this unique love that helps her stay up at night and still get up the next morning, over and over again. Perhaps I really should have known that Mother Love is not always distributed in equal doses to all new mothers -- something I soon discovered anyway. Nor is it equally admired by other women.
I remember that before my first baby was born I thought that I would return to work as quickly as possible and continue to climb the career ladder, at least to the glass or marble ceiling. That I would smash any barriers that kept me from achieving my career goals. I really thought that I could balance my life like a three-legged chair, dividing my time equally between motherhood, career and personal pursuits, including being married to another Type-A.
Overwhelmed as a new mom, however, I found myself all alone. Only one other friend had a baby and she had returned to work after six weeks. My other friends kept asking me when I was planning on returning to work. I started to question my own values and wonder where my career motivation had gone. At the same time, I was being bullied by my new stay-at-home-mom friends to stay home, too, to take care of my baby. I was being pulled in both directions. But the real pressure came from within.
The answer to my question of “stay or go” was given to me when we just did not have enough money to pay all the bills every month. I had to return to work. I was sad that I could not maintain my growing friendships with the stay-at-home-moms. They thought that I was self-centered and not interested in caring for my baby. Au contraire! I cried every day when I dropped off my baby at the daycare center that was within walking distance of my office. I cried when she pulled on my leg and beat the tear-covered floor with her tiny hands every time I pulled out my suitcase and walked to the front door.
As much as I loved my career, I loved my baby more. I went to work an emotional wreck many days. I knew, deep in my heart, I was responsible for providing for my baby’s basic needs of food, shelter and clothing. I also knew that my husband was not able at that moment to make enough money to cover of all our needs. I will reiterate “needs” not “wants”. My friends who did not have children could not understand why I was so upset after I returned to work.
I realized that I was going to be bullied by both groups of women. I never really found another mother who seemed to experience the kind of Mother Love that I had experienced until last year, twenty-one years after becoming a mom. Ironically, she was another “Yale Mom”. Mother Love appears not to be given to all women equally; however, all women need to accept each other just the way each woman is, with whatever amount of Mother Love. Women need to stop being so judgmental of one another.
After working for two years, our financial situation had changed, and I decided to return home to be the primary caretaker for a few years. I returned to work when my oldest was about to enter kindergarten. I found out just as I was about to start a new job that I was pregnant. The next baby was a totally different child. She slept through the night after two weeks. No colic or projectile vomiting or tantrums when I had to pack my bags for work related travel. I felt at ease going back to work.
We must embrace mothers whose ideas of motherhood are different from our own (as long as there is no evidence of child abuse, of course). We must accept mothers who either stay at home or go to work. We must accept each other no matter how much Mother Love a person appears to have been given. We must tolerate all people and learn from our differences. There are more effective and good ways to parent than one. We might just learn something from each other. We must stop the Mother v. Mother bullying! And maybe in the process we will teach our kids an invaluable lesson, too.
Diary of a Yale Mom
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