Amy Welborn linked to this wonderful opinion piece in the Guardian, by a mother with four children under two (she had triplets) who is — gasp! — enjoying her children:
No one wants to hear that we are having a lovely time with our babies, who have started to smile all at once this week, and are sleeping in blissful four-hour chunks all of a sudden, and are so bright-eyed and lively after their bath that we feel like cracking open a bottle of champagne just to give them the party they seem to be up for. It’s not what people want. They want to hear how dreadful we feel, how exhausted and depressed we are, how it’s the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone, ever.
She hits it right on the head — already I hear this kind of remark from people when they see me out with my five-year-old and two-year-old boys. Two children — two! — and daily it seems I hear "Wow, you’ve got your hands full" from cashiers and the like.
I don’t understand what it is that makes people constantly denigrate their own young children, sometimes in earshot, sometimes not (he really keeps me on my toes *eye roll*) (she has been driving me crazy with that thing today) (more kids? oh gosh no I can barely handle *these two* as it is) (oh my god I can’t wait until school starts). I know people must love their kids, but it’s as if it is unseemly to admit it.
And if you’re allowed to admit delight in your children, you aren’t allowed to delight in the experience of parenthood of young children. New mothers are allowed some oohing and aahing, but still we expect, after a couple of weeks, that the story is we’re coping, we’ll survive, not — this is amazing, I can’t believe we waited so long, every day she takes my breath away, I could just hold him and hold him all day long.
Is this — "isn’t parenthood a drag" — just acceptable small talk, like complaining about the weather? (Then maybe that explains it, because I never could get the hang of small talk.) Or is it true that most people really don’t like it? If so, why is their experience so different from mine?
Because I love my kids. I love throwing myself into the mothering life, every morning. I can’t even call it "work!" It’s too much fun. Yes, I have rough days from time to time. But I’m the grownup — it’s not like it’s their fault if I spend a whole morning stomping about grumpy. (Maybe when they’re older.) Most of my days, I have a wonderful time.
I’m happy! I loved being pregnant, giving birth (yes) and having tiny babies who nursed all night and all day. I want more kids. That makes so much sense to me on a gut level that, e.g., when I heard a young pregnant mother say to another last week in the kids’ music class, This is the last, we’re done after this one: my first impulse was to feel terribly sad for her, to say with all the sympathy I can muster Oh, I’m so very sorry, because my first thought was that some tragedy must have befallen her family, like horrible postpartum depression or complete financial ruin, that forced her to renounce childbearing.
This happens a lot. Usually I come to my senses in time, and remember, Oh yes, more than one or two children just isn’t ‘done’ anymore. But I still cannot imagine that. What a poverty to feel that one must say, No, to babies. Maybe it’s better, maybe worse, to actually not want them.
I wonder about all the couples who long to conceive and bear children and literally can’t. What is it like for them to hear friends complaining about the babies they have, and paying good money to have their sleek, smooth, glisteningly healthy tubes sliced and cauterized, their abundant seed diverted and thrown away?
But most days I feed the children breakfast, I do some shopping, I teach Oscar to read, I take them for a walk, I listen and watch and smile. Milo turned two yesterday, and I gave him a little box of plastic figurines of birds. He lined them up on the table, put them back into the box, carried them around, lined them up on the table again. Bird bird, he said over and over. This morning I left him with Mark so I could take the computer to the coffee shop, and when he said to me I go, I said, You and Daddy can play with your birds. As I quietly opened the door and headed down the stairs I heard him: Bird bird Daddy. Bird bird.
I like my Saturday mornings, breakfast out alone with a book, the coffee shop with my computer, my little weekly retreat. But every week I almost can’t wait to get back.
bearing blog 