Clare has blogged today about a Daily Mail article – “Sorry, but my children bore me to death!” – and rather than clog up her post with my overlong comments I’m blogging it here. This one has been ticking over in mind since I read it, and has bothered me emormously.
Perhaps it is my guilt-ridden-working-mother sensitivity speaking out here, defensively. But then the very fact that I am guilt-ridden as a working mother is a problem for me (on so many levels that I just can’t bring myself to go into it here – maybe another post!) so I am trying not to let my lingering feelings of bad-mother guilt get in the way of responding to this.
Well, the writer of this article, Helen Kirwan-Taylor, discusses how she finds children’s activities boring, and how she is not constantly in thrall to her children and their wants / needs, and how this makes her – in most people’s eyes – a really bad mother. Most of the people commenting on the article agree with her. She is a bad mother – selfish and lazy and superficial. Both she and her kids are missing out.
Although I can’t say I sympathise entirely with her position (after all, she does write for the Daily Mail and therefore must have something wrong with her!) I do respect her point of view. And I find the comments that she is getting interesting. For example, most of the commenters are quick to say that she is selfish, that her kids will turn out badly in some way, that she herself must have something pathological wrong with her, that she shouldn’t even have had the kids in the first place if she wasn’t going to look after them.
Yet she, and several of the mothers she quotes, and a number of the commenters, all describe their experiences honestly and all say that the work of mothering is dull. Are we saying that it isn’t dull and discounting their experiences? Or are we saying that, whether or not they find it dull, they should do it anyway because they chose to have children? Either way, what these commenters are saying is that there is something wrong with Kirwan-Smith and all the other mothers who expressed similar feelings. It is their fault for unnaturally not liking all the baggage of modern motherhood, or else it is their fault for not just putting up with said baggage and putting on a brave face, or else it is their fault for having kids in the first place if they weren’t just going to suck up the bad stuff along with the good.
I read through all 89 of the comments so far on this article, and even for the Daily Mail they strike me as somewhat hysterical (testerical?) in that when you read the article it is clear that Kirwan-Smith does actually spend some time with her kids and does love them and want them. She just doesn’t enjoy children’s parties, or child-centric social events such as school plays, or reading bedtime stories and, where she can, she avoids doing that stuff – preferring to have a work life and a social life as well as a maternal life. Moreover, Kirwan-Smith herself believes that her children are well-adjusted, creative young people developing as independant individuals – but her judgement doesn’t count, of course, because she is a bad mother, and other people’s idea of how her children will turn out is clearly thought to be more credible.
We all love to judge mothers – whether we say that she is a bad, selfish mother who should never have had kids in the first place, or that she is an independent woman bravely speaking out for all the mothers who are made to feel guilty about not being good enough… But what I thought was most interesting about the article and the responses to it is the almost complete absence of any reference to these children’s father. Where is he? Down the pub, if we are to take the only clue in the article seriously. He is certainly not stepping in to read the bedtime stories that his wife dislikes so much.
This is of course standard Dad behaviour. (I said standard, not universal.) Yet where are the people calling him out for being selfish, and not spending time with his kids, and leaving it all to the nanny? Who is asking him why he bothered to have children in the first place? How is his, and many other fathers’, failure to spend time with his children any less blameworthy than his wife’s? What are we hearing about his qualities as a father?
Nowhere, No-one, No-how, Not a dicky bird. Somehow, I am not surprised. Just saddened.
14 August 2006 at 8:35 am
it’s bloody dull looking after children 24 hours a day. Don’t let anyone tell you anyhting else! I get panicy if I don’t have an activity planned for the day ‘cos if their bored they turn on me! I think a lot of stay-at-home-mums need to feel as if they are ‘better’ than working mothers because they live through their children and if they admit how mind-numbing it is it will negate their very exsistance. I am a stay-at-home mum and I’m crap at it. The trouble is SOMEBODY has to do it and I do love my kids LOADS. In one day I can swing from feeling amazingly competant to panicing to lieing under the duvet crying while kids climb on me. I enjoy it, I hate it, I don’t have many options as this is the path I chose. I just wish ShitFace Father wasn’t lieing in bed staedfastly ignoring the fact I am having a nervous breakdown.
14 August 2006 at 7:43 pm
In the past we would have shared the burden with mothers, grandmothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, neighbours, older children. Now we are expected to do everything ourselves, either stuck at home on our own or else constantly dashing from home to childcare to work to childcare to home and back again… AND we have to like it, or be labelled a Bad Mother. Is it any wonder that we’re going slowly mad?
Hugs.
24 August 2006 at 6:31 am
I did actually post a comment in which I compared the reaction to HKT’s statements to the reaction which might have occurred had she been a man. It didn’t appear on the site. Guess it didn’t fit with the DM’s sensibilities.
However I also said that I am appalled by HKT’s attitude. Many of the physical tasks associated with looking after small children are mundane, but that is true of many jobs, even the “glamourous” ones – and indeed, of life itself. Other parts of parenting a small child are enormously entertaining or mentally challenging, and certainly as my children grow older, they have turned into interesting, delightful people, and I thoroughly enjoy their company. My two oldest sons are 11 and 9 – about a year younger than HKT’s; they are far from boring.
What I object to is not HKT’s feelings, but her decision to ignore her responsibility towards her children – and her apparent pride in it. All relationships require effort; this is as true of parenting as it is of marriage, so it is hardly surprising that someone who puts the minimum of effort in doesn’t get a great deal back. Part of being a parent is “doing what it takes” – whether that’s staying up all night with a sick child or sitting through a school concert. Those who choose not to bother can hardly be surprised if they are criticised for it – particularly when they choose to have another child despite knowing ahead of time that they are *not* willing to make the necessary effort.