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The Good Mother
November 8, 2013
Just being surrounded by bountiful nature, rejuvenates and inspires us.
-E.O. Wilson
-E.O. Wilson
In a clever essay, "The Good Mother", Lynn Shattuck notes...
"I often hear people saying, 'Scott is such a great dad.' My husband is a great father. He is affectionate and fun, and he spends a lot of time with our kids. He bathes them and changes diapers and takes them out for ice cream and tries to soothe them when they’re sad. But it occurs to me that we set the bar much lower for fathers than we do for mothers.
"Because all those great things that my husband does, I do, too. I smother my kids in hugs and kisses. I say, 'I love you,' with my words and my actions throughout the day. I take them to the beach with their friends and keep them reasonably clean and reasonably well fed. I read their favorite books to them over and over again until the words feel like they’re melting my brain. And still, the Good Mother voice pops up to remind me that it’s just not good enough.
"One of the hardest things for me about being a mom is that I make about 107 little decisions every day, and most of the time, I am totally winging it. Unlike work at a paid job, I don’t get regular feedback on how I’m doing.
"So I think that as moms, we need to tell each other, 'You are such a good mom.' And we need to really hear it when our friends or family says it to us. We all parent differently. We parent from our personalities and from our wounds. From our heads and our hearts. We parent from our unconscious family patterns and from tips on books and blogs. And it is never perfect because we are human and messy, and our kids are human and messy."
In the last decade there has been a revolution in our understanding of the minds of infants and young children. We used to believe that babies were irrational, and that their thinking and experience were limited. Now Alison Gopnik — a leading psychologist and philosopher, as well as a mother — explains the cutting-edge scientific and psychological research that has revealed that babies learn more, create more, care more, and experience more than we could ever have imagined.
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Comments (4)
Displaying All 4 CommentsAcelero Learning
Princeton, NJ, United States
Lynn,
I so agree and this is why whenever I see a mom do something I think is good parenting. I describe to her exactly what I saw her do and why I think it's great.
United States
Thank you for this!! As good mothers, we constantly wonder, "Am I doing the right thing? Should I have done something differently? Is this right?" I think it would be more problematic if we didn't ask ourselves those questions. We all know that babies don't come with manuals, which often leads us to ponder if we are doing right by our children. No matter how great we do things, as a good mother, it is still never "good enough" by our standards!!
Rider University
Lawrenceville, New Jersey, United States
I love the title of this essay. I have been thinking about this subject so much of late and started a blog with that same title!
http://tamarika.typepad.com/the_good_mother/
Bethesda, MD, United States
You're getting constant feedback from your children. And if you are interacting with them, sensing how they feel and helping them to understand and cope with those feelings, you're a fine mom and nobody should criticize you.
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