The Good Mother

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."

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