There is no such thing as perfect motherhood: perspectives from a daughter
By Natalia Albin
There is no one way to be a mother, and the narratives around perfect motherhood perpetuated by society, the internet and policy are deeply damaging.
When I was around eleven years old, my mum decided to go into full time employment for the first time. She was raising three children with increasing economic demands and an ex-husband who infrequently sent money after a variety of threats (mostly, as far as I remember, around not paying for our education). She needed the money. After six months, she came home announcing she was quitting. She said she didn’t like having to spend so much time away from us, especially as teenagers she had to make sure she was raising us, not abandoning us.
In a lot of cases, there isn’t a choice about whether to work or not anymore. As Linda Scott’s research for her book The Cost of Sexism found, “living costs in the rich nations, and especially in the cities where 80% of the population resides, are too high for new parents to live on one income. Mothers must work, and yet working mothers are penalized and stigmatized by employers.” The world is telling mothers that it’s okay to have a job, something my mother definitely didn’t hear when she was growing up and having her first child at 22, yet it’s not ready for them to fully join the workforce. There may be a shimmer of light at the end of the tunnel for future parents: Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt announced that working families of children aged under five in England will be entitled to 30 hours of free childcare a week, which, if enacted, would save a substantial amount of money for families and allow both parents to hold steady work.
Some of the narrative has also changed. I don’t know if a single mother who has to work full time would immediately be thought of as “abandoning” her teenage children. However, it is true that mothers are still expected to do most of the childcare, even in two-parent households, mothers are more likely to be in part time work (further widening the gender pay gap) and a 2019 study by UCL found that less than 7% of couples share housework equally.
And while changes in policy are important for economical gain, the emotional labour needs a deep change in the attitudes we hold towards motherhood. My mum, without necessarily realising it, had a deep rooted fear and bubbling guilt. In their 2019 book, Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers, Jude Doyle states that “at the heart of horror is a bad mother: the familiar and terrible vision of a woman corrupting the world, unleashing her own flaws upon it through her monstrous children,” when talking about the myth of bad mothers both in fictional media and real cases of male violence where the blame is placed on the mother. The fear of being a bad mother goes beyond the obvious: it’s been ingrained in us through news stories, films, books and myths. If your child is misbehaving, even as an adult, the underlying cause must be that of a bad mother.
The internet has, as it always does, been a double edged sword. While it allows women to freely state whether they want to be mothers or not (and not having children has become an almost act of rebellion against the pressures placed on women as bodies) and feel less lonely in that experience, it has also exacerbated the commentary around the myths of perfect parenting. If a mother chooses to share her experiences online, there will be a myriad of comments on whether she’s doing the wrong thing. In a quick TikTok search while writing this, I found comments on videos about parenting ranging from “your daughter might be independent, but you have lost control” to “I don’t think your parenting style is working.” One minute videos allow people to believe they know everything about a mother and her style of parenting. It’s a bizarre attitude that leads, in many cases, to mental health problems for mothers who are increasingly afraid to share their experiences.
Motherhood comes in so many different shapes and sizes, yet the belief that there is one good way to be a mother still permeates our psyche, and it causes deep anxiety in new mothers and mothers-to-be. Even with the progress in the discourse around being able to be a working mother and the ideal image of motherhood being ever-so-slightly more blurred, there is constant judgment. If a mother works too much, she’s abandoning her children. If a mother doesn’t work, she’s lazy or a “housewife.” There is no winning, almost as if there is no perfect way to be a mother.
My mum is not a perfect mother. She was short-tempered at times and was impatient in many ways. She was anxious about money and I lived with that anxiety too. She shouted at us and we had a lot of arguments. But she also taught me to be independent and the signs to look out for in healthy relationships. She showed me that a job should work for me. She led by example in being strong and standing her ground. She was vulnerable with us and trusted us. She encouraged my creativity and carved opportunities for me to develop it. She’s always proud of me and is the first person to read everything I write. I am who I am thanks to my mother, she was a great mother, and not because she didn’t have a full time job or because she followed the instructions given to her by society. She was a great mother because above everything she wanted us to be happy, protected and independent.
From single mothers to adoptive mothers, from those yearning to be mothers to those who don’t want to be mothers. From those who have lost their mothers to those in strained relationships with their mothers. There is not one form of motherhood, nor is there a perfect way to be a mother.