The Mom Gene--do you have it?

[cruisin]

This isn't a motherly issue reallly, but I am terrble at remembering birthdays and doing thank you cards. I always knew this from when I was little and thought I really shouldn't ever be a mom, because that seemed to be job one for mothers. Keeping organized and thoughtful at the same time. If it wasn't for the dotted i's and crossed t's, I think I'd really like being a mom.

That doesn't mean you're a good mother. Some people are so organized and good at remembering things. I am terrible. Not with my immediate family, but I don't want to admit how many times I've had to call a friend with belated birthday wishes. I lose track of what day it is, even when I know the birthday date. I'm terrible at sending thank you notes, but good at calling. I was militant with my kids about saying please and thank you, holding doors for people, etc. I think being polite is really important. But, loving your kids and nurturing them makes you a good mom, not social graces.

My outside observer POV is my POV. I'm just not a voice that you agree with.

I don't know that I would agree that it would be Siberia for the kids. But, I do agree that the kids are judged by the Mom's behavior in play groups. That is why I never went that route. Couldn't stand the cattiness.

Now here's what I'm calling bullshit on...this idea that people without kids are selfish and parents aren't.

What I call selfish are people who really do not want kids, but feel they are "supposed to". Not having kids, if that is not what you really, really want, is the most unselfish thing you can do.

I can only hope. I'm sure I'm doing something that they will determine has completely ruined their lives for ever and ever!!! I still have to make it through the teen years...

That is our most important job! I tell my kids that if I don't embarrass them, at least once a month, I'm not doing my job. they tell me I'm doing a splendid job

[Aussie Willy]

I pay my rent to my landlord and if I were to die he'd be sad and he'd miss me terribly , but he'd eventually move on and simply find a new tenant to take my place to help pay his mortgage and finance the lifestyle to which he's become accustomed as property owner.

You must get on very well with your landlord.

He would also probably take the opportunity to give the place a re-vamp once they removed the body.

[Southpaw]

You must get on very well with your landlord.

Let's just say that some people find my landlord stories rather amusing, while other people are rather perplexed, while other people are downright disturbed by them. It all depends on who my audience is.

[OliviaPug]

Read: "Couples in the good ol' days had a lot more sex for fun than they cared to admit, so they said they had a lot of kids in order to help out the farm."

Read: Not as much as one might think, but no reliable birth control.

O-

[heckles]

Read: Not as much as one might think, but no reliable birth control.

I'm certain that Ma and Pa Walton got really freaky every night after they said good-night to John-Boy and the dozen others.

[my little pony]

I'm certain that Ma and Pa Walton got really freaky every night after they said good-night to John-Boy and the dozen others.

olivia could have been hot if she had ever been able to shake all those losers

[Hedwig]

I don't have any kids but having been an audience member to more than a few mommy conversations over the years it just cracks me up at how much mommies all HATE each other. Holy crap, they can't STAND each other and yet they sit there and smile and pretend to like each other and pretend to like each others' kids just because nobody wants to be ostracized from the playdate circuit and then they turn around and lecture their kids about being honest about their feelings. The kid needs to be honest but mommy? Nope. Mommy can't be honest, mommy must sit there with clenched jaw and take it. At least when I'm at a mixed gathering and a mommy starts yammering at me about stuff that makes me nutso I can simply walk away from her and go talk to her husband instead without any social fallout. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Not the mommies, though. If they hightail it away from a mommy the way I do they may as well be booking a one-way ticket to Siberia for their kid.

And then sometimes the mommies will tell me how lucky I am that I don't have to deal with any of that and I say nope, not lucky at all. This is nothing but a result of strategic decisions and birth control.

Your comment reminds me that it is not only mothers who have mommy-wars but there is a sort of war sometimes between women with kids and women without kids as well. You sound very dismissive of mothers in general in this thread and that is a behaviour that I witnessed in a couple of women without children as well. Maybe because society is sometimes regarding women without babies as if something is missing? Maybe because they feel like they have to justify that choice?

In general I often find that women tend to make things harder for themselves among each other. Not all of them of course but a lot of them.


About the instant love: Just last week I was at the introductory talk at the hospital I will likely give birth in. The mid-wife that gave the talk there said that in her 30 odd years experience the thoughts that run through the mind of the mother when the child is put in her arms for the first time are seldom pure bliss. They are more along the lines of:
"Finally, I thought I would die."
"I will never have another child."
"Gosh, I am tired and sweaty."

I loved her honesty.
Being pregnant I find that even complaining about pregnancy aches is not something that a lot of women do. Even pregnancy has sometimes a sort of sainthood attached to it that goes on my nerves. People are often surprised when I moan about things I cannot do or that I am constantly tired and spend half my day peeing because they rarely hear complaints from other pregnant women. And I as well thought before that pregnancy would be more romantic than it is.

[MacMadame]

My outside observer POV is my POV. I'm just not a voice that you agree with.

Except your "outside POV" is not based on any knowledge of the social circles of the kids at all. As far as I can tell, it's based on distain for mothers and your imagination of their motives.

In reality, kids are friends with who they are friends with at pre-school and elementary school independent of what their moms do. They are mostly oblivious to the friendships of the moms in fact and two moms being friends will not force the kids to be friends no matter how hard those moms try to force the friendship and believe me, if two moms like each other, they will try to get the kids to be friends, but if the kids don't want to be friends, they won't be. Likewise a mom who never hangs with the other moms will not stop the kids from being friendly to her kid if the kid has an okay personality.

The moms who hang out together even though they appear to not like each other are hanging out together because it serves some purpose of their own, not to make sure their kids are popular.

[MacMadame]

Right ... he does say that ... Then he spends most of the text writing approvingly of women who stay at home, and embrace a parenting style that no career woman could sustain.

I don't know, I never had any issues doing AP parenting and working. And holding oneself to an impossible standard seems to be a common pitfall of many moms no matter what parenting guru they subscribe to. It's much worse, though, if your guru is telling you that yo must do things to a certain schedule or you MUST do X, Y and Z than if they say "follow your instincts" and "take what works for you and leave the rest."

People are often surprised when I moan about things I cannot do or that I am constantly tired and spend half my day peeing because they rarely hear complaints from other pregnant women. And I as well thought before that pregnancy would be more romantic than it is.

I never thought pregnancy would be romantic but people were shocked when I told them that being pregnant with my first made me feel like that guy in Alien who had a baby alien shoot out of his chest. I was convinced a baby alien was growing inside me. It was better the second time because I knew more what to expect and felt more harmony between me and the kidlet.

Though in my circles telling horrible stories about pregnancy and trying to one-up each other with the inconveniences was pretty common. Maybe you should hang with my friends so you can compare who had to pee more or gets up more at night.

[agalisgv]

I'm not sure why people think being selfish means doing something that harms others. Selfish simply refers to making decisions based on considerations of only oneself. The more one is actively involved with other people, the more likely it is that one's actions are determined in part by the needs of others. When a person functions as a caregiver, the necessity of framing one's actions by another's needs rather than one's own is greatly magnified.

The point isn't whether sleeping in harms someone else. It's that the basis for choosing that shifts when you become a parent from "I'd really like to do that" to "my child needs me to take care of her now." In day to day life, there are a myriad of things you decide differently because there are others to now consider (eg. I can't choose to eat all pretzels out of the Chex Mix bc then no one else can eat any, I can't just eat ice cream in my bed Friday night while watching movies bc the rest of the family also needs to eat, I can't just take off for the weekend bc there's no one else to watch the kids, I can't just not do laundry bc the baby's clothes all got pooped on and can't be reworn, etc). When you're single, sleeping in doesn't necessarily impact others. In a family, everything you say and do, including sleeping in, impacts others bc you live with others in an inter-dependent fashion.

That doesn't make parents more saintly--but it does mean they often have very different frames of reference bc parenthood rather forces that.

[Southpaw]

Your comment reminds me that it is not only mothers who have mommy-wars but there is a sort of war sometimes between women with kids and women without kids as well. You sound very dismissive of mothers in general in this thread and that is a behaviour that I witnessed in a couple of women without children as well. Maybe because society is sometimes regarding women without babies as if something is missing? Maybe because they feel like they have to justify that choice?

What I'm doing is giving voice to an alternate POV that is often overlooked because yes, society is heavily geared towards parenthood and parent culture and those of us who aren't following the mainstream culture ARE often dismissed as non-essential personnel. Look at how mommy-centric those two speeches were by Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Romney. OK, they were speaking to the majority of America, the majority of America who is in the family way, but there are plenty of us who don't subscribe to the majority lifestyle and hey, we vote too. So what you may perceive as me being dismissive of mothers is actually me simply putting forth a POV that's just a squeaky bit different than the majority POV. People can have kids all day long, I really don't care what they do if that's what they choose to do (as long as they don't hold me responsible in any way for their choice), but when someone like Mrs. Romney comes along and stands up there on that bully pulpit podium and tells me that I don't know what true worrying is because I'm not a MOTHER, and how only MOTHERS know what it really means to worry then yeah, I get annoyed. That's rather arrogant thinking if you ask me and I wonder, how many mothers listened to that and shook their head in agreement. Sure, you can say it's just the words of one politician's wife and who cares what she says except....it ain't. Maybe people on this thread don't feel that way which wouldn't surprise me because it's FSU and we're a sort of rarefied universe and if that's the case then they have no reason to get defensive, but believe me that attitude is out there. If you can't relate, you can't relate. I read an article after Nora Ephron died in which the writer said that Nora would have been a better writer if only she were a mother. Written, of course, by a mother. So only MOTHERS have the ability to write touching prose??? Lady, give me an effing break!!! If you want to see the piece I'll hunt it down.

Now, am I speaking from personal experience? Of course! Maybe some people don't like that approach to my thinking and they only consider POVs that are sprung from hard data and statistics and that's fine with me, go ahead roll your eyes and tell me I'm full of crap and I don't know what I'm talking about. If I had a buck for everytime told me I'm full of crap and I don't know what I'm talking about then I'd be able to throw a party and invite everyone in this thread. I'm interested in the human condition, not pie charts so if you're a pie chart kind of person then I'm probably not the POV for you. However, I hear from a lot of people about how they're happy to hear that they're not the only one who sees things the same way so seems to me like maybe there are some people who can relate to what I'm saying and I'm not completely talking out of my ass here. Not this time, anyway.

[Hedwig]

I don't really find your text to simply be a different POV. To me they come across as really bitter and, yes, dismissive of mothers.
The way you write for instance about the mothers you meet is "mommys" and their husbands are their husbands and not "daddys" or even fathers. You make such a clear distinction in that that that alone made me stop.

I am no American so of course I don't know the speeches you linked to but I am a 34 year old women who is no mother and until like 2-3 years ago did not intent to become a mother. But I never felt like the mothers in this world are glorified or that people think only they can write touching prose or what not.
I do believe that some things can only be appreciated or even be written by a mother simply because they made a specific experience that the rest of us haven't had yet. For instance if a childless woman wrote about childbirth and how it feels it would be pretty weird IMO (unless she was a mid wife or somehow involved in birth in any other way). Or if someone wrote a poem about how it feels to lose a child, I imagine that a parent who has gone through with an experience like that, would be able to give a more touching and better picture.
We as humans cannot really understand experiences of other people if we did not go through something similar IMO.

What I find sad in your posts is that it comes across to me like you think that all mothers are brainless idiots who only talk about their children and that they all agree with anyone who sprouts bullshit like "mothers are better people".
I find that pretty narrow minded and would not call that a different POV but actually a bit sad.

[skatingfan5]

I read an article after Nora Ephron died in which the writer said that Nora would have been a better writer if only she were a mother. Written, of course, by a mother. So only MOTHERS have the ability to write touching prose??? Lady, give me an effing break!!! If you want to see the piece I'll hunt it down.

Southpaw, I'd like to see that article, because either you are misremembering it and it was about someone else or the author was a complete idiot -- Nora Ephron WAS a mother -- she had two sons with Carl Bernstein.

[Southpaw]

What I find sad in your posts is that it comes across to me like you think that all mothers are brainless idiots who only talk about their children and that they all agree with anyone who sprouts bullshit like "mothers are better people".
I find that pretty narrow minded and would not call that a different POV but actually a bit sad.

Excellent! That means I'm arguing my position strongly if that's what you're getting out of it as a reader. Thanks for the feedback.

[OliviaPug]

Mothers and non-mothers are just like everyone else. There are good ones, bad ones, selfish ones, democrat ones, republican ones, snotty ones, self-righteous ones, humble ones, selfless ones, perfectionist ones, lazy ones, etc. The generalizations in this thread are amazing!

O-

[Southpaw]

Southpaw, I'd like to see that article, because either you are misremembering it and it was about someone else or the author was a complete idiot -- Nora Ephron WAS a mother -- she had two sons with Carl Bernstein.

Sorry, I'm an idiot. I meant Maeve Binchy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/b...#disqus_thread

[BlueRidge]

Mothers and non-mothers are just like everyone else. ...

In this sentence, who is everyone else?

[skatingfan5]

In this sentence, who is everyone else?

Fathers and non-fathers?

[cruisin]

Just last week I was at the introductory talk at the hospital I will likely give birth in. The mid-wife that gave the talk there said that in her 30 odd years experience the thoughts that run through the mind of the mother when the child is put in her arms for the first time are seldom pure bliss. They are more along the lines of:
"Finally, I thought I would die."
"I will never have another child."
"Gosh, I am tired and sweaty."

I realize that everyone is different. But, I did feel this overwhelming love. It was like nothing else I'd ever felt before. As tired and sore as I was, I was exhilarated! I will say that I got to the hospital 9.5 cm dilated, they broke my water and I pushed her out in 20 minutes. The second one was a little longer, but he was a fairly easy delivery too. I hope that yours goes as easily as mine did. I remember going to Lamaze classes, before the first baby. The last class has couples who just had their first babies a month before. They all told horror stories! I told my story and several women came up to me afterward and thanked me for talking about the birth in a very positive and upbeat way. Not everyone has an easy delivery, but some do. It can happen .

[BlueRidge]

Fathers and non-fathers?

I think they fall under mothers and non-mothers.