Mother Blaming Has to Stop

Having a boy compounded the sense of responsibility I felt as a new mother. The world seemed to expect more. Those raised expectations brought with them an even higher level of anxiety, due in part to work I'd been doing as a clinician in a well-known outpatient child and adolescent psychiatry department. In case conference after case conference, it was always the mother who was held at fault for her child's problems. She was too close or too distant, too strict or too permissive, hadn't set clear enough boundaries, or was found wanting in the empathy, love or affection departments. Whatever the issue, it always pointed back to the mother. And because a higher percentage of boys were seen in psychiatric treatment than girls at that point, the notion stuck that a boy and his mother were at risk.

Even then I knew they couldn't all be to blame.

I remember sitting in my office in those days and listening to mothers talk about feeling tired, about how they hadn't been as responsive as they felt they should have been, or about having their reactions to their child colored by having been up with him or her all night. Not until the birth of my son did I fully appreciate just how difficult the job of mothering is, what it calls on in oneself, and how it pulls on every single aspect of your emotional and physical life.

"I was such an exposed nerve for that whole first year," said writer and moonlighting chef Fiona Dansinger*, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of two boys who I met at the beginning of writing "Raising Boys Without Men". "I was convinced that I was a terrible mother because I kept reading about 'better' ways to mother." By the time she had her second son, she had learned to trust herself a whole lot more, and not depend on the how-to books. "I think I had a happier baby because of it," she said in hindsight.

Mothers are not immune to the criticism bug.

Darlene Michaels*, a forty-two-year-old woman who chose a sperm donor with a fondness for Boston Cream Pie, often feels judged simply because she's a single mom. When her brother comes to town, for example, he comments on the fact that her five-year-old doesn't listen to her. "From my experience watching my son versus a playgroup, I [didn't] feel his behavior was atypical," she said. Further, she has no desire to discipline her son in her brother's authoritarian style, which includes spanking. "I don't want to have that kind of relationship with Isaac. I don't want to be a dictator. I don't want him to be scared of me." Still, she feels that her mothering is being condemned in large measure because she's alone.

Every mother I've ever talked with whether married or single by choice or circumstance harbors regrets and guilt.

When Melanie Addison's* thirty-five-year-old husband died without warning one day while running, she was suddenly left to raise three sons. "I was on my own for ten years with them -- my oldest son was eight, my next son was three-and-a-half, and my youngest was ten months when their father died. I married again when my youngest was fifteen. So all those years I raised them on my own."

She kept the family anchored through their daily meals and inexpensive family outings. Having been raised by a single mother in a studio apartment, Melanie knew not only how to survive, but how to give her kids what they really needed. Of course, it wasn't easy. She recalled getting financial aid letters from her oldest son's college and her middle son's private high school on the same day. "One said, you don't qualify because you're worth too much and another one said you don't qualify because you don't earn enough," she told me. "I thought to myself, 'this is the great middle class, it's just a terrible squeeze.' And you know, we worked it out."

Still, she blames herself for not pushing her kids in school as much as she thinks she should have. She also bemoans the fact that she didn't read to her kids every night, even though she acknowledges "just getting everybody into bed was in itself quite an ordeal". This woman raised three boys on her own for ten years after her husband died suddenly, and kept her family together through her sheer strength, determination, and willpower. Yet she still reproaches herself for her imagined misdeeds. When she talks about her grown sons, she can see how strong, caring, and mature they are. Even so she has trouble giving herself the credit.

Clearly, even mothers who have successfully mothered a child into adulthood aren't spared from self-recrimination.

Divorced mother of two Holly Saxton* and her twenty-four-year-old son Trevor passed a billboard advertising khakis. That's when Trevor told his mom about desperately needing a new pair of pants as a teenager, but not feeling he could let her know because of how afraid she was about their finances following her split with his father. Life before the divorce had been "World War, seven days a week." Life after was more peaceful in some ways, but more anxiety producing in others. "I was worried about money all the time. I didn't know how this or what would work, [and was] trying to juggle everything I'm supposed to do and everybody's needs and wants. So Trevor decided that he didn't have needs, because if he needed something, it might push me over the edge," Holly told me, pointing out that her husband's leaving had changed nothing in terms of actual parenting, since she had always been very much on her own in that department. Hearing about the khakis, however, even years later, "was devastating ... that touches on all my stuff about trying to be a perfect parent."

For mother-blaming and self-blaming to ever stop, mothers are going to have to be seen -- and see themselves -- as individuals rather than symbols or caricatures. That's not as easy as it sounds.

*The data I compiled and the patterns I've observed are presented as 
collective experiences. I have honored promises of confidentiality by changing names 
and disguising identities.

 

Comments

[ms lc]

Enough with the articles about mothers and guilt! As if mothers don't have enough to worry about already. How about an article showing how successful mothers are at raising children, especially when they do it as single or divorced mothers? I'm tired of the Mommy Wars that the media created, and I'm sure other mothers are tired of it, too.

[AdamX]

As long as mothers think any job is as important as mothering, it is their fault.

[CRMurray]

Stop Father blaming as well and we'll have a discussion.

[OnTheCusp]

Have fathers be PRESENT and we'll stop father blaming.

[Indon]

In conclusion, until and unless our society offers the same things to childraisers - male or female, though in our society females traditionally bear more of the burden - as people who generate value without earning a big paycheck (and frankly, often far more value than the people earning those paychecks!), we will be a society that through its' construction, discourages parenting itself.

[Indon]

Frankly, we can expect nothing else from our society.

Ours is a culture oriented around economic activity - if you do something which generates wealth, you are showered with praise, considered important, social opportunities open up to you which are closed to the rest of society, and so on. Your lesser needs are easily dealt with and you are given the leisure to pursue what makes you most happy.

Take, if you will, the example of a single professional woman, never wedding or having a child. Almost any opportunity is open to her.

But if you don't do something that cuts a big paycheck, it's the opposite. Society distains you and denies you comfort. You struggle to meet the lowest standard of society such that you can hardly pay attention to things outside economic concerns, let alone properly seek happiness. Restrictions of time and culture isolate you from friends, family, and community.

Take as an example, a mother. A woman who dedicates herself to raising a child is, in our society, powerless. If she does not have an external provider, she is poor and she is hated as a "welfare mother". Her energy and effort is vital to raise the next generation, but every second spent with her child is one taken away from the respect and empowerment our society would offer her.

[theycallthewindmariah]

Alot of our problems come from changes in how we live. In the old days, boys got out and ran, and helped on the farm, ate fresh food, fished, had dogs & horses, and had to walk 3 miles to school (at least that's what my father said). They weren't inside enough to have reason for mother-blaming. If anything, it was their fathers they rebelled against.

Now kids stay inside with the TV and their own computers and air conditioning. Family meals can be torturous if they turn into negative confrontations and inquistions. Mothers are more stressed, driving everywhere with a dozen stops everyday for everything from the grocery, to the cleaners, to schools to pick up kids who no longer walk, to "lessons", to the bank ATM, the gas station. It's rough out there.

[tjdestry]

I think the article says the mothers blame themselves. It isn't clear where the external blame is supposed to be coming from except society, shrinks, etc. -- a rather nebulous cloud of blame which really boils down to women accepting blame from the world and from themselves. The writer is very careful, for no apparent reason, to make up phony names and occupations for the women she quotes, but then doesn't give any specific examples of how or by whom they were blamed for anything. Instead, they all report a general sense of guilt. Twenty or thirty years ago, a woman had to be twice as good to rise in the business world. That's no longer true, as anyone who works in the business world can testify -- incompetent men and women rise and fall together. But for some reason women have bought into the idea that they need to be better, to do more, to prove their value. And the real questions are "Why?" and "To whom?" If women want to be empowered, the first step is to recognize that they are not second class. If they don't accept that, how can they move forward???

[lefty2026]

I don't really know what the point of this article is, but I think you are right at least to some degree.

The other day my boyfriend and I were talking about unequal pay for equal work. Since both he and I got the starting salaries that we asked for, he wondered if mant women simply undervalued themselves.

Real equality lags equal rights, because it takes awhile for society to catch up.

[Indon]

You neglect one important factor which, when it arises, is virtually guaranteed to cripple a woman's career in almost any profession.

Becoming a mother.

But no, they're not second class. They're just disproportionately impovished. That's certainly not the same thing, right?

[neworleanslady68]

I'm trying again because the quote didn't work.

It said:
Having a boy compounded the sense of responsibility I felt as a new mother. The world seemed to expect more.

And I said, "HUH? What does this mean?"

[Michael96]

Strange article. It almost has the "traditional male" libertarian message screaming proudly that single mothers are pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, so to speak, and yet it's also asking for mothers to stop being blamed by ... who? I'm still not sure, actually, other than by the children of the mothers themselves and I guess, by default, every person who was ever raised by a mother--mothers themselves included.

On that level, it's just a weird message that goes nowhere. I don't understand the point of such articles. I'm not saying they're bad, per se. Just that they don't ... say anything overtly in a meaningful way that might actually help alleviate the actual difficulties of raising children. It reads more like a plea, a thinly-veiled venting by a woman trying to calm her own underlying terror related to the overwhelming weight of the responsibility she has accepted by bearing a child. I'm certainly not discounting the terror or the weight of responsibility, but in the scheme of things I think I'd rather read an article that more overtly addresses those issues.

[lakeharriet]

I think our culture here in the USA is unusual among world cultures in that the relationship between mothers and their children is treated as if it were unimportant. A good example is a news item elsewhere on this site about a baby being made into a ward of the state so that the mother could be sent to Afghanistan to prosecute a war. Where but in the USA would a mother's ability to kill be valued over her ability to nurture her baby?

[Balzac]

Good point.

[LegalCodex]

"mothers and their children is treated as if it were unimportant."

The numerous children who have turned out well-adjusted, successfull adults after being raised with a male parent or, as is becoming increasingly more common, two male parents hints that it maybe unimportant. A child needs nurture and care, and whether that comes from his/her mother, some other woman, or neither doesn't, in my opinion, matter at all.

[excusemydust]

I have to disagree with you - in western society, we idealize and romanticize mothers to the point that their role is all-important and fathers are expendable. The reality is, neither gendered parent is integral - as long as a child has one parent who actually cares about them, then they're ahead of the game.

But if you want to make it a gender situation, you can look at MANY societies that totally disregard the mother - particularly in those that still sell off their children for marriages, labor and warslaves, in which the female parent has absolutely no say.

As for Ms. Drexler's article, she makes her most important and crucial point at the very end: we must not stop treating mothers as "caricatures" and view them as individuals if we ever want to achieve egalitarianism in parenthood.

[OnTheCusp]

Yay! Someone else gets this!

[SmileAndActNice]

Mother-blaming is due to our current societal belief that women "owe" their children things. As opposed to the children owing their mother for the gift of life. This is probably due to the anomalous last few decades where a father could support a family by himself ... something essentially never before seen in the history of our species. 80% of food consumed in hunter/gatherer societies is gathered by Mom so we have millions of years of Mom-as-provider and a thousands of Mom-and-Da­d-working-­together-t­o-provide after agriculture caught on, but only a few decades of Dad-as-sol­e-provider­.

Deprived of her traditional job as family provider, Mom was left trying to fill her empty hours and justify her existence. As the Industrial Revolution chipped away at Mom's economic contributions to the family she focused more and more effort on what was left ... eventually that being just sexual appeal and mothering with tremendous amounts of energy being applied to each.

Somewhere along the way the idea crept in that children were "owed" the excessive amounts of Smothering they were getting. This trivializes motherhood.

Motherhood as a debt to be paid off, as an obligation, or as punishment opens the door to this kind of ungrateful nitpicking and whining. Motherhood as a Choice and Mom as a significant economic contributor to the family closes it.

[SethBLiNK]

You have to give somebody permission to make you feel bad. A mother's responsibility is to take her role seriously, to get whatever counsel or assistance she can but ultimately to be "the decider" until her child is old enough to be responsible for his or her own decisions.

Everybody has an opinion, and you have to choose, to listen to those opinions or not, to follow that advice or not an to ultimately be responsible for your own choices.

Know that sooner or later your child will blame you for something, and to some extent he or she will be right, because as his mother, you exerted an enormous influence on him. But the answer is simple... I did the best I could under the circumstances and made the decisions that seemed best at the time. Some were right. Some were wrong. That's what you'll do if you decide to be a parent.

No parent is perfect and no parent's child lives a life of non-stop contentment and happiness. That's life deal with it.

[marybluesky]

SethBlink: You are channeling my mother's advice. Reading your words, I could just hear her saying them. She was a fantastic parent and her mantra was always, "I did the best I could under the circumstances and made the decisions that seemed best at the time". It's been 9 years since we lost her and I miss her more all the time. Thanks for the sweet reminder.

[SethBLiNK]

You're very welcome. Mine is gone a bit more than a year and I know how you feel.

[LadyXoc]

Unfortunately, mother-blaming is very convenient for both therapist (who can convince the client that they're so FUBAR that it will take years and years and years of therapy to get better) and the client, who is absolved of all blame for how his/her life is going. So I suspect it will be with us for awhile.

[jhamm1]

Indeed. What can therapists know, being nothing more than Ph.D's in psychology which enable them to discern the patterns of human behavior and contributing problems to mutual relationships better than anyone?

There are competing schools of thought, one of which blames the parents for everything and another which by default absolves the parent of any accountability in the spirit of sticking to the biblical advice that one should "honor thy parents", no matter what.

The only sensible median is evaluate each issue on an individual basis.

But dismissing experts in psychology as "not knowing what their talking about" rivals arguments against a reality of global warming under a similar notion of "What do scientists know?"

[k1dork]

Therapists are not infallible. Actually, I tend to think that many of them are hacks, working to line the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies.

My grandmother, and many women in her generation, didn't even finish school, yet I think she has better parenting skills and more common sense than a lot of PhD's out there.

[malodorousgit]

I think you hit the nail right smack on the head. And it's not that therapists have bad intentions, most of them are wonderful people who really want to help, it's just that blaming the parents is so much a part of their training, they don't even think of it as blaming the parents. They think of it as helping the client to separate.

[violettefemme]

Thank you so much for not referring to mothers as "moms"--the common usage of that word grates on me, day after day, on the news, in commercials and articles, it's Mom Mom Mom, and I think it is a cheap label for the maternal role.

I'm not your Mom, but I am someone's Mother. I think I need a t-shirt.

[sherifffruitfly]

Presumably whomever the primary caregiver is, will receive the bulk of any criticism, or kudos (as the case may be).

It doesn't seem to me there's a problem per se with mothers being the target of criticism; rather, there's a problem with only one parent typically doing the lion's share of upbringing work.