Tuesday, January 03, 2017

Parenting and the social (media) contract

While everyone else was having a miserable time in 2016 (and let's face itparts of that year were rough), I was surreptitiously enjoying the happiest months of my life. At 38 years old, I became a mom for the first time. And so far, parenthood has been wonderful. But I've learned not to admit that too often or too loudly. 

 There were a lot of reasons I put off having kids so long—I was getting my PhD, fumbling around trying to establish some kind of career, pursuing my dreams as a writer and an actor. But mostly, I didn’t want to have kids. I loved my nieces and nephews and my friends’ kids, but parenthood in general seemed bleak, limiting, and unrewarding.   

There is no shortage of sources who will tell you how difficult, how challenging, how gruelling parenting can be. But if I found those refrains ubiquitous and dire enough to put off having kids until my late thirties, I was in for one hell of a surprise when I got pregnant. 

I was at a baby shower for a pregnant friend when I first began to suspect the widespread popularity of the Frighten the Pregnant Woman game that parents like to play. My friend was about to have her first child, and there was, I thought, a palpable malice among the mothers who attended the party. There were, of course, the usual gleeful utterances—“You’ll never sleep again!” “You’ll be lucky if you find time to shower!” “Spend time with your partner now because after the baby comes, there’s no time for romance!”—but there was also a more subtle needling in the gift-giving itself. My friend was puzzled to receive one contraption that looked to me to be a cross between an Elizabethan ruff and a baby pillory. When my friend confessed that she didn’t know what it was, the other women at the party—the mothers, that is—squealed with glee. “It’s a drool bib! You’ll need it soon enough! You’ll see!” Apparently, the unmanageable quantity of drool that this baby was about to produce was a source of profound amusement. There were other gifts like this. The undertone was one of warning: Parenthood sucks. You’ll learn soon enough. You’ll need all this to survive. The phrase “You’ll see!”, especially with reference to imminent parenting, is among the most ominous in the English language. 

When I got pregnant, it wasn’t long before I started responding impatiently to the stream of You’ll never sleep again, You’ll never wear nice clothes again, You’ll never lose the weight, You’ll never have time for fun. My friends, apparently put out that I was annoyed rather than terrified at their warnings about my impending misery, put my snappishness down to pregnancy hormones—a response that didn’t make me any less waspish. 

The truth was, I couldn’t understand then (or now) why people want to terrify pregnant women. Did they not remember that pregnant women are already terrified—terrified of all the things that can go wrong, terrified of giving birth, terrified that they won’t be good parents, terrified that they’ll regret their decision? Where is the value in compounding that terror? Why do parents want to put pregnant women on their heels like that? Is it a way to establish dominance over women who haven't experienced the pain yet? Or asserting their own value by emphasizing all the suffering they've endured? Or is it just a mean-spririted prank to make pregnancy even more unpleasant than it already is by increasing the terror and the worry? 

Now, I’ve gone through the pregnancy and the delivery, and I’m a mom. (That still surprises me sometimes—I’m a mom. Me. I have a kid.) A lot of it has been difficult. Giving birth hurt more than I expected. But being a mom is way better than I thought it would be. I’ll admit right now that I’m lucky. My son is healthy, he’s happy, he’s a good sleeper, and he’s a relatively easy baby all around. I also have a wonderful partner who is an incredibly devoted father. Yes, I have things a lot easier than a lot of moms. I get that. But I’ve also learned that some of the biggest challenges are wonderful, too, in their way. For instance, I never realized that getting up in the night with my baby meant that I would have these incredible, moving, meaningful—albeit exhausting—moments to snuggle and bond with my son. My son who smiles at me in the most heart-floatingly delightful way during 4 a.m. diaper changes. 

And as happy as I am, as much as I love my kid and I love being my mom, I’ve also had my earlier suspicions confirmed: having a kid doesn’t automatically make you complete. At least, it didn’t for me. I can imagine a life where I didn’t have this adorable baby. And it’s not a bleak prospect. Having a kid has turned out to be a wonderful choice. But I can see that it wasn’t the only option that could lead to happiness and fulfillment. 

Now, because I’m home with my baby for at least a year, and because I’m a social media addict in general, I spend a lot of time online. And I’ve learned that there are implicit rules about what parents (or maybe it’s just moms) can and can’t say on social media. And several times, I’ve contravened the unspoken but inviolable social (media) contract about what parents can and cannot say online, incurring the wrath of friends and acquaintances. Unfortunately, I never received a copy of this contract, but so far as I've been able to piece them together--mainly by angering people when I transgress--these are the rules: 

  1. When discussing parenting in general, you can only talk about the difficulties and the challenges. Articles that suggest that parenting (in a general sense) can actually be wonderful—articles like this one—are not allowed, under any circumstances.  Further to this point, it is essential to fully educate non-parents and especially soon-to-be-parents on all of the ways in which parenting is demanding, exhausting, and deadening, and to enumerate—especially to pregnant women—all of the luxuries and pleasure that must be given up entirely when you become a parent. 
  2. When discussing your own children in particular, you can only describe them in positive terms. It is not acceptable to admit that your children have any negative qualities—only different and challenging textures of multifaceted wonderfulness. 
  3. It is never, never, ever acceptable to admit that becoming a parent might have been a mistake. I posted an article like this one  to emphasize that becoming a parent is a choice, and that choosing not to be a parent was an equally valid option. The Moms disgorged their ire at me for suggesting that while not having children and wishing you did was perfectly acceptable, having children and wishing you didn’t was the worst kind of travesty.

While I have no intention of following these rules, it took a good deal of time and intuition to fully understand them. I post them here for anyone who might wish to avoid the censure that I’ve faced, and will continue to face, from the League of Mommies.  

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