Things My Mother Never Told Me

When I worked at Real Simple magazine nearly a decade ago (as a photo editor), a writer was assigned a piece called "Things My Mother Never Told Me" for the May issue; it was an interesting way in to the subject of motherhood on the occasional of Mother's Day, but the writer fell short in the editor's eyes, and while the piece ran, it ran under a different title. Before the issue went to press, the editor had mentioned this to me and I got it into my head that I would write the piece and have it published in the magazine; I didn't, it didn't, opportunity lost.

I was reminded of this not long ago when my dear friend Marni brought her first son into the world, Daniel Bing Schapiro; when I got to the hospital, their small room was filled with family, yet Marni's first words when I entered were, "How long until my vagina feels better?" Without missing a beat, I said "About a week. Depending on tearing." Our mothers were part of a generation who were not respected for their role in the birth process, when the rise of the Birth Industry privileged science over nature, the father over the mother: like so many women in the 60s and 70s, my mother had three scheduled c-sections despite her youth and health; before the first operation, the Doctor asked my father whether she wore a bikini- this determined the direction of the incision (horizontal: she was, indeed, a sunbather). I remember after Clio was born how strange it was to think that my experience of birth was so different from my own mother's, and that because of this she could not answer questions like Marni's.

Mother memory is short. At the hospital, Marni's mother, Max, asked me how much newborns cry in the first few days. Because we are one of history's oldest generations of mothers, there is often a gap of three or even four decades between our mother's infant experience and our own, and they can't possibly remember these things. When Clio was 6 months old, we went to the Bronx to visit friends with a 5-week old, and Dave and I marveled at how much we had already forgotten: the mustard-like poop, the newborn wail, the floppy neck, which milestones happened at what age. Mothers keep on being mothers even when their children are grown, and the details of their parenting evolve to homework and boy trouble and college decisions and weddings. When people had very large families and started them young, like my father's family, the youngest may have been in diapers when the oldest went off to high school, keeping the mother much more present in the broad range of milestones that pepper our lives. But those mothers were also, by necessity, more absent in the details (my father is one of a dozen or so kids): they relied on their older kids to raise the younger ones. Now, I keep reading articles stating statistics like the high percentage of today's mothers whose own infant is the first they've ever held; and hearing anecdotal evidence from mothers whose kids' diapers are the first they've ever changed. Mothers also live further than ever from their families, and the community of women--mothers, aunts, sisters,cousins--who once taught the basic skills of diapering, breastfeeding, bathing, are now only available by phone, and motherhood is a hands-on job. While I started babysitting at 11 and remember changing my infant cousins' diapers as a pre-teen, when I was pregnant with Clio I refused to hold any baby because it had been so long and I was afraid that I would be expected to display motherly instincts that I feared I might not have. Last week at the playground, I encountered a nine-year old who had come alone with her one-year old sister, presumably to help their mom out. Recently, a Montana woman was arrested and prosecuted for child endangerment after sending her 3- and 7-year old kids to the mall in the care of her 12-year old daughter and a friend.

There are such conflicting messages here: birth has become medicalized, but motherhood is still expected to come "naturally" to women who have never so much as held a baby, yet giving pre-teen or teenage girls the responsibility to care for their younger siblings makes a mother a criminal. This is insanity. Without support and education for a natural birth process, without some empathy and understanding (as well as resources for skill-building) for the challenging early days of motherhood, and without ongoing support from a community of friends in an era where women live far from their families, how can we expect women to come into their own as mothers? Marni's struggle to adapt to her new life brought it all back to me: the hormone imbalance, the sleep-deprivation, the guilt I felt that I was not immediately overcome by a sense of unconditional love for my child, the sense of incompetence or inadequecy, the occasional wish that I could put the baby back inside, where caring for her had been easy. In sharing this with Marni, I realized something even more critical: we have been silenced, and that silence does other mothers a disservice. When I told Marni about my own experiences, she asked me why she'd never heard this before? Why no one had told her how hard it would be? I found myself saying, because we're not allowed to talk about it. And even if it didn't break the social code to admit just how very hard it is, by telling anyone that we are having a hard time with motherhood admits failure where failure is not allowed, and opens us up to judgment where judgment already thrives. Mothers are "supposed" to know, in their blood, what to do, and they are "supposed" to do it with grace and joy. What the world has forgotten is that, like anything, motherhood is a skill. Only we are now hard pressed to find mentors, and the working conditions for on-the-job training are less than ideal. The woman in Montana writes about her struggle with her arrest from a place of sadness that her instincts have been so thoroughly questioned; she refuses to plead guilty for a suspended sentence (the easiest path) because that admission of wrongdoing would undo her as a mother, something that no mother can afford.

Enough of the time, I take joy in parenting my girls, and all of the time, I love them. But it has been (and will always be) a long journey, and I wish more people had told me more of the time that I was doing a great job, or--even better!--that it was okay to do just a passable job.

We all have different experiences as mothers, and there's plenty that no one can tell you--both good and bad--about what you will experience. There is more information about pregnancy and motherhood available in the mainstream than ever before (I remember watching Knocked Up and being surprised that a mucous plug would now be common knowledge), yet that information is often not from what we would call "trusted sources," and with so many different opinions out there, it can be hard to know what to listen to. I count myself lucky that my boss told me about the squirt bottle you use in lieu of toilet paper in the first days following birth; that a friend of a friend sent me an email with "the ultimate baby list" with the minimum supplies needed; that I found a peer group of moms at the same stage as me to relate our ongoing questions and concerns about motherhood; that my own mother could hop on a plane and be here to support me days after the birth of each of the girls; and that I was available to pass on some of my own hard-won knowledge when Marni needed it.