On Motherhood Statements

WordPress has replaced Google as my favorite search engine for insights, tips, and common experiences on the various baby-related topics like pregnancy, motherhood, breastfeeding, etc.

Unlike Google results, I have a better chance of coming across real nuggets of wisdom from fellow moms instead of market-driven magazine articles that are actually advertisements with a cleverly written story on them. I prefer to read up on stories.

The following links lead to blogs and sites that made me smile, cry, or rethink some of my ideas on motherhood.

This has got to be the most reassuring quote I got from my blog search:

“You get a do-over,” someone wise once told me. “You get to reshape motherhood. You get to let go of the example provided to you. You get to make it anything you want it to be.”

 

That quote alone gave a whole new meaning, challenge, and hope for my motherhood experience. The article is even better. Here is my favorite part:

 

Here’s what I know, this morning: if I ever lost my girls for any reason, I would never feel free again. My freedom lies in the possibility that they’ve shown me. They’ve given me a joyful home, a happy family, a burning desire to do whatever I’m doing for precisely the right reasons, always. My girls have made me responsible for leaving their world a better place, and in doing this work in any small way, my heart expands as well. Becoming a mother has helped me realize that perhaps it wasn’t simply freedom that I was after all of those years ago. I think it was purpose. I think it was possibility. Motherhood has provided me with all of these gifts.

 

These are the things that this has cost me: time, money, and the ability to travel as much as I would like. But this is what I know motherhood has provided me: perspective. My girls are growing older every single day. We’re finding our freedoms returned to us. Slowly, there is space and there are resources to do anything we may have wanted to do when we were in our twenties.

 

But because I am a mother, I know how I want to spend that time. I know how I want to spend that money. I know where I want to go. How I want to get there. There will be meaning inside of these experiences that wasn’t there when I was twenty-five.

 

Ironically, motherhood has given me roots. It has also given me wings.

 

Beautiful. Six months into pregnancy and I do feel a tinge of what this mother feel. Truth is, I feel the same way about Pong. I bemoaned my loss of freedom and the hardships that come along with commitment. But now, her last sentence could not be more apt. In our love, I found a home. In that home lies endless possibilities.

 

Another blogsite I liked is PhD in Parenting. This sharp mom stands up for everything this antithetical mom believes in. In this blog post, the writer explores the meaning of feminist motherhood and how she has applied her own feminist belief system in her own married and family life.

 

I am copying here the writer’s answer to the question – “Do you feel feminism has failed mothers and if so, how? Personally, what do you feel feminism has given to mothers?” 

“I think that feminism has failed mothers in countries where they have the equal right to work, but no right to a decent length of paid parental leave. These mothers are forced to either put their child in day care at a very early age or accept a traditional stay at home mom role, where they are dependent on their partner. I think that feminist mothers should be able to choose to spend some time nurturing their children without having to significantly compromise their career or their financial security to do so.

I think feminism has failed mothers when it makes them feel that they have to be super mom and super woman every day. We are told that we need to have “balance” in our lives, but for many working mothers that means working extra hard at their job, working extra hard at being a mother and working extra hard at being a wife. I don’t feel that it is reasonable to always have balance between those three areas. And I think that feminists need to seek out relationships with employers (or be your own boss!) and life partners that recognize that and that are willing to ride the waves and ebbs and flows together.

I think feminism has failed mothers when it tells them that choosing to stay at home is not a valid choice.

I think feminism has given mothers more choice and more freedom. It has made it acceptable to want more than to just stay home and raise kids. But it also needs to make it acceptable to choose to stay home. Going back to my first answer, to each according to her or his abilities and desires. This needs to be worked out by each couple and I don’t think that the choice to have a parent stay home, whether it is the father or the mother, should ever be seen as wrong or backwards. As long as it is a choice that is entered freely and equally.”

I hold a fondness and admiration for black women. They have the swagger, the ass, and the voice. They can dance, sing, and beat the s*&t out of you. I love their flair and sense of style that is unapologetic and decidedly strong. I came across two mama blogs already.

Single Ma and Just Mama.

They are just a sample. What I liked most about their stories are the decidedly anti-maintstream thinking to motherhood. Single Ma’s latest blog post is on saving money on buying school supplies. While this post by Just Mama depicts realities of ‘black motherhood’.

“Black motherhood has always looked different, after all we didn’t need to fight for the right to work, shit we were working from day one when we landed in this country. Yet we raised kids who were good even when we had no time to spend and no money to give.

So, I think mini-me and I will be ok, yes she may end up watching too much tv when I am on a deadline but as elder boy tells me too much TV didn’t rot his brain back when I was a single parent and had to rush home to make dinner so he had to entertain himself with Rugrats and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air back in the mid-1990’s. This is a kid whose summer reading included Kurt Vonnegut and that was just for fun.

No, motherhood takes many forms and we can’t allow others to define it for us.”

I like her approach to parenting. It doesn’t advocate the excessive ‘baby-ing’ of children. You don’t have to apologize for working. And hey, even if the kids grow up in a less than homey environment, they will be fine.