Ruminations on motherhood

I went to another crunchy moms' meetup yesterday. It was another small group with a few new faces of people I hadn't met before, though one was technically a woman I had seen at LLL the one time I went a couple of months ago.

My view of other mothers has really been changing as I'm reading Perfect Madness. Whereas before I sometimes viewed them as cliquish, their diaper obsessions sometimes as materialistic, their ardent allegiances to this or that parenting technique as judgy, I actually now find myself awash in empathy at such times. I think we've all been subjected to the same cultural pressures and we're all affected by them to some degree, manifested in different ways for individual people.

There was one woman there, a newbie, who showed up and because our meetup's theme for the day was babywearing, sheepishly and somewhat plaintively asked if we would have run her out on a rail for showing up with a stroller. The group leader said "of course not!" and I believe that the women in this group are genuinely kind and accepting, and yet the fact that I totally knew where this newbie was coming from is just so, so sad. I rather liked her for wearing her insecurities on her sleeve as she did the entire day, and at the same time I pitied her and suspected that that could become an annoying habit if I spent a lot of time with her. But still, I admired her for asking aloud what I think a lot of moms are secretly wondering a lot of the time: Are you judging me???

I think a lot of the ideas we espouse and a lot of the practices and projects and products we tout are a way of taking refuge from those insecurities, and maybe also a way of soothing generalized anxiety of whether or not we're good enough as mothers. One interesting aspect of this crunchy mom group is that although their ideas are trendy in a larger American cultural sense (at least the AP strain of the culture), they're generally pretty offbeat for Nebraska. So when we went around introducing ourselves and explaining why we'd joined the group, everyone voiced some version of "I was looking for people who wouldn't think I'm weird." There is a military wife who's AP and vegetarian. There is a girl with plugs in her ears, which believe it or not is pretty counterculture around here. There is a mom who's still breastfeeding her two year old. There is an unschooling female clergyperson. There is a homebirther. I think what everyone has in common is that they are all trying to do what's "right" as mothers, at any cost.

The group leader has this book that she loves and has mentioned in online discussions. She brought a copy to the meetup yesterday for people to look at, and I briefly perused it. I knew the gist of it since I'd looked it up online when she'd first mentioned it. I won't even mention the title since I'm not going to recommend it and it's not all that important - it's basically an attachment parenting text that falls on the extreme end of the AP spectrum in my opinion. Of course it references "tribal cultures" where babies never leave their mothers' care, or even really physical contact with their mothers. One part that I skimmed over as I leafed through mentioned the way today's American babies will spit up milk after feedings because they are suffering so greatly and so deprived of maternal affection that they are literally physically sickened. On the face of it this seems absurd, I think - in fact I had to laugh inwardly as I was wearing my baby for about two hours yesterday, then nursed him and put him back in his sling, where he promptly spit up all over me... but I understand completely how this kind of idea can take hold of a person's mind for a lot of complex psychological reasons. Behind it is a deep, existential fear - a soul-rattling terror of being the cause of a child's emotional suffering. The mere suggestion that you could be an almost unwitting agent of abuse is sometimes enough to prompt a slavish devotion to any dogma that promises to do no harm.

But harm is done to mothers in this culture, all the time. I find it interesting to note that Ina May, who is of course a kind of earthly goddess to natural-birth mamas and by extension to a lot of AP mamas, says that the incidence of post partum depression in her village is very low - nearly non-existent. Is it because they get to be crunchy AP hippie mamas who never have to go work in an office and are able to wear their babies 24/7 like nature intended? NO. It's because the mothers are supported. Ina May says she believes that it's because the community really rallies around new mothers so they DON'T have to do the whole work of motherhood alone - but this point seems to have gotten utterly lost in the noise of modern motherhood.

This post is pretty all over the place as I'm just kind of haphazardly pouring out my thoughts. But I want to also link to a blog post. I read Heir to Blair, which is not on my blogroll simply because, well, everyone reads Blair, don't they? It's almost like putting dooce on your blogroll at this point. But I do read her regularly. And I had been stupefied at the harsh and almost violently negative reactions she had gotten from some people on the B.ump for posting about her post partum depression, until I started reading this book and understanding a little better why women attack each other about any and all motherhood related issues.

Yesterday she posted that motherhood had not lived up to her expectations, which I think is a totally fair, honest, and reasonable point of view. The comments on the post are amazing. Here at a glance, I think, is American motherhood. The good, the bad, the ugly, the backbiting, the cries for help, all of it. It truly is remarkable and so I direct you over there to have a look.