I’m sitting down in my robe this morning to write a message to all the mommas out there…
You are in the middle of a HUGE social experiment and you might want to think about how it affects you.
The fact is:
Nowhere in history have women:
SUPER PARENTED
ENDLESS JOBBED
and (mostly) RUNTHEHOUSE
All. At. once.
Some terms defined:
Super Parenting – The act of not only building the babies in our bellies OR taking on the full second career of a Fertility Struggle or Adoption Process – but of feeling as if you need to design, engineer and build the very road these kiddos both presently and will eventually, travel on. The idea that their basic success lies in what you, as a mother figure out, moment to moment.
Endless Jobbed – The act of working a bit everywhere thanks to excellent technology that allows for a constant connection with what needs to get done. This convenience interrupts you while reading labels at the grocery store in an attempt to suss out the crap you are supposed to guard the family from. No strolling along is safe.
Runthehouse – The act of being the emotional touchstone, general planner and “mom/honey where is the: fill in the blank.” You remember to buy the birthday gifts and plan the birthday parties, often your own – there is no proof of this however, because you are in none of the pictures.
Here is the modern experiment situation:
Humans do not evolve quickly. It is not one of our strengths. We have been slow and steady throughout our evolutionary process. We are not hardwired for the amount of multi-tasking or stimuli we are currently in the middle of.
Not even us women.
Yes, we can DO it… But there is a cost.
Your system needs you to recognize that you are, for the first time in human history, doing the job of THREE people.
Not too long ago it would have been Auntie Joannie often cooking the dinner.
Grammie Marie would have been watching the kids in her home or yours.
You would have had a secret language with them that would make leaving and returning every day easier than the generational and logistical issues modern parents work with constantly.
Why?
Because things in society weren’t changing as quickly as now. And you would have more access to intimate community who understood what even many of your facial expressions meant.
The job you went off to would END at the END of the day.
I know this for a fact.
My grandmother began working in the 1970’s. She had a job downtown Chicago as a secretary for an executive at a large company that built power plants.
She got that job in her late 40s, worked there for 25 years and loved it.
Why?
Because her kids were out of the house (until she raised me for 5 years during this job, but that’s another post).
At the end of the day, she got on Chicago’s South Shore Train and rode home for an hour, reading or sleeping along the way.
Her job ended and her evening was her OWN.
Her weekend was her OWN.
She got to sleep through the night.
She came home to a house that was the way she left it.
She got to focus on one thing (raising four children), and oooh get this…THEN the next thing (a manageable job).
Here’s the best part:
When she was going in for the original interview for this job, it was in a big shiny skyscraper downtown Chicago and she was deeply intimidated. A stay at home mother for 25 years, she said that the very idea of going into an office, talking to someone about her work experience or skills, terrified her.
What she would tell me years later was:
“I truly could not believe it. I realized that raising kids was WAY more difficult than going into work every day!”
She would later marvel about how: “ridiculously complicated feeding a family, working a 40 hour week and trying to have a real ‘good life’ (as she would often call it) was for a modern working woman.”
Oh Grandma Junie, how right you were and ARE.
The STAY AT HOME MOMMAS have a load like never before too.
They actually seem to feel as if it isn’t enough to be the person trying to make everyone else’s load, less.
Hello? Have you ever tried to take on another human’s load?
It’s a pile ON.
Moving a few years ago I was sifting through books I was trying to get rid of (while working and answering texts about work and cooking nutritious meals for the family and selling and buying a home…you get the point).
While simultaneously berating myself for not getting enough done quickly enough, AND avoiding more life pressure, I picked up “To Kill A Mockingbird” and decided to re-read it.
Ooooh! Was it eye opening!
There is a part about how Scout, the little kid, is in a Pageant at her school. Her dad, Atticus and Aunt Alexandra don’t go because, and I’m not kidding here, THEY ARE TIRED.
Can you imagine that scenario today?
We modern-days would have made the decorations, or helped form the group of overwhelmed parents to get the stuff at whatever craft store to make the glitter wings, decorated until ONE AaaaMmmmm the night BEFORE the “Pageant Day”, had to get the kids to school the next morning after getting home at 1:30 AM Thursday night, been at the dress rehearsal Friday after school or coordinated with another parent about how that was going to go, worried about the thirty other details that the frantic teachers needed, picked up the cupcakes for the event, fought back a head-cold with a turbo combo of NyQuil, zinc tablets and lemon fizzy vitamin C water, fixed the melt-down situation with our kid actually IN the pageant and the one who was NOT, but feeling the very real need to express how chaos around school events does NOT jibe with their system, gotten in that extra mortgage paperwork for the re-fi the bank needed for the 4th time even though it was uploaded to the vault last month, talked with the pediatrician’s office about the slip of paper needed for that camp, maybe had and IVF treatment or helped our mom with her sudden worries about our sister who is doing the thing again, made lunches, helped the homework issue get resolved, GONE TO THE PAGEANT Friday night, both planned and or attended the pizza party for it afterwards, helped with the tear down/clean-up or felt badly that we didn’t, tried to sleep that night after all the adrenal pumping chaos – then – run to soccer practice or grocery shop or catch up on work (perhaps all 3) Saturday morning.
And I haven’t even begun to discuss what women who are under-resourced have to struggle through. It is very important to know that if you are sick, an under resourced minority, financially unstable, taking care of multiple generations (even “just” emotional care) or helping unwell family members…this is where the load becomes full on survival mode.
And those who are outwardly resourced/resourced-ish often feel guilty about other levels of lack out there and push harder, therefore leaving themselves, who ARE at least somewhat resourced, more wiped out and completely incapable of recognizing the ridiculousness of it all.
THIS is what keeps us all believing that EVERYONE else is managing…”so why am I bone tired, who am I to be tired??”
Breathe in slowly and with a long gentle exhale…
Please consider this:
Unless we recognize the ridiculousness, we are denying what IS.
You are, whatever configuration of your life that was possibly described here, currently running through very new human territory.
Even pandemics have happened before.
You are doing WAY more things than your body has evolved over thousands of years, to do.
Our human systems read this NEW territory as:
“This is very overwhelming and possibly dangerous!”
This keeps us in an ever vigilant, heightened state of Scramble To Adapt, NOW.
This means the brain and body are constantly in some form of survival mode.
Add to that, our culture has normalized this feeling of scramble-adapt.
“Like, yeah, of course you feel you are at capacity…SO WHAT? PUSH THROUGH LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. NEXT!”
Do you realize how much pressure you put upon yourself because you’ve internalized that you are supposed to?
I’m asking, if we can start to look at this huge situation without even beginning to think we need to solve it.
But stop looking away because we think it is too big to solve.
For now, we just need to begin to SEE it and give ourselves permission to FEEL it.
More to come.