Bad moms

[Portia]

Ask Men is kind of obnoxious in layout AND content, but I thought this article was hilarious. Not nurturing? Perfectionistic? Impatient? Self-centered? Um, doesn't even want kids? ... Yeah.

Except for being violent or an alcoholic partier, this kind of sounds like me. (I'm not a monster!) And where did I get it? Well my own mother made no secret that she had not wanted children. (It's different when they're your own!) And she was impatient and perfectionistic and short-tempered. I just feel bad for her; I feel like I kept her trapped in a prison that may have been of her own making, but was certainly reinforced by her culture. She pretty much tried to make up for being temperamentally unsuited to being the full-time mother of a large-ish family by swinging the other direction and having no life outside us and being racked with really, really intense guilt over her "perfect" children that she was "unworthy" to be a mother of. Chica needed a degree and a challenging job.

Can I just rant a bit about how the Mormon Church tells women that their social role is dictated by their very biology? That being nurturing and patient and self-sacrificing is as natural as growing breasts or menstruating? If you're not naturally maternal, but you have a strong desire for a family, hey, go for it! More power to you! If you are maternal and it's easy and right and fulfilling, huzzah! But if you aren't, yet you face constant, unrelenting pressure about what constitutes a "good" mother (crafts. so many crafts.), I think it's enough to snap even the strongest of women. I wouldn't call my mother dramatic and she lacked my self-destructive streak. She was actually a very strong person who rarely complained per se, but she was clearly deeply miserable. So I think she took out that misery by blaming convenient targets. It was kind of like the more she gave us, the less of her was there, and as I got into my teenage years, it was kind of demoralizing. I didn't do my laundry til I arrived at BYU; the way I did it was "wrong." She actually was pretty hands-off about homework but I had my first nervous breakdown over a B on a test, or something. (I think that alarmed her, that it had reached a point that I had so little resilience that the slightest failure could destroy me.)

It's very sad to me that a beautiful (seriously, stunning), intelligent, organized, level-headed woman lost the best years of her life to an idea that she had to get all her fulfillment from her home. It's easy to say that this is faulty thinking, that God accepts whatever you're able to do, but I don't think it's accurate. There are plenty of speeches and talks and scriptures on LDS.org and other such official organs that definitely reinforces the idea that women are and ought to be nurturing and wholly devoted to their offspring and housekeeping. For neurotic perfectionists who happen to not marry into or inherit money, it's an impossible idea that breaks people.

Why aren't men subject to this kind of intense scrutiny? Why wouldn't God gift them with a knack for fatherhood along with their gonads?

We hear often of a void or emptiness the childless feel. What about that same void the unwilling or reluctant parents feel? It seems like a social taboo, and maybe for good reason. Maybe once you've become a parent, there's no way out and if you're bad at it, tough. Maybe these are not learnable skills.

My mom didn't drink, do drugs, pummel me, leave me in a shed, or shut me up in an attic. So she wasn't a horrendous mother. But I think that in her short life there were other things that would have been more fulfilling and had a greater impact on society. Her whole life was the LDS Church but it was never good enough, not in their viewpoint and not in hers. It makes me mad. Trying to shove a square peg in a round whole wastes human potential.

It's not really a very easy thing as I approach my own reproductive years. The man I think I could live most comfortably with is vain and narcissistic and thinks that children are a status symbol. (If I end up as the mother of his child as a sort of social experiment ten years hence, I hereby abrogate any right to complain. Ha.) It was pretty much life-changing when my therapist said that I'm not obligated to have kids if I don't want to. He said I don't even need to have a "reason," beyond my own desires. What. And he's a very mild-mannered Christian dude married to a Mormon, I think, who has kids of his own.

I hope that the many parents and future parents on the Board find fulfillment in that part of their lives. I hope that those who don't have the skills and degrees and spousal support to find outside work or household help to make it a manageable task.

[Zedability]

"There is no one perfect way to be a good mother... Each mother has different challenges, different skills and abilities, and certainly different children... Some may have to work part-or full-time; some may work at home; some may divide their lives into periods of home and family and work. What matters is that a mother loves her children deeply and, in keeping with the devotion she has for God and her husband, prioritizes them above all else." Elder M. Russell Ballard

[Portia]

Zed, if I have a child, I hope he/she befriends/dates/marries one of yours and makes awesome science and gets Canadian healthcare. :P

[Zedability]

Hahaha. Only Alberta healthcare is good. Maritime health care is the worst. It made me so sad.

[Portia]

Hahaha. Only Alberta healthcare is good. Maritime health care is the worst. It made me so sad.

Tell me more! I need an NPR-level in-depth analysis of Canadian health care inequality like yesterday.

(What about B.C. healthcare? I have in my mind that B.C. is the promised land.)

[Zedability]

I've never experienced BC health care. The big issue in the Maritimes, at least that I saw, is the waiting lists and disorganization. I never really experienced bad waiting times in Alberta. In the Maritimes, lots of people have to wait FOREVER for procedures, and they combat wait times for drop-in clinics by being ridiculously un-thorough. I taught this one lady with back problems who had free bars for her shower delivered over a year ago. However, she can't afford to hire someone to install it, nor does she know how to do it, so they've been sitting in the box in her living room for a YEAR. The system is losing out on the price of the bars, but she's also not benefitting from it, so it still has to pay for her bad back and would have to pay for the fallout if she ever slipped and fell. Stuff like that happens all the time, just stupid inefficient stuff like that.

[Katya]

Speaking of the Maritimes, were you ever in Truro, Zed? I have family (sort of) there.

[Zedability]

I was in Truro for, like, one morning of studies and 2 proselyting hours. We just street contacted the whole time. So I probably didn't meet them haha

[Portia]

I've never experienced BC health care. The big issue in the Maritimes, at least that I saw, is the waiting lists and disorganization. I never really experienced bad waiting times in Alberta. In the Maritimes, lots of people have to wait FOREVER for procedures, and they combat wait times for drop-in clinics by being ridiculously un-thorough. I taught this one lady with back problems who had free bars for her shower delivered over a year ago. However, she can't afford to hire someone to install it, nor does she know how to do it, so they've been sitting in the box in her living room for a YEAR. The system is losing out on the price of the bars, but she's also not benefitting from it, so it still has to pay for her bad back and would have to pay for the fallout if she ever slipped and fell. Stuff like that happens all the time, just stupid inefficient stuff like that.

Well, the Maritimes is analogous to rural Maine or Vermont, Alberta is basically Utah North, and B.C. is culturally and meteorologically quite similar to Washington State. So if anything I'd expect education and healthcare to be outstanding on the West Coast.

Could be an infrastructure issue. Isn't the population of the Maritimes quite low?

[Zedability]

Alberta is a lot like Texas as far as economics goes actually. Comparable amounts of government intervention and fueled by oil. Yeah the biggest city in the maritimes has like 300000 peole