Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Less than a generation ago adults could still be adults
Reject the parenting arms race and take your life back
But this thread is just engaging in a different kind of arms race. Instead of being the perfect mom, it’s being the perfect person— perfectly balancing parenting with a fulfilling career, active social life, hobbies, and personal fulfillment. It’s the same BS as always, where we set the bar insanely high for women and then keep changing the rules in them.
My mom was a middle class SAHM (she married at 19 and never got a college degree) and she was pretty much enslaved to her kids and home. I think this is true of many women throughout history. Whereas dads only recently got involved in the service of parenting. So the arms race of motherhood is NOT a recent phenomenon.
Unlike my mom, I got a college degree and graduate degree, didn’t marry or have a kid until my mid-30s. I’ve had a hard time finding balance as a mom, and its partly because I have no role model for it. My mom was a martyr but not out of choice. I can sometimes fall into mommy martyrdom and have to watch it, but I also find the expectations of others sometimes push me into it too— the exacting high standards of modern parenting that largely fall on women. But then the expectation on top of that to be successful at work AND have a social life and a “full, enriching” life outside parenting.
It feels like a game designed to ensure I can’t rest, and will be judged harshly no matter what I do.
Like even if I successfully balance family and work, I’ll get judged for not also being well read and having an active social life and playing pickle ball? But of course, if I do all those thing and it impacts my kid, I’ll be judged an inadequate mother. If I let work slip then I’m either bad at my job or (if I take a mommy track job) not living up to my potential. Oh, and if my job isn’t deeply fulfilling (while also never exceeding 40 hours) then I guess I’ve failed at that too.
So my radical contribution to this thread is this: it doesn’t matter to ME how you do it. I don’t think you need to strike the perfect balance. It’s okay if you don’t have hobbies. Maybe you find parenting sufficiently fulfilling to not need them. Maybe you would rather focus on work. Maybe you have limitations like a crap partner, financial limitations, or you’re just tired, and therefore life is about surviving not thriving right now. That’s a-ok with me. I don’t think you need the perfect balance, a fulfilling career, or a hobby to get it right. You getting by? Good for you— they don’t make that easy.
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