In adolescence it is enough to be “bad,” but in motherhood it is necessary, apparently, to make “bad the new good” and to tell it like it is which is your way and shine the light on the truth that only Bad Mothers are interesting, real, or someone you could stomach having lunch with.
I have a confession to make: I am a good mother. I know this comes as a surprise to many of you, because I have angsted over being a bad mother and hated being a mother and wished I could do anything else please by everything holy make the whining stop for five seconds so I can think.
But the truth is: I am a good mother.
Here are the facts:
I gave up caffeine for the first three months of my first pregnancy. Sally weighed over nine pounds, so I vowed to drink gallons of the stuff next time.
I breastfed, even when it was painful at first, and even when I sometimes felt like a human pacifier, back before it was trendy to complain about feeling like a human pacifier.
I daydream about going to law school or getting a masters in “motherhood archetypes in modern literature” or putting my kids in daycare so I can sit at Panera with my laptop all day, but I don’t. Not yet.
The TV hasn’t been on at all since summer began eight days ago. (For them. It’s been on after 9 pm. Oh, yes.)
Spot, at 2 1/2, can swim like an embryonic minnow and say words like “Rameumptom.”
Susan, at 4 1/2, can write her name, left-handed, upside-down, like the boy on Fringe who’d been sealed underground for years.
Sally, at 8, can choose a “Native-American” Barbie doll and answer the following social-awareness question correctly: “Which is more important — the color of someone’s skin or what kind of person they are inside?”
But that is only the good stuff, right? Of course I only tell you the good stuff, as a good mother, right?
Tell me — does anyone, anywhere, think that a Good Mother has only good stuff to tell?
Or that a good mother cannot tell anything at all, because she is too busy being repressed and dictated and obscured by niqab? In our western culture, with our free speech protections, are the “good” people those who are silent and dumb and unheard-from, or are the good people those who give voice to the obscure, the unpopular, the uncool? “Cool” probably isn’t even the right word, I am so far, far from embodying that trait.
I am a good mother, and I have bad to share: Like the time I whacked Sally on the head with a hairbrush because she wouldn’t hold still for a ponytail, and the time I yelled at Susan that I didn’t give a flying f&*^ if she didn’t want to wear her seatbelt because wear her seatbelt is what she had to do. And the time I ignored baby Spot crying in her crib because I just had to finish one more page of my trashy romance novel if you know what I mean.
Still, I am a Good Mother. I am not and never will be cool, sophisticated, or cynical enough to charmingly regale you with how proud I am to be a Bad Mother. I don’t let other people tell me what I have to do to be a good mother, either. Nor can I tell you whether you are a good mother or not (though chances are, if you try to be, and if you don’t do crack while you’re pregnant, you probably are).
The way I see it, being a good mother takes two things: 1) the desire to be a good mother: the earnest, chumpish, embarrassingly dorky, peasanty desire to be a good mother. And 2) the will to do those things that she determines to be important for the well-being of her children. Even those that require sacrifice, change of habit, or a lot of w-o-r-k.
For example, she can’t say “Of course nutrition is important, but I have to have a life too, don’t I? So I let my kids eat dingdongs for dinner yo-ho-ho, aren’t I fabulously way-cool?” Maybe nutrition isn’t important to her. Fine. THAT doesn’t make her a bad mother. Maybe she has great genes for winnowing the beta carotene from a cheese puff that she passed on to her kids. Fine (and can I get some of that?).
No, what makes someone a bad mother is knowing or believing that something isn’t good for her kids, and yet revelling in them doing it, whatever it is. And revelling in her own bad behavior (that she herself deems bad), whatever that is.
Being a good mother means wanting and trying to be a good mother. Why wouldn’t you want to be good at what you do or who you are? Do we wish to be friends with Bad People? Does anyone want their cancer treated by a woman proud of being a Bad Doctor? Would we like our country led by a Bad President? The difference here, of course, is that the Good Mother’s consituents do not include any other mothers or any other mother’s children. (My constituents are myself, my husband sometimes, and my children infrequently. Not my mother or mother-in-law or the internet.)
And here is the real problem: If a mother cannot shrug off the opinions of those who are not her constituents, this is not the fault of the term Good Mother, this is a weakness of personality that looks to others for approval. And, not seeing that needy reassurance forthcoming, rocks itself in a corner shouting intermittently, “Oh yeah, maybe I am a Bad Mother, but I LIKE it. So there.”
This doesn’t mean a good mother never questions herself, never worries or hopes to improve, of course she does, that is the whole point. A good mother seeks better ways to do things, just as a good doctor learns new surgical technique thingies. And maybe somedays she feels like a bad mother, because let’s face it, on some days the good mother is a real bad mother. It happens.
Thinking yourself a bad mother for falling short of your own goals is not the same as thinking yourself a bad mother because other people said so. One is a valid gauge of one’s progress, the other is just stupid.
And I know I said I wasn’t cool, but I do get that this whole embracing of the Bad Mother term is a linguistic reclaiming of the something-something-revolutionary-blah-blah-the-man-and-the-media-is-holding-us-down-and-making-us-feel-bad-about-ourselves-something-something.
But the truth is that bad means bad and good means good. They always have, and they probably always will. Instead of reclaiming “bad” I say we reclaim “good,” from both the sanctimonious and the self-satisfiedly-smug not-good. I do believe that would make us counter-revolutionaries, which, beat THAT for being better than bad.
I’ll go first:
Hi, my name is Jane (okay, it’s Shannon) and I am a good mother.
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This makes me think of the new “sexual revolution” where it seems to be okay to be sexually objectified and treated like a sexual object if “I choose it”. It’s okay if girls want to get drunk and kiss other girls in front of boys because “THEY” think its cool. It makes me very sad for our young girls that somehow they have been tricked into believing that if they choose to be treated like a sexual object it is okay – it is liberating. In reality it is neither okay nor liberating.
Regarding motherhood – well, I have a very good friend who is a family counselor and she frequently reminds me that I have a LOOOOONG way to go before I could be considered a “bad mother”. Being a good mother is when you choose to do the hard things that you know are good for your kids but not easy.
Jane Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 9:44 am
I think that’s a very apt comparison.
Whenever I watch the evening news (or Law & Order SVU), I am reminded of just how good (fantastic! non-abusive! superb!) a mother I am.
I strive to be a good mother but often fall short of my own goals. Maybe I have set the bar too high for myself or anyone else to obtain. I also know that other people think I am a “mean” or even “bad” mom. I am pretty steadfast in my rules, I enforce good behavior no matter who is around, and yes that sometimes means I yell at my kids in public. But quite frankly, I would rather be the Mom yelling at her kids for misbehaving than the one who completely ignores innappropriate behavior. None of this really goes with your blog post… but since I don’t really blog I will just ramble on your blog instead. ;-P
Side note… You are a good Mom. But you already know that.
Jane Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 9:43 am
I love making goals. I am not always good at reaching them, but the possibility and the ideal and the striving are good. I think it’s just important to make sure they are our own goals, and not mandates imposed by anyone else.
Well written! I also just read all of your posts you linked to – also well written.
I am a rage-aholic, I yell way too much. I hate it. It makes me feel worse, it makes them feel worse. I need to adopt a “no-yelling-rule” also. I believe you’re right about all the ways you listed to overcome it, and I think I should start working on that.
I often fall short of my expectations for myself, and I hate it, but let’s be honest… I often fall short because I left them at just “expectations” and not follow throughs.
Like now. When I should be coordinating the clean up of the messiest living room in Texas, the messiest our living room has looked in a long time, after a long day with an insufferable sinus headache and ALLOWING them to make it look this way. But I’m not. I should. But I’m not. I don’t look forward to it anymore than they do. And therein lies the problem with this particular “falling short.”
But this things, do not make me a bad mother. Not individually or collectively. They are bad moments. We all sin. It doesn’t justify my actions, or allow me to intentionally slide in the future. But I am not perfect. I do sin. I want the best for my children. I work towards that goal. I AM a good mother.
Jane Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Good luck on your no-yelling resolution. I have broken mine more times than I care to count, but I am not giving up (yet).
On the cleaning — that is one of my major goals for the summer — to teach the kids to do chores, etc, without whining, and it is doubly hard bec. it seems like it would be so much easier to just do it myself (and relieve my resentment over THAT with a little yelling).
Thanks for sharing your own “bad moments.”
Amber @ Classic Housewife Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 10:19 am
I am SOOO with you on the “it would be easier to clean it myself (and then yell about it.)”
Truth is, it’s really easier when you’ve got help. I had to learn to LET GO of a lot of things. For example, I no longer care how well their clothes are folded, so long as they are attempted to be folded and IN THEIR DRAWER, not on the floor, under the bed, etc. Soo.. I make them fold their own laundry. I even have the older girls fold the 3yo’s laundry and make the 3yo put them in his dresser.
I am AWFUL MEAN that way.
Good luck on your summer cleaning goals. It’s hard to let go of how well it’s done, but it’s nice to not have to do it yourself!
Huzzah! Amen to you, Jane, and to both the comments so far. Well said on all points.
With your last point (bad means bad and good means good), I’m reminded of “Wo unto them that call evil good, and good evil . . . !”
I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call myself a “good” mother. I do try—sometimes. But a lot of the time, I’m too focused on my own goals and my own tasks to give my children the time they need and deserve. On the other hand, I’m not actually doing bad things. Maybe I’m just “fair”?
Jane Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 9:38 am
“Fair” is good enough for me. And I do honestly think it’s good for our kids to not ALWAYS think they are the center of the universe.
Points to you Jane for daring to write this.
I’d comment more, but you’ve got my wheels turning. I’ll point people here if I post in a tangential direction from this.
Best to you – and kudos on the no tv! Impressed!
Amen and amen and hallelujah.
“Bad” means bad. “Good” means good. Anything else is a transparent, unimaginative marketing ploy.
As far as Her Bad Mother goes, as I understand it, she got the phrase from her mom who called herself that but who, Catherine says, did plenty of cool things that challenged that self label. And the title is a throwback to nostalgia.
It should stay there, however. We don’t need to scan the media with narrowed eyes looking for an excuse for indignation to help justify the title and spur some kind of blog fervor to increase traffic.
Not that I’m saying that is what’s been done. I don’t know. But if it was, that would suck and be totally lame-o.
Jane Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 9:37 am
It’s hard, on the internet, because of course you can’t explain everything in every post. But we write precisely because words are important, so I think it’s worth taking care that the words we adopt and proclaim are truly the ones we want.
[...] means, as Jane put it so well today, that: being a good mother takes two things: 1) the desire to be a good mother. . . . And 2) the will to do those things that [...]
This is a really good post.
Interestingly, the self-examination may not stop with the children’s exit. When children marry, comparing parents can become a favorite pastime for a while: Who had the worst mother/father? Unfortunately, one spouse who might have been perfectly happy with their upbringing may come to the conclusion that he or she were short-changed afterall. And then he or she may pass that new-found info onto Mom or Dad. Dad, of course, utters something like, “Oh, well.” While Mom suffers through sleepless nights reliving those “bad” days of mothering and may decide they outnumbered the good. Then, if that’s not bad enough, the day comes when she learns she’s falling short as a grandmother, too! Last week I would have joined Jane/Shannon in proclaiming, “I’m Renae. I was a good mother, and now I’m a good grandma.” This week I can only muster, “I was a mediocre mother, and now I’m a medicore grandma.” But next week – well, who knows what next week will bring, right?
Jane Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Yes. One day I am the best ever, and the next day I think it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if DCFS was notified. (Not really. Please don’t call them!). I think the desire to be a good (mom/grandma) and the will to try every day is what’s important.
So much to think about – godo writing, Jane!
I don’t know that I ever consider myself a “bad” mother (or a “good” one, for that matter), but I do have times where I worry about my choices. Some, like dragging Miss M out of the pool last week because of the tantrum she was throwing, and having her wailing all the way up to our 16th floor room, well, that was a painful experience, but I’m fine with what I did, because she needs to learn about consequences and my threats are not hollow. Oh no.
I worry about whether I should not work. Is my daughter going to hate me because I haven’t stayed at home with her? Or is my vague thought valid that I’ll have some kind of mum-hours job when she’s in high school, because she’ll need ME more then.
I also know that I turn myself into a great big ball of vomiting worry when I worry about things too much, so I don’t wonder too much if I’m being a good mum or a bad mum. I’m being a mum, and standing by my decisions, and changing them when I need to, and trying to do what I/we think is best in raising our daughter. I’m learning all the time.
Jane Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 9:32 am
I think it’s a very good point to get beyond the whole “good/bad” thing altogether. I guess “doing-your-best mom” is just too long.
I once totally mortified Dick by enforcing the one-treat-at-the-grocery-story rule in Cairo. The Egyptian clerks were appalled too. Oh well; Sally learned her lesson and I felt it was the right thing.
Jane Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Oh, and I’ve been thinking about the work thing — when my Susan, in defining things around her, says that things like “doctor” “writer (technical)” and “mail carrier” are “boy jobs.” Probably will be a post soon.
I don’t comment very often. But I love your blog and I love this post.
Hello, my name is Sharla, and I am a good mother.
Wow, very freeing! But gosh darn Shannon, (I can say that now, right?) do you always have to be so brilliant? Good thing I like people who are too smart.
I blogged in response to this here: http://themomnerd.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-name-is-sharla-and-im-good-mom.html
I totally needed to read this today. I’ve spent all day feeling like a crappy mother for whatever reason. Now I get to revisit “bad mother” and “good mother” with a bit of forgiveness and love. THanks for the great, and timely post.
Of course no one (or very few) strives to be a bad mother, in the conventional understanding of that term. But most real mothers struggle with coming to terms with the reality of their own motherhood against models of ‘good’ motherhood that are thrust upon us at every turn and it is that dynamic that I want to rebel against. If not doing motherhood the way that parenting magazines and Dr. Sears and Mr. Weissbluth and the Baby Whisperer and other media tell us we should do it, of we are to be ‘good’, is BAD, then bad I am, and I will be that proudly. Because the fact of the matter is – as any rhetorician from before Aristotle until now will tell you (not to mention the philosophers that I cite in my post) – bad is not always simply bad and good is not always simply good. A good mother under Taliban rule is not a good mother in a western democracy. A good mother to Dr. Sears is not a good mother to the Babywise people. A good liberal atheist mother is not a good mother to many Christians. My use of the word bad is meant to signify a rejection of the hegemony of the idea that there is such a thing as a universal ‘Good’ mother that we can model ourselves after. According to my own measures, I’m an excellent mother. But that excellence includes many things that others would consider bad, and so I’m just embracing that.
One other thing: none of the other ‘bad parent’ bloggers that I know did not set out to establish themselves within a popular niche. Most of us have been telling these stories since long before the media decided that maybe ‘bad parenting’ was hot. These are authentic stories, told because we want to write honestly about our experiences. I’m not trying to be cool, I’m just being, and writing about it, and the same holds for every other parent that I know that writes in the same vein.
Jane Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Pardon me. I guess I should bow down to the obviously superior intellect of all rhetoricians since Aristotle (and the other philosophers in your post; all men, I noticed) and jump on the anti-hegemony revolution.
Viva la Bad! Down with ideals of Good!
Is it not a valid intellectual inquiry to wonder if, perhaps, it would be better, more independent and truly feminist, to fight for a redefinition of “good” rather than a submission to “bad” because we are unable to get beyond the binary dichotomy imposed by a malignant media (and Greek philosophers)?
Maybe I’m simply not smart enough to enter your dialogue.
My point is that wanting, working to be “good,” demanding to define “good” on one’s own terms, and rejecting authoritarian mandates of proper “good”ness is a valid path.
I am in complete agreement that “good” is often more than “good” and “bad” is more than “bad,” but that makes it even more vital that we reclaim, redefine, and strive for “good” rather than allowing ANYONE to maneuver us into calling ourselves “bad” passive-aggressively.
Her Bad Mother Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Making an ironic claim to ‘bad’ is doing exactly that, because it subverts dominant narratives of ‘good’ which rely upon stable meanings of bad.
Look, my whole post was about defining good on one’s own terms and rejecting authoritarian mandates of ‘good’, as you say. If you didn’t understand that ‘bad’ was being deployed to that redefinition, you need to read more closely. Celebrating ‘bad’ is not celebrating abuse or neglect – as I thought I made clear – it is celebrating the kind of motherhood that one defines for oneself as good, regardless of the fact that others might call it bad. It holds that fighting for a redefinition of good requires a redefinition of bad, and a destabilizing of accepted meanings of both. It’s rhetoric.
The Greeks, by the way, refused such binary oppositions. As did all those horrible male philosophers. Which is why I cited them. And you’re not seriously trying to get me to defend the entire canon of Western philosophy against charges of misogyny, are you? Or suggesting that we abandon the entire Western intellectual tradition because there aren’t enough wymmin represented?
I didn’t come here to pick a fight, just to restate my case, which it seemed to me was being misunderstood. Me citing a philosopher isn’t meant to shut down dialogue. It’s just me bringing my resources to the table. I’ll take them away now. Snark, I find, is generally a far greater deterrent to dialogue than intellectualism.
Jane Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 10:09 am
I’m sorry, I didn’t write this to fight, either, and if it’s not too presumptuous on my part, I’d venture that we’re more in agreement than not on this. I don’t know if it’s my religious leanings or what that makes me want to defend the ideal of good.
I want my daughters to WANT to be good. Not as defined by others (except me, naturally
). I want my husband to strive to be a good father, as he sees it. I think I understand the rhetorical implications of futile binaries.
I guess my question is: Is my gut feeling that good is better than bad (the value, the word, the label) completely valueless up against the history of rhetoric and malignancies of modern media?
Can’t I say, without sounding like a hopeless rube, that I think it is possible and worthwhile to strive to be good, to reject labels like bad.
Maybe I am just too provincial to think that “good” will ever lose it’s symbolic weight of meaning and being “not-bad.
Jane Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 10:14 am
Oh, and snark may be a great deterrent, but even better is an absolute belief in one’s own argument.
Jane Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Okay. I think I have got this. We can agree, I think, that the media and other assorted people involved in making money from being parenting “experts” like to say there is One Way To Be a Good Mother, and that those mothers who fail to do x, y, and z (where x and y are often mutually exclusive) are Bad Mothers.
And this is ridiculous.
But where the Bad Mother movement says “Fine. If that’s what it takes to be a Good Mother, I’ll be a Bad One.”
What I want to say is:
It is possible to be a Bad Mother or a Good Mother. Crack mothers, however else worthwhile as human beings, are Bad Mothers, and I won’t apologize for thinking that.
Good, an empirical, rational, value-laden good does exist and is worth striving for.
Mothers should judge for themselves whether they are good mothers and they should strive to be better, just as children should strive to be better children, doctors better doctors, police officers better police officers, etc.
Ceding linguistic ground over the bastardization of the term “Good Mother” by embracing “Bad Mother,” even if you do it as a rhetorical strategy to undermine the bad meaning of “Good” is defeatist.
Somehow the idea of quitting the field, of relinquishing “Good” because some misuse it for material or pseudo-moral gain, just smacks of defeat and passive-aggression.
I’m a good mother and I know it. Not a “perfect” mother, whatever the hell that could possibly be, but a Good Mother, definitely. I know my kids are well taken care of, and I know that I do the absolute best I can for them. Do other people always agree with my style? No, not all the time. Some people think I’m downright evil for sleep training, and putting my kid in time-out when he’s gone ape-shit for no good reason. But I couldn’t care less how they feel about it because they’re not my kid’s mom. It works in our house, and we’re the ones who get to live here, so we’re the only ones we need to answer to.
No, I have no interest in joining the “cool” bad moms. Well, I also didn’t think it was “cool” to be one of the stupid girls in high school either, and I raised my hand in class no matter how “uncool” it made me. But that’s just me.
Whew! I’m exhausted after reading all these excellent comments. And excellent, they are! Intriguing arguments, strong writing, and intellectually stimulating. I can’t think of a better topic either because of the supreme importance of parenting – downright good parenting as defined in the most beneficial terms. Beneficial to whom? To the children. I think that’s what lies at the heart of the discussion: What is best for our children? And that’s not always easy to determine either because what is best for one is NOT for another. Gosh, why did we want this job/calling anyway? Is there truly anything more challenging or more important? Did we seriously know how difficult it would be when we signed on? I didn’t know, but I am so glad I went through it 4 times!
What a timely posting – I am going to pass it on to my daughter whose heart is breaking because she feels that she does not, can not live up to the shoulds and musts of being a good mother. She can’t see what a wonderful mother and human she is! I’ve never seen such a happy child as her son and I can only hope my face lit up with love the way hers does when she looks at her child.
Thank you for giving your perspective on the fact that it is alright for good to be bad sometimes.
Jane Reply:
June 11th, 2009 at 9:15 am
Your daughter might like Her Bad Mother’s post even more (because she decides to wear the title of Bad Mother proudly).
But what I hope for my own daughters is that they feel within themselves that they are good (or “good-enough”). “Good” just seems more positive to me.
Your daughter is lucky to have such a supportive mother of her own. I should be more grateful for my own mother, who never made me feel inadequate or bad.
I would like to challenge the notion that people, women in particular, who do abandon their children, abuse them, willfully deny them love and attention, and food, and other necessities of life, are even deserving to be called “mother”. Really, how can we continue to call them mother? What makes them deserving of that title? Many people refer to an absent, deadbeat cliched father as a ‘sperm donor’, and no one bats an eye at their demotion from Dad to ‘sperm donor’. Why then, is the phrase “Mother” so sacred and holy, and not allowed to be discussed in any manner that is different from the view each individual cherishes? There are as many different ways to parent as there are children on this planet, and we should each be allowed to choose the adjectives that describe our Mothering styles without having to fight another stupid Mommy war.
Jane Reply:
June 11th, 2009 at 9:12 am
This is kind of tangential, but I was talking to my mom the other day about the safe-haven abandonment laws. Women are allowed (in some states) to abandon their babies w/o fear of legal repercussion, but men, if paternity is established, can never do this — their wages and tax returns, etc can be garnished, and they always owe that support. Is this just an instance of the law not covering all possible situations?
It seems inequitable to me.
(And I think your Mother v. sperm donor thing is interesting, and I can say with utmost sincerity right now that Mommy wars are indeed stupid (or “counter-productive.”)
Anyone who thinks they are a bad mother needs to read the book “The Glass Castle” in it there is a bad mother. Everyone else who loves and feeds and teaches their children is a good mother.
i consider myself an excellent mother. i picked just a few things that i thought were important in raising a family and that’s all i really concentrate on. everything else can go.
i pray and read scriptures with my family everyday without fail. i make my kids work and clean my house. i teach them to read. i bring tons of library books for them every week. i don’t let my kids watch tv (we don’t have one). i feed my kids mostly healthy non processed food.
that’s it, really simple. and that makes me an excellent mother!!
I think the mere fact that this post is in response to another post in which you believed someone was glorifying being a “bad mother” in the simplest meaning of the term shows that you don’t get it at all. We are all just mothers, plain and simple. No need for good or bad to be placed in front of that name. We all do what is best for our children by drawing on our own experiences and strengths. What is best for my children may not be best for yours, and that is fine. This is no different than the SAHM and the working mom wars. This is just mothers judging mothers rather than supporting each other in the hard work that is raising children. Cahterines whole point with “bad is the new good” is to flip the notion that there is only one way to mother in order to be a good mother on its head.
Jane Reply:
June 11th, 2009 at 9:05 am
I see your point, and I’m sorry to have caused such bad feeling — and although I disagree with the logic, I understand the desire to re-appropriate what has been a derogatory term.
But where is the notion that there is only one way to mother to be good? Does anyone really believe that? (Am I hopelessly naive or stupid if I say I’ve never thought this?)
I think that this whole “bad is the new good” is simply assimilation. We’ve lost the battle so lets forfeit the war. Other people don’t like our parenting, so let’s degrade and belittle ourselves. Women are the best at doing this to themselves.
Minorities don’t say “oh, you don’t like the color of my skin? – okay, then I’m a (insert racial slur here) and proud of it!” No, they battle against those deragatory terms and don’t allow themselves to be belittled into accepting the terms set forth for them.
And if you don’t really give a crap what people think of your parenting, then why go to such great lengths to label yourself “bad”?
In 20 years, do I want my children looking back and saying I was a “bad” mom? No, I want them to think I was a fantastic mother that made all the choices that worked for our family – and there was nothing “bad” about that.
Jane Reply:
June 11th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Yes! I compared it to African-Americans using the “n” word. It’s their right, I guess, but I don’t understand the appeal.
Wow, Jane! Have you ever received so many comments about a topic? I’m amazed at the comments generated. Goes to show what a sensitive topic this is. Before leaving this topic alone, I want to share a wonderful day – the one when my 28-year-old son said to me, “You are a perfect mom; perfect for ME.” And I cried.
Jane Reply:
June 11th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Renae — it has been awhile. I learned about a year into blogging that some things (WIC, abortion, etc) got a lot of attention, and not all of it productive.
I was a little surprised this one was so charged, though modesty insists I inform you that others who have written on the Bad Mother side have received many, many more comments. Either my writing, or my ideas, are not very popular compared.
(I appreciate your contributions to the conversation — and I love the “perfect for ME” thing. I don’t know if I’m perfect for my kids, but they certainly challenge me, and I often think my husband, while imperfect, is perfect for me.)
[...] « The Good Mother [...]
I know I’m late to the discussion, being a good mother has kept me rather busy this last week.
When I read the original bad mother post, I felt like they were taking a ridiculous argument to extreme conclusions to prove its silliness. Those mothers who believe their parenting philosophy is the only way to be a “good mother” drive me nuts. And since I disagree with a lot of their ideas, to them a lot of my parenting would be considered “bad.” There is no way to rationalize with illogical people, to them I will always (proudly) be a bad mom. I think they were trying to make the same point in their post that you did in this post, but in a different way.
That being said, I really enjoyed your statement on what it takes to be a good mom: desire and will. I also liked how you alluded to the same action from two different mothers could represent good or bad parenting. Bad if they lazily do it thinking it is wrong and good if they think it is OK. For instance, I believe children should learn from natural consequences. If they don’t wear a jacket after I told them they should, they will be cold while we run errands. If I believed 30 seconds of cold weather going into or out of a store was detrimental to their health, I would be a bad mother for doing the same thing.
Interesting post. I strive to be a good mother every day. I am OK that other people may think I am a bad mom (but I must admit I think they are probably a little nuts to think so).
Hi, my name is Geo and I am a good mother.
Thanks for inspiring me to feel this even though I have not yet been successful at birthin’ a baby.
I love you Shannon. That is all.
[...] comments, but could there be a safer subject? While I have weighed in on controversial issues like bad and good mothers, I usually don’t because I feel uncomfortable even COMMENTING about the debate. I worry [...]
wow….interesting both the post and the comments. I sometimes label myself as a bad mom. Mostly because I do think that is how others see me. I will comfort them when truly hurt but a paper cut that cant be seen isnt going to be coddled for a week…i am harder on them than i should be and most anytime i get frustrated or angry its because i see what i could have done to alter the outcome and it makes me mad at myself…i do everyhthing n my power to not let it affect them
i do let them do some things i really dont like but at the same time how are they to learn tolerance and decision making if they are only ever exposed to perfect situations?
steff
[...] I learned how to say “I’m sorry” from my dad. I didn’t always love him when I was a kid. I was afraid of his contempt, and he wasn’t often patient or easygoing. But he taught me how to say “I’m sorry,” because he always said he was sorry. And he proved he was sorry by changing. He became a better man, a better father. He recognized that he was sometimes not a good father, and he had the desire and will to change. [...]
[...] months ago I wrote an impassioned argument against the Bad Mother Manifesto. I felt that proudly proclaiming oneself a “Bad Mother” as a way of standing up against [...]