That's right, the article is entitled "Die, Mommy, Die!" Of course I had to read it. You see, I have only recently [as in within the past month] come to the conclusion that I can see myself as a mother, and I thought that ELLE magazine would provide some kind of hip interpretation of modern moms in the workplace...at least that's what the blurb before the article led me to believe:
"Why do so many successful women feel the need to blather on about their children in the workplace? Nancy Haas argues that the personal is still political--and it's also a big bore."So, I thought to myself, I like this Nancy chick. Women, stay-at-home and career mothers alike, should have more to themselves than their children, and they should be able to hold a normal conversation. Right on, Nancy! Yea, I can ignore that extremely concerning, insensitive title--I get it, you need people to read your writing, and that title is certainly an attention grabber. Then, while reading the article, my initial like for Nancy quickly dissolved into hate and then, finally, pity. [Check out the entire article at: http://www.elle.com/Living/Career/Die-Mommy-Die!]
I quickly realized that Nancy's article was more than just a way of encouraging women to take some interest in themselves in addition to their interest in their children...it was a kind of Mommy-bashing arena, calling for moms to kill the mothers within themselves. I thought to myself, "Man, Nancy, I was really rooting for you. I even crossed my fingers after you brutally mocked that mother for being so obsessed with her kids that you would somehow make your article something I could relate to." Then, I lost all hope for Nancy when she said,
Pardon?!?!?!?!?! At this point, I was yelling at Nancy in my head [I would have been talking out loud, but I figured that wouldn't be a wise move on my flight]: "Your child is not the best thing you've ever done? You aren't most proud of the beautiful life you brought in this world? It's 'just natural part of the human cycle'? JUST?" I was fuming. I would go on with Nancy's silly thoughts, including her reference to children as "banal, private reproductive life" [utter rubbish] and her suggestion that all motherly inclinations should be left in the household, but you can read the article yourself.It’s not as though I don’t love my daughter. Or that I take her for granted. Infertility made her birth a novel-length saga, and I marvel daily that she’s a healthy, fearless, slaphappy toddler. I am mesmerized by the sound of her Betty Boop voice serenading stuffed animals and moved by the sight of her flapping pigtails as she tears through the playground. Each night before we turn off the lights, my husband and I recap, often in numbing detail, her triumphs and setbacks of the day.
But I have never once thought of her as the best thing I’ve ever done. Perhaps that’s a function of having had a better-than average work life, but it’s also because I’m loath to take credit for my daughter as an accomplishment. Reproducing, even for me, who had to go to such lengths to become a mother, doesn’t feel like a personal achievement; it’s just a natural part of the human cycle. That’s one of the reasons I love being a parent; it’s comfortingly prosaic, delightfully unremarkable. Can you imagine women in small Indian villages standing around the local well asking for reassurance from the others that having their brood of kids is “the best thing they’ve ever done”? It’s a ready-made caption for a New Yorker cartoon.
After calming myself down by moving on to decide whether I thought Michele Obama should flaunt her arms as much as she does, I reached the conclusion that I shouldn't be angry with Nancy---I should feel sorry for her. It is truly a shame that she has yet to realize the treasure and the many beauties of motherhood. I feel like Nancy is yet another woman wrapped up in some of the warped ideas of feminism, including,"Men don't talk about their kids non-stop at work, so women should do the same." Well, I hate to break it to you, Nancy, but women are not men. Mothers have an inherently closer relationship to their children than fathers ever will---9 months in the womb will tend to do that. Having children shapes a woman's personhood; it intrinsically changes her. And it changes her for the better at that. Even though a woman cannot put "Mother" on her business resumé, motherhood undeniably shapes her as a person. So, asking mothers to stop talking about their children in the workplace is essentially the same thing as asking mothers to stop coming to work, period. Once you have a child, you cannot all the sudden decide to separate the new, beautiful, budding life you brought into this world from your personal identity [Not that I know this from experience...but I am confident in this statement's validity].
One would think that Nancy, who openly shares her fertility struggles with her readers, would be one of the most excited, over-the-top mothers around. Unfortunately, the ideas of how a woman should be in the workplace seem to have stifled her personal excitement. See, I think Nancy really is an overly-excited mother at heart and that modern society has muffled this excitement; Nancy thinks that expressing motherhood's beautiful impact on her is socially unacceptable and essentially unattractive and unappealing. Yes, I agree that women should be able to talk about more than their wonderful bundles of joy [this, after all is healthy], but the idea of a woman removing herself completely from being a mother at any point in time, even if "just" while at work, is extremely scary and heartless.
Society has no right to tell a mother to prevent her motherhood from molding her person, firstly because this is impossible and secondly because it is a denial of a woman's femininity. I truly feel that motherhood is one of the ultimate expressions of a woman's femininity. It is something beautiful that should be cherished and taken as one of God's most fabulous gifts to women. It is a shame that the demands of modern society and the workplace are making women not embrace this gift as they should. Modernity is making women deny their femininity in the most basic sense when it asks them to sever themselves from motherhood, and it makes me very very very angry. But more than angry, it makes me truly sad. I really feel bad for Nancy and all the other women out there who feel the same way--I also feel bad for their children. It's a shame that it's harder than ever to truly embrace one's femininity. I can only hope and pray that these perceptions will change eventually.
You raise valid points but I believe to let ANY one thing define your being is to stop growing. The most fabulous ladies were Mothers but that was not the first thing they were and surely not the last. The classic ladies that we adore and admire like Jackie O would never solely defined themselves as a mother. She was an artist, a traveler, a learner, a writer, a philanthropist, etc. etc. Yes she was a mother and a wife too but she was NEVER defined in those terms because she did not allow herself to be and because I think that presents a problem later on in life when the children leave the house because women, and I say women because ladies would not let it happen, forget that they had hobbies and events and were once many things before mothers.
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