The Mommy War Within

Last Thursday night, I found myself in the Wendy’s drive-through lane, awaiting the arrival of several greasy paper sacks filled with food whose aroma would linger in my minivan for the next 24 hours. In the back, Meg and Ben drooped in their seats, on their faces an odd combination of glazey-eyed boredom and single-minded focus as they watched Peter Pan on our in-car video system.

“It’s not what it looks like!” I wanted to shout at the cashier guy and drivers behind me in line. “We hardly ever get fast food! But it’s been a really crazy day! And the only reason the kids are watching a video is that my precocious and talented 9-year-old is at her piano lesson, which is the one time I let my younger kids watch car videos because what else am I going to do with them for the 30 minutes that their sister is at her lesson?!”

I know. It’s unlikely that the cashier guy or my fellow fast-food purchasers even noticed me, much less judged me on buying fast food while my kids watched TV in a gas-guzzling minivan. But I was judging myself. I’ve read enough parenting books and articles to know that fast food and car TV are bad. And I’ve read enough online comments responding to articles by writers such as Judith Warner and Ayelet Waldman—mothers brave enough to be honest about how things really go down in their families—to know that, even if no one in my immediate vicinity was judging me, there are plenty of people, mostly other mothers, who would gladly judge me if given the chance.

Who am I kidding? I would judge me. If I were having a different sort of day—the kind of day where everyone in my household, including me, is well-rested and mellow, where everyone gets where they need to go on time with minimal fuss, where I am busy enough to feel a sense of accomplishment but not so busy that I feel completely crazed, where no one is sick, where I have a well-stocked refrigerator and the perfect recipe in mind for a dinner that won’t be too much work, but will be both nutritious and well-received—if I were having that kind of day, and happened to pass a minivan leaving the Wendy’s drive-through with a video playing and a bleary-eyed mother driving with one hand while pressing the other against her temple, well, I probably would think some rather uncharitable things about that mother. Just as I was thinking some rather uncharitable things about myself on the drive home.

Leah, upon entering the car after her piano lesson and inhaling the french-fried aroma, looked at me with wide eyes and said, “We’re having Wendy’s again? But we just had Wendy’s last week!” Leah has been around long enough to know that fast food twice in a week’s time means something is seriously messed up in the Dollar household. Namely, her mother. I was messed up. It had been a really hard week, with more than just the usual stresses of whiny preschoolers and too-full schedules. There was illness, serious and not, in my immediate and extended family (including the cat); frequent phone calls from a friend in trouble; a crisis with my book manuscript that led to all-consuming personal and professional angst; looming deadlines met only at the last minute with much scrambling; and serious sleep deprivation as a result of all the anxiety and worry that came along with all the other stuff. So I was justified in feeding my children Beelzebub’s grub again. Right?

Right. But here’s what I’m trying to learn. I was justified not because there were extenuating circumstances that made it OK for me to head for the drive-through lane. The script I have in my head, its lines written by me but amplified and applauded by popular culture, parenting gurus and other mothers, says, “I’m a good mother even if I occasionally take my kids to Wendy’s.” The new script I’m drafting, the one I’d like to write directly on my heart and mind, says, “I’m a good mother who sometimes takes her kids to Wendy’s.” In other words, I’m always a good mother—certainly not perfect, but good—for the simplest of reasons: I love my children and I show them that love, as best I can under the circumstances, every day.

I’m reading Ayelet Waldman’s new book titled Bad Mother, a collection of personal essays about her own struggle with meeting “good mother” ideals. The essays touch on a broad range of topics, from housework and breastfeeding to Waldman’s decision to abort an abnormal fetus. Before writing the book, Waldman polled friends and family about what makes a Good Father and what makes a Good Mother. Across the board, the qualifications for Good Father were simple: be present and supportive, as best you can. The qualifications for Good Mother were much more numerous and complex. Almost all required constant and cheerful maternal self-denial, and in all cases, the women she talked to were sure they themselves did not qualify. As one woman said, “The Good Mother remembers to serve fruit at breakfast, is always cheerful and never yells, manages not to project her own neuroses and inadequacies onto her children, is an active and beloved community volunteer; she remembers to make playdates, her children’s clothes fit, she does art projects with them and enjoys all their games. And she is never too tired for sex.”

I came up with a few of my own additions to that list: A Good Mother is always enthusiastic when her children ask if they can help cook, clean or garden, because these are opportunities for teaching and bonding. She saves the planet by buying local and organic; washing out her kids’ plastic sandwich bags every night (disclosure: I actually do this); maintaining a vegetable garden; using cloth diapers, or at least chlorine-free Seventh Generation diapers; walking her kids to school; having the kids make their own wrapping paper out of paper bags, potato stamps and nontoxic paint; always having reusable shopping bags in her car; and recycling absolutely everything that can be recycled, even when it means making special trips to out-of-the-way collection centers. She initiates and maintains an unlimited number of chore charts, sticker charts and point systems that ensure a smoothly run household where everyone knows what is expected and discipline is always fair and consistent. She never subjects her children to inappropriate song lyrics, radio banter or TV images, even if singing along to Green Day or catching the latest episode of House are two of the very few pleasurable diversions keeping the mother from completely losing her freakin' mind.

(Note to Billie Joe Armstrong: Wake me up when Dog Train ends. Note to the Fox network: When you decided to air House at 8 p.m. on Mondays—an hour when children are still wide awake requiring homework supervision and hair brushing—did you realize you were ruining the lives of mothers across America who daydream about talking to their children the way Greg House talks to his staff and then popping a handful of pills? Note to blog readers: No, I do not have a DVR, so I can’t tape it. Anyway, everyone I know who has a DVR says they never get around to watching most of the shows they record.)

In her book, Waldman points out that Bad Mothers are having their day. Plenty of bloggers and columnists are ‘fessing up to their maternal sins, tossing their TV-watching kids a Capri Sun and some Chips Ahoy while rolling their eyes at the Good Mothers who insist on after-school craft projects accompanied by veggies and hummus. The problem, Waldman insists, is that the Bad Mothers still paint themselves as sinners, as not measuring up to an ideal that is still defined as good, even if they (the Bad Mamas) admit they can’t, or won’t, meet it.

Waldman wonders what would happen if, instead, we stopped labeling mothers as good and bad altogether, stopped rolling our eyes at the crazy ladies on the other side, stopped insisting that they (the smothering, perfectionist Good Mothers) have too much time on their hands and need to get a life or that they (the lazy, selfish Bad Mothers) should never have had children in the first place? “Is there really no other way to be a mother in contemporary American society,” Waldman asks, “than to be locked into the cultural zero-sum game of ‘I’m Okay, You Suck?’”

The hardest part of untangling myself from the alternately self-flagellating and self-congratulatory Bad/Good Mother paradigm is that I, like most American mothers, have been conditioned to look elsewhere, outside myself, for clues to what I’m supposed to do and be. I’ve never cared much for self-help or advice literature. But I read the newspaper, with its coverage of school cafeteria menu warfare, overmedicated and underdisciplined children, and the Obamas’ organic garden. I watch HGTV, with its uncluttered, designed-on-a-dime houses. I leaf through women’s and cooking magazines, with their photos of cheerful, clean and well-dressed families roasting marshmallows over a campfire; colorful multi-course meals served on rustic outdoor furniture with vintage tablecloths and vases of just-picked flowers; and artfully arranged and spotless beach homes that their owners claim are designed for comfort and convenience (The white slipcovers can be popped in the washing machine when they get dingy from all those sandy feet!). The shelter magazine photos I linger over longest feature a smiling, well-groomed mother in her sparkling, renovated kitchen preparing to transform a pile of gorgeous fresh produce into a family meal, while her smiling, well-groomed children do their homework at the other end of the kitchen island, a bowl of unblemished, polished apples within reach should they need a nibble before dinner. These families always have clean-soled bare feet, proof that they have no reason to fear stepping into dried cat food bits or the remnants of this morning's juice spill on their gleaming kitchen floors. I may scoff at all the so-called parenting “experts,” but I’m still weighing my maternal merits using someone else’s scale.

New York Times writer Lisa Belkin wrote in last Sunday’s magazine that there are signs that the Bad Mothers are gaining ground. Reasonable and thoughtful mothers are publicly admitting that they don’t measure up and that’s just fine. There are even stirrings of full-fledged movements toward “slow” or “idle” parenting, with experts arguing that a less hands-on approach is actually better for children. But, Belkin concludes, one thing isn’t changing: We’re still looking outside ourselves for validation of our parenting style. Belkin writes, “[W]e have replaced the experts who told us what a good parent worries about with experts who tell us that a good parent doesn’t worry so much. We may even see parents stop aiming to prove how perfect they are and start trying to prove how nonchalant they are. But worry is worry. The search to keep from messing up goes on.”

I mess up—truly mess up—often enough. Tonight, exhausted after wrapping up our final Brownie meeting of the year, running late for another volunteer meeting and feeling guilty for leaving Daniel to put three tired children to bed all alone, I snapped at Leah about something minor, and immediately realized I was being snippy and cruel. So when I came home from my meeting, I apologized to her. My mistake was clear, I made amends and we moved on.

But there’s no moving on from the voices and images cramming my head full of useless and damaging guilt over my maternal inadequacies: less-than-balanced meals, cluttered rooms, lots of TV, my impatience, my loathing of crafts and most games, and on and on. I have let those voices and images in. I carry them with me and, unlike Leah, they don’t respond to my remorse with a graceful shrug and a goodnight kiss.

I’ve invited another voice in, hoping that if I give it enough room, it will grow and eventually drown out those accusing voices. It’s the voice of my dear friend Holly, whom I saw last summer for the first time since my wedding in 1997. I was telling her about all the mama guilt I carry around. She looked at me and said simply, “Ellen, as far as I’m concerned, your kids hit the jackpot when they got you and Daniel as parents.” I think that is truly the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. I just need to start saying it to myself.