The Good Mother Myth
You know those advertisements of happy mothers eating with their well-groomed children where the entire mess is the spilled juice and it gets wiped up with a single paper towel? Apart from the fact that the juice never stains anyone’s favorite pajamas, those glossy counters and smiling children are so exhausting.
Clearly, that mother has never struggled to eat dinner in public without one child dumping an obscene amount of food on the floor, another has a potty accident and the last throws a tantrum because their ketchup got put on top of the fries instead of beside. No, she and her kids probably play developmentally-appropriate games while patiently waiting for their all-organic food to be delivered to the table. And she regularly posts their coordinated outfits and smiling faces on Instagram with #blessed #nobetterjobthanmom.
Well, that’s an ad, but all that impossible standard comes from a myth. The reality is motherhood is wonderful, but it’s also terrible.
We recently read The Good Mother Myth, a collection of essays, curated by Avital Norman Nathman, which debunk the perpetual myth of the good mother. It was refreshing to read one story after another that was unique and honest and sometimes harrowing. A powerful collection of personal testimony of women shattering the good mother myth.
Reading this book, we each had moments where we found ourselves saying “Hey! that’s me.” And others where we said to each other, “Oh wow, I had no idea what that experience was like.”
The authors share their deepest faults and most brutal truths. Some of the stories were crushingly heartbreaking, like the mother who put her son on an airplane to visit his father and her son didn’t come back. In another essay, a mother confesses that it took some time to actually enjoy her child. And one woman shares her incredible journey of breaking the cycle of abuse from her own childhood.
Even if you couldn’t relate to a particular story, it was clear that this collection of stories was saying no more to that good mother myth manufactured by media. Not to mention by ourselves through social media. It can be too easy to scroll through feeds, just getting snippets and vignettes of others’ good times, without the meat or the backstory or the pain or the bumps in the road, feeling lesser because your house is mess, you haven’t showered, and you just want a glass of Chardonnay.
To then read this collection makes it a little easier to share our own stories. That we fished cat food out of our toddler’s mouth (again) this week. Or that we sometimes wish our partner understood why the pressure to do it all gets suffocating. When we all start opening up about our story’s truth, we may truly dispel the myth.
The lovely thing about Avital Norman Nathman’s book is that the arrangement of stories and contributors are so diverse — single moms, straight moms, lesbian moms, working moms, stay at home moms, moms with mental health issues, moms who have different nationality from their kids — and no one story is like the other. Not only does this book destabilize the good mother myth, but it works to open your mind and heart to the lives and struggles of over 30 other mothers.
There are many ways to be a mother, there are many mistakes we’ve made and new ones ahead, but if we can offer less judgement to other moms and work to shake the one-size all definition of what it means to be a mother, then this world will get a little easier for all parents.
Definitely pick up this book from your bookstore, library or download it to your Kindle.
And if you want little text reminders telling you you’re doing a good job, text HELLO to 612–261–0113. ❤️
