I Wasn’t Always Like This
Regaining my sense of self after children
Our oldest daughter was around 5 when our second daughter reached the point where she needed to switch from a crib to a toddler bed.
So before my husband got home one night, I dragged out a toolbox from the garage and took it to the girls’ bedroom so I could take apart the crib to make room to assemble the toddler bed. As my 5-year-old daughter watched, I pulled out a socket wrench and started testing the sockets to find the one that fit the bolts on the crib.
“Mommy…” she started. I looked over at her and saw that her face held a look of disbelief. “You really should just wait for Daddy to get home so he can do this.”
“Why?” I asked. I thought maybe she realized that I was tired from work and should take a break.
“Because Daddies are supposed to do that sort of stuff,” she said. Her tone was clear: Put the tools down; you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re a girl!
I sat there frozen in shock for a few minutes. How could my daughter think like that? My daughter?! I mean, I was about the least girly-girl that existed. I’d spent 3 years living in the Idaho wilderness, alone except for my dog, tracking bighorn sheep for my Master’s research.
I’d just finished my Ph.D. in wildlife biology, where I’d studied raccoons and black bear populations, and a few months before this incident, I’d gone wolf trapping (live) with other biologists in northern Michigan. I’d gotten my first motorcycle (a Honda 50) when I was five, which was the same year I’d gotten my first gun (a Daisy bb gun), when I lived in Idaho I had rebuilt my own carburetor when my car was acting up… The list went on and on. How could my own daughter think I was incapable of something as simple as removing a few bolts from a metal frame?
And as I sat there stunned, I started to look at myself from her eyes. She’d been born after all the stuff I’d done. She’d never seen me climbing under the hood of my 1974 Idaho Fish & Game truck to try to heat up the frozen gas line when I was stranded in 20-below weather in a canyon so deep that my radio transmitter couldn’t reach anyone to get me help (this was before cell phones, kids). She wasn’t there all those years that I’d spent hiking in the woods, riding my motorcycles, shooting my bow, trapping raccoons, or living alone at the edge of the wilderness area chasing my bighorn sheep.
She saw me now — the out-of-shape mom of two, who was gone all day long at a job (and of course she knew nothing about what I did there), then came home to cook dinner, and do laundry, and clean the house. I looked like every other woman she knew, whose main activity in life was taking care of other people and paying bills. I was horrified. Up until I had kids, I’d spent my entire life being strong, independent, and free, doing things I loved — none, except quilting with my Grandma, of which were very girly.
I was not the typical mother they portrayed on some of the t.v. shows she watched - moms who were at home all day wearing a dress and heels, cleaning and cooking, and taking care of their children, waiting for their husband to come home to be complete. I still cooked and cleaned and took care of my family, of course, but NOT in a dress- and only after I’d worked all day in my high-level job where I was the only woman with a Ph.D. in the “man’s” world of the Wildlife Division. And with my husband helping at home with whatever he was able to when he wasn’t traveling for his job.
I abandoned work on the crib and started dinner while I thought about how much my life had changed simply by becoming a mom and having responsibilities that reached beyond myself. I saw myself for the first time ever through my daughter’s eyes and realized how limited her view of me was.
The first question was — Did it matter what she thought of me?
And the answer was yes. Not in the context of how she viewed me personally really, although I did care about that some as well, but in the context of how she viewed females as a whole. Our children are born without boundaries of who they can be or what they can do. We as parents and the rest of the people she interacts with set those boundaries for her.
A long line of studies, including research into twins who were separated at birth, had already concluded that genetics dictate around 50 percent (or more) of a child’s personality and abilities. So, at birth, half of what you are and what you will become has already been determined. But what about the other half?
Some studies did comparisons using large datasets of children who were adopted out vs. siblings who weren’t. They looked at how twins (or in some cases just siblings) who were given up for adoption turned out when one stayed in an environment they were originally born in — in this study it was a poor uneducated family/neighborhood — and the other is raised in a more well-to-do family where the parents are college educated. So think about it- each of the pairs of kids had the same genetics, but were raised in very different families. What did they find?
The sibling who was raised in a place where most people — the family who adopted him, the other kids in their school system, their neighbors and friends — were college educated, ended up being more likely to go to college and succeed, and more likely to have a decent paying job, less likely to resort to crime, etc. In contrast, the sibling who was left behind in his/her place of origin was less likely to be college educated or have a full-time decent paying job, and more likely to be involved in drugs and crime.
Why this difference in results?
It was the environment they were raised in that made the difference in the success of these kids. When you are raised in a home where you are expected to go to college and expected to work hard at succeeding (and where it is unthinkable that you would not try to educate yourself, or to not try to get a good job), you are much more likely to accomplish these things. When you are in a place where no one pushes you to excel or be better, you are much more likely to adopt the same apathetic attitude as the people you are around and to be unsuccessful.
So, yes, I cared about what my daughter thought of me, if nothing more than that I didn’t want her to have boundaries about what she could do with her life and what she could be based on her gender.
When my husband got home that night, I explained what had happened and he suggested that he fix the beds and have our daughter help him. I listened at the bedroom door as they worked together to take down the crib and put together the toddler bed. As they worked, he explained how to use a socket wrench, how the switch worked to make it turn a nut left or right depending on whether you wanted to loosen or tighten it, how to hold a crescent wrench on the bolt head to keep it from turning as you turned the nut. And he talked about my past to her.
About how I’d lived alone in the wilderness area, studying bighorn sheep. How when we’d first met, he was intrigued by my self-confidence and my ability to take care of myself. That I changed the oil in my car and did other maintenance without his help. How we hunted together, went camping and hiking together, that he was proud of how highly educated I was, and so much more I can’t even remember now.
Since then, I’ve tried hard to make certain that my children see me doing the things I enjoy that aren’t necessarily stereotypical female. A few years after the crib incident, I took the girls into the woods behind our house with a saw and a hatchet, and we worked together on building a small fort. I later took our oldest daughter squirrel hunting in those same woods, where she made her first kill.
I also learned from this experience that it was very important for me to separate myself from the constant responsibilities of being a mother and spend some time just doing things for me. I had spent so much time as a young mother trying to be that superwoman mom and wife who worked full-time and then still did all the kids things- like kids crafts and kids movies and reading kids books and arranging playdates and all the things that supposedly made me a good mother- that I had no time left for myself. I had hidden away all the things that made me “me” because I just didn’t have time for them anymore.
I had to learn how to reclaim time for myself to remember who I am besides “Mom”. With 5 children now, it’s not always easy to do this. Sometimes, the “me” time is few and far between, because I spend an inordinate amount of my evenings running kids from one event to another. But I fight for moments here and there, and occasionally get even a weekend away in the woods with friends to just enjoy being free of responsibility.
I’m able to fit in some time doing things I want to do- things that remind me of who I used to be, what I used to dream about, and what I enjoy doing just for myself now. I’m certainly not the person I was years ago and my interests have changed some. But’s that okay -I like who I am now.
And it’s true -I don’t do all the things I used to do anymore. As I’ve become older I’ve definitely gotten more lazy about some things. Maybe that (along with having cancer) has made it so that I am less fit, and probably unable to do many of the things I did when I was younger. But I did do them, once upon a time. And my children all know now that I wasn’t always like this.
