Babies, Childrearing, Maternal Impulses, Nurture Fantasies, etc.

As a young woman who has taken care of other people's children for the past ten years, I have a lot of feelings regarding my possible future as a mother. There are instances of tremendous longing (typically attributed to the proverbial biological clock), anxiety and doubt, and even strong rejection. There are moments in which I feel no desire to procreate, and then I encounter waves of wanting. I was not brought up in a family that stresses marriage and babies. But even I am under a pressure (with no discernible source) to do this purportedly selfless thing and give life.


If there is one thing I've concluded from observing the parents of the children I take care of, being a parent is incredibly selfish and selfless at once. More about this later.

On the occasion of my college graduation, my paternal grandmother told me to never get married, and to never have children. She was married at nineteen, and had six children over the course of ten years. She loves her children, her grandchildren, her big messy family. I heard regret in her warning, but not with regards to her sons and daughters. What she was talking about, I suspect, was a somewhat vague yet utterly undeniable lack of happiness, and the regret of not having found that something that everyone talks about searching for, discovering, and cherishing. 

Many of us believe that that something resides in the family life, life with a partner and children. Many of us have experienced the cult of parenting and the fetishization of bringing up children that is now perpetuated in middle to upper-middle class social circles, and is seeping into the consciousness of my peer group. Our understanding of how to go about having a family and children, and being parents will be heavily influenced by what is happening now in the thirty- and forty-somethings-with-youngsters set.

I'm interested in the development of ideas surrounding parenting and childhood, but I'm not sure where I stand. I appreciate many of the theories, yet am skeptical about their applications. The progressive, cerebral approaches are the ones that supposedly foster joy, play, and an intelligent connection between parent and child. I've gathered that the aim of these methods is to establish a fluid, calm, easy channel of communication. For example: by taking the word "no" out of interactions with a child, and by phrasing everything in the positive, you are teaching her that the world is not made up of the good and the bad. Instead, you are introducing a spectrum of possibility, and the better in sync she is with this spectrum, the more likely she is to say "yes" when asked to do something. Ultimately you are investing a great deal of faith in the child's intelligence and powers of reason.

I am no doubt simplifying it, and I cannot speak from the position of a parent, but I can speak from the position of a childcare provider when I state: the logic doesn't work out in life as well as it does on paper. In fact, all of that "yes" actually results in a lot of "no" from the miniature party, thereby creating plenty of fissures and rifts.

Ultimately, any parenting method is directly correlated with the parents' own striving towards happiness. This can't be ignored. Most parents care about their offspring's happiness. Women and men seek happiness in the very act of having a family, which, if you think about it, can be a dangerous thing.

Lacan posited that in almost all cases, children are born in order to fulfill unmet desires. The child becomes a symbol, a stand-in for that which cannot be articulated, and the child's life is formed in the configuration of intersecting desires between the man and woman, or man and man, or woman and woman. And yet, when the anticipated happiness does not arrive (this goes beyond postpartum), where is the mother and/or father left? Hence the selfishness that everyone tries to deny. This is where guilt arises. Parenting (and even just taking care of kids who are not your own) does require a degree of selflessness, but the selflessness by no means eradicates the desire to be alone, to be free, to have time, space, quiet. 

There are individuals who truly flourish in the role of caregiver, homemaker, mother. And I do love spending time with babies and little ones - I love their wonder, their affection, their humor. It's tempting to believe that everything we have ever wanted to be or feel is wrapped up in the existence of a new being. But is there less and less room for those of us who have complicated and somewhat shameful feelings about our ability to do the job well, or our doubt as to whether we want to do the job at all? How do we distinguish between what we want and what we have been told we should want? How do we deal with these conflicting notions of what it takes to be happy, and not only that, but what it takes to be a valued and contributing member of the community? 

According to this piece in New York magazine, raising a child is not always the joyful, playful, stimulating adventure it is purported to be. Rather, it is an exhausting and often maddening feat, and people's lives are not necessarily the better for it, despite popular myth. I have met people who glorify parenting, and others who are matter-of-fact about the cost of such an enormous choice. The mothers I have worked with clearly love their children more than anything in the world, but it has seemed, in moments of tension or exhaustion, that they hesitate to speak honestly about what it is they are feeling, as though admitting to a complicated love, peppered with feelings of despair or dissatisfaction, means they are doing a poor job and falling short of contemporary mothering standards.

At a family reunion several weeks ago, I asked my aunts Michele and Jeanine and my uncle Peter how they ever managed to have kids - what with the exhaustion, the worry, the defiance, the crying,  the threat of sudden infant death syndrome, the sleeplessness, the tantrums, the endless messes, the picky eating habits, the diapers, the boredom. All of that. How?

Peter said casually, "Kids are so much fun."

Granted, there are people who have written entire books for and against this premise. But perhaps that is reason enough to be optimistic, or hopeful, or to not dread the tick-tick-ticking. Or it simply begs the question, fun for who?

Most importantly, as the researchers themselves have pointed out, all of the good cannot be quantified in the same way frustration, anger, or exhaustion can. The negative feelings are noted, even captured on camera and in written accounts. But the problematic aspect of any study on parenting is this: there is simply no way to adequately describe and measure the abounding love that is shared therein. And ultimately, there are many different forms of happiness - there is the moment-to-moment variety, and then there is the gradually accumulating, life-long, foundational happiness that accompanies feelings of having accomplished something after investing lots of time and great labor. Which is, it turns out, the sort of happiness many mothers and fathers garner.


This article says it far better than I ever could:

Why Parents Hate Parenting