Obscure CanLit Mama: How Does She Do It?

How does the Perfect Mom manage to care for her children 24 hours a day, cook fresh and healthy meals from scratch, source her food locally, keep her house tidy and clean, launder her family's clothing, arrange regular doctor and dentist appointments, read books to her children, spend special time with each individual child, ferry children to after-school activities, cope with conflict creatively, stay patient and calm amidst the great and constant storm of chaos, spend meaningful and romantic time with her partner, and even do paid work on occasion? Oh, and still make space to nurture herself.

I ask because this is the kind of mom I strive to be. And because we're all familiar with that Perfect Mom ideal. We're bombarded with images of her.

I'm not against setting the bar high. I want to learn and achieve and strive to do better. But when I look at that list of Perfect Mom achievements, it becomes really clear that the ideal is not just impossible, but improbable, even mythical.

There is no way, for example, to do paid work while caring for children. I might be able to involve my children (with effort and time lost and extra mess afterward) in helping to cook a meal, but I can't involve them in helping me write a story (my paid work). In fact, as anyone knows who's ever chased a toddler around house, in order to do that work, I need my children to be elsewhere entirely, being looked after by someone else (though the television is also an occasionally effective babysitter). Which completely nixes the possibility of Perfect Mom-dom.

In fact, the answer to how does she do it? is: She doesn't. Those of us who occasionally look like we're achieving the impossible are working with smoke and mirrors. We're magicians of special effects. We're faking it.

And I wonder whether there's something intrinsically wrong with that, have we created an image of motherhood that is both alluring and ultimately disappointing. And yet ...

I strongly dislike wallowing, complaining, whining. I think negativity is corrosive and infects others, too. Part of my mothering goal is to be as positive as possible, to create an optimistic family culture, to live inside even the most difficult situations and cope with grace and humour. To forgive my own mistakes and be careful not to judge others, too.

But maybe I should be reminding myself that there's an imperfect human being behind the curtain. And sharing that conflicted, often harassed and frustrated self.

Note: This is cross-posted from my Moms Are Feminist's Too blog, because it applies equally to what I'm doing here, and what I'd like to be doing there.