Even before I had children, I was aware of the inexplicable war being waged among women. If you had children, was it best to be a full-time mother or should you return to work? If you returned to work, did you work full time or did you see if you could work part time? Did nurse or bottle feed? Should you send them to public school, private school, or home school them? Was it better to deny them access to TV and all electronics or give them a set amount of time per day that they could indulge? Did you keep all refined sugar from ever passing their lips? Timeouts or reasoning? Set schedules or child-led schedules. Choices, choices.
Still,,it didn't seem to matter which choice a mother made: she was wrong ... always.
This leads me to this, the now-infamous cover of Time magazine featuring a slender, attractive young woman nursing her almost-4-year-old son.
Everything about this cover is meant to be provocative, from the photograpy to the typography to the postures and clothing choices. The editors meant to provoke and they succeeded. I was in the grocery store earlier this week, and the magazine was on display, with a piece of cardboard cut so that only the very top of the magazine, to the bottom of the title showed. (Don't get me started on all the skin showing on the other magazine covers ... or on some of the clientele.)
While I'm a bit squicky about the image, it doesn't bother me as much as it does some. Both of my kids nursed until they were 3 or so. I benefited from the help I received from Nursing Mothers, a mom-to-mom support network, so I became a nursing counselor. Whatever a woman chooses to do to nourish her kid is up to her -- none of my business. If she wants advice, I give it; if she doesn't, I keep my mouth shut. By the time my kids were the age of our coverboy, though, any nursing was sporadic, quick, and done in private, as virtually all my nursing was. So, no, the image doesn't bother me that much.
The title, however, raises my blood pressure to dangerous levels. What the hell does "Are you mom enough" mean? I wasn't aware that being a mom was a competition.
You know what? It isn't.
I'm weary of the spirit of competition that surrounds so many things. Being a mother shouldn't be a situation where you come out as a winner or a loser. Just like most parents, most of us do the best we can with the tools we have at the time. I know I certainly don't wake up every morning wondering how I can screw up my kids' lives ... or make them super-fantastic, either.
If we, as moms, could just agree that what works for you might not work for me ... as well as the reverse and obverse and inverse. You get the point, I hope.
There can be no competition for "super mom" if we refuse to compete, right? If we don't take the bait that Time and its ilk throw in the metaphorical water, then we're free to live our lives, content that we're doing just fine as we are ... and sending those who troll for easy prey home empty-handed.
