We are not bad moms -- but are we good moms?

Reader sarah replied to my post We are not bad moms* with the following:

There is a corollary to this post that I think should also be said. Babywearing, breastfeeding, EC, etc. don’t necessarily make you a good mom. There is a world of hurt you can bring on your child even if you practice those parenting techniques, they don’t inure anyone from the negative aspects of parenting.

I just feel like this needs to be said (and repeated over and over) as I see my friends lulled into a false sense of safety and superiority because they subscribe to a certain set of parenting practices. We need to constantly challenge ourselves to look past our more superficial lifestyle choices to how our personalities, histories, family structures, and communities impact our children in a way that is beyond our control.

First, sarah, thank you so much for the comment and the post inspiration. I’d like to reply to this — agreeing and disagreeing and expanding and being inspired by — in three parts.

To the first:

Babywearing, breastfeeding, EC, etc. don’t necessarily make you a good mom. There is a world of hurt you can bring on your child even if you practice those parenting techniques, they don’t inure anyone from the negative aspects of parenting.

I really hesitate to agree, although I think it is technically true. But as I’ve mentioned before, everyone and everything in our society jumps at any opportunity to either knock us down and declare us horrid mothers, or place us on Olympian pedestals no one could hope to live up to. I am therefore loathe to take part in any of this game, to spend any of my time lending any credence to the bad-mother meme. I am in fact, in general, loathe to even place mothers on any kind of good/bad spectrum, nor to attempt to define what a “good mother” is, such that someone who breastfeeds and babywears, or who formula feeds and lugs a baby bucket, might or might not be one, because of or in spite of those practices.

Furthermore, I believe that babywearing and breastfeeding and elimination communication are good things in their own right; all other things being equal, it is better to breastfeed than to not, better to practice EC than to not. These practices have tangible, intrinsic benefits, to infants, to the parent-child relationship, to parents, to the environment, to society; I do not want to see them placed in opposition to intangible “good parenting”, as though it were a trade-off (although I will say I know sometimes it is a trade-off, especially with the limited amount of energy and resources mothers have available to them in the early months and years, but no one can know from the outside the balance of a mother’s choices; what costs time and energy for one person might be a simplification and a lifesaver for another). An inherently good thing is good whether or not one is managing to do other good things, and whether or not it protects you from the damage of other not-good things.** And, as they are minority practices, which are often attacked in a very misogynistic way (often supported in a misogynistic way as well, I will grant you), I am loathe as well to contribute to the belittling or dismissing of these parenting choices.

(I also wish to discuss whether or not or in what way(s) attachment parenting practices might indeed protect against “the negative aspects of parenting”, but I’ll leave that for another post, because it’s a complex issue in its own right.)

Jumping to the end of the comment:

We need to constantly challenge ourselves to look past our more superficial lifestyle choices to how our personalities, histories, family structures, and communities impact our children in a way that is beyond our control.

I can give a big ol’ Amen! to the bolded part. Certainly when we look at the ways in which the kyriarchy constantly constrains our choices, debating diapering methods can seem like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Mothers are a persecuted subset of a persecuted gender; mothers who exist without white, straight, able, or class privilege even more so. So much of the damage that is done to our children is out of our control, dictated by the work choices we (don’t) have, the community support we (don’t) have, the parental benefits we (don’t) have, the schooling options we (don’t) have, and so on, et cetera, ad nauseum. Even those of us hell-bent on countering the kyriarchy and the dominant culture to the best of our ability recognize that our children will grow up in this society, influenced by its memes and beliefs and ideals and prejudices, fully versed in its gender and racial and sexual norms and mores, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it, except try to at least help them be able to see and recognize those influences in their lives, and thereby, if we are very lucky, reduce their power at least a little.

That said, I’m not sure I can agree with the “We need to constantly challenge ourselves to look past our more superficial lifestyle choices” preamble. Although that is, at least in part, what I try to do with this blog, I recognize that it is something I am able to do due to privilege: I do not have to worry about where my child’s next meal will come from, whether his water is going to make him ill, how to pay for any injury he might incur running around like the toddler he is, or how to protect him from any abusive relations; and so I am able to spend my time thinking about paid family leave, environmentalism, universal health care, and preventing domestic violence, and the role of the kyriarchy in the lack of these things (which is not to say that only those who exist with privilege, like myself, can think big thoughts, or need to “fix” things for “them”, just that I have far fewer roadblocks in my way than does someone who is oppressed in more ways — these roadblocks are one of the many ways the kyriarchy seeks to protect itself). Further, “constantly challeng[ing]” myself does, to an extent, fulfill me and give me energy, but I am not hubristic enough to think that therefore everyone must lead the examined life: for some, letting go of the need to examine and challenge themselves is the healthier path.

Finally, looking at the middle part, where I think the meat is:

I see my friends lulled into a false sense of safety and superiority because they subscribe to a certain set of parenting practices.

Here we have the twofold point: “superiority” speaks to women who attempt to build themselves up by placing themselves ahead of others, because the kyriarchy has ensured that hierarchy is the only organizational principle they know (even in trying to be grateful, we too often make it about being better off than others); “safety” speaks to women who are seeking to protect themselves, because they are under constant attack by the kyriarchy and forces of anti-mother misogyny, threatened always with the spectre of the “bad mom” label if they don’t do things “just right”. And although I don’t think that being “lulled into a false sense of safety and security” (by clinging to breastfeeding or babywearing or what-have-you) is a good thing, I also cannot blame them, or fault the inclination. Because we are under attack, because there is so much out of our control, and if clinging to cloth diapers like they were lifesavers is what helps a mother get through the tsunami of hate, from outside and in, that comes with the early years of parenting… well, she gets through, and that survival is worth celebrating, an intrinsic Good Thing, even if she might have done it “better”.

The “mommy wars” suck. (A lot.) Possibly the most evil thing about them is the way they make us turn against each other, first by scrambling to place ourselves on a hierarchy of most attached/most crunchy/most Super/most whatever, then by attacking each other with “[not] necessarily… a good mom” when we recognize the fallacy of the hierarchy. Dismantling the kyriarchy without undermining each other, critiquing parenting choices without criticizing fellow parents: these are not easy tasks. It is not an easy dance, and it is so easy to make a misstep — just as with parenting itself. But it is necessary to try, and it is necessary to forgive ourselves because we will get it wrong sometimes — just as with parenting itself.

So no, putting the telly on for your toddler doesn’t make you a bad mom, and knowing a dozen carries to do with a 5m wrap doesn’t make you a good mom. But what might make you a revolutionary is to let go of both the fear of being a bad mom, and the need to be a good mom. Let go of the good mom/bad mom hierarchy altogether. Just be a mom — a bad-ass mom in your own right — and tell the hierarchy it can go to hell.

*Which is, by far and without question, my most popular post, which still kind of mystifies me. The reaction to it has been amazing, and humbles me. Thank you to everyone who read, and especially to everyone who commented or passed it on.

**An analogy: recycling is a Good Thing (as is reducing and reusing). I do my best to reduce my consumption of paper and plastic containers, and reuse or recycle what we do bring home. I also drive well over 100 miles a week, when I could take public transit, or avoid travel altogether. Does my typical American use of the car, which has a much greater overall impact on the environment than the waste I produce and how I deal with it, mean that “recycling doesn’t make me a good environmentalist”? Does my use of the car somehow negate the Good Thing that recycling is? It’s not exactly a rhetorical question, but I have an answer that I can live with for myself, and I hope you do too.