Motherhood Sucks

I have written extensively about Women and particularly Motherhood and the larger Mommy Blogger Scene that has risen like a flood and a tide that has become a cottage industry of its own. We have reformed Mothers, converted Mothers, Christian Mothers, Aged Mothers, Royal or “former” Royal Mothers, Hot Mothers, Grandmothers, Lesbian or once straight Mothers, and all of them versed well in what defines being a Working Mother. That is a redundancy in and of itself as all Mothers are. We revere the concept of Motherhood yet not all of us should be nor want to be. Ah yes that is the question.

And while every day when you are a Mother is Mother’s day there are many many Women who have elected to not be Mothers. We are obsessed with Mothers and we are sure that again in our faux Meritocracy that it is some type of intrinsic failure to be a mother. We have Women who go to great lengths to be Mothers and hire women when all else fails to be one for them. We are sure any Woman wants to be a Mother and if not why not? I got 99 reasons and do you really care or is this again somehow about you? I feel that is our society now, it is always about me, no you, no I mean I. As My Mother used to say, “What are you an Eye Specialist?” I’ll let that sink in.

I realized the other day why I am shitty at interpersonal relationships. I don’t care. I used to try and it was over the top, as I thought if I tried real hard to care I would. It doesn’t work that way. Not a day goes by thanking myself that I did not have a child. I do believe we see all relationships as a type of a Mirror and I have used that euphemism repeatedly when it comes to Children. They see themselves as a reflection of the Adult holding it. And that is a bag of mixed nuts right there. And we do that with our Adult ones trying to find a reasonable compliment to our own view of self. As mine changes frequently anyone in a partnership with me would have to be a shape shifter. I loathe the expression finding a Partner just like Mom or Dad, YIKES, paternal incest how charming. And with that I duplicated my Parents marriage to a perfect imitation where we were literally in a Marriage of one. I liked it, he did not. And with that I moved on and out and about and he is in what I believe his 15th year of Marriage with someone who I assume gets him in ways I had no interest. No regrets what.so.ever. I learned something, got something from it and with that I am happy to be alone. I would enjoy genuine friendship/companionship but I do not miss day to day routines and I especially do not miss Sex. I can handle that one on my own.

People do confuse Intimacy with Sexuality and I realize that again I liked them in their own lanes and now perhaps at this age it seems to make sense more and with that I tried to hard to co-join them like bad Siamese Twins. (I believe that term is of course outdated and will the language Police give me the new and approved one) It takes a lot to realize that the difference between the two and I often think that is why when Women have children all of that unconditional love, the endless obsession and desire about what that is is now directed to the child. And that in turn is as equally smothering, damaging and destructive, it just takes longer to see the results. Much is often made of those Couples that have distinct relationships outside of Parenthood and those are thought of as Outliers who are selfish, weird or eccentric. And there are many Women wish they had not; The irony that the most famous Authors of Children’s books hated or did not have kids. The Cat is not in that hat. This is what we do as adults, make adults ones and leave the child behind.

The word CHOICE is being heavily bandied about of late as it is regards to decisions that surround Pregnancy. The move to make any type of option outside of carrying a Child to term is being now decided by the States, the same States that think Drag Shows and Drag Queen Reading Hour is a some type a recruitment mission or a pedophile on patrol. They are sure that Trans Men and Women are a threat to Bathroom freedoms and sporting shenanigans. I recall the scandal of the Women of the East German Swim Team. “Gosh Grunhilda can really do the backstroke, check out those shoulders!” I still will go to my own death bed believing it is about fucking and dicks. I can see a (fill in the blank word) Man standing at the Urinal and the guy next to whips out a foot long or he sees the feet in the closed stall facing forward. And the other is that the hot chick next to him is in fact a Trans Woman with still a Penis. Fucking or Pissing are two essential dominant factors in men’s thought process and then sports. See that is the Trans obsession.

Women I assume have less interest in where that dick is. We get bored of sex early on. How many Dick pics can you see where you think, “Haven’t I seen this in a Museum and wasn’t it better?” And when you love sex as I once did, it takes one too many dicks after a time where you think “God please let’s end this now as I got shit to do.” It will be a cold day in hell when I shove a dick down my throat ever again. That gag reflex is restored thankfully.

So when not planning the career life that will be crashed by Men in some way shape or another; That the Aging Parent that you now have to care for like a child will occur or that at some point you will be required to drop one from your Uterus or hire someone else to do it for you in both cases. I do wonder is that due to biological problems? And in turn that may be a sign that you should not breed or for some other reason that has little to do with fertility that demands you become a Parent. And then it begins.

When I read this essay from the Sister of Frank Bruni, the former NY Times columnist, I thought it was actually true. Children are not your clones and with that it explains again much of the Mommy Industry. When you can’t have a career you pimp your children. It is like Mama June only not making your kid a stripper.

Success for my children meant finding their own paths, not retracing mine

By Adelle Kirk

Every year, without fail, about 20 of my best female friends from college and I reunite for a long weekend. It’s not always easy to pull off; we’re career women, wives, mothers, busily “having it all,” which means having almost no free time. But we relish traveling back across the decades together. We reminisce about the nights spent dancing to Liquid Pleasure, our favorite 1980s band. We laugh about the sleepless fog we lived through our senior spring as we tried to finish the thesis papers required to graduate.

Then, inevitably, the talk turns from our antics back in the day to our kids today. To the trials they put us through or the challenges of parenting that no one saw coming. Some of our kids have real limitations. Others are quietly defiant. Still others are outright rebellious. But a single common thread runs through our observations and complaints about them: Why can’t they be more like we were?

We’re no doubt seeing our pasts through rose-colored glasses when we ask that. We’re also measuring our kids with the yardsticks of the academic accolades that we accrued, the elite university where we got our cherished diplomas, the big jobs we snagged, the fairy-tale parents we expected to be. We want exactly — and I mean exactly — the same for them.

But is that concerned parenting or simple vanity? Are we trying to encourage and shape authentic individuals or create clones of ourselves?

The positive spin is that the path we’re best equipped to help them navigate is the one we took, so we’re simply giving them the surest set of directions we can. There’s truth in that and in our desires, heartfelt and understandable, to make certain that they and we continue to have the same bearings, enjoy the same interests, speak the same language. It’s a way of holding them close as long as possible. It’s a recipe for lifelong friendship.

Now that they are young adults, I look back at my two children’s youths, and I see, over and over, me frantically trying to determine who they’d be rather than letting them discover who they really were. I’d been on my high school swimming and basketball teams, so my son needed sports of his own, and I forced him to play football and lacrosse, though what he loved was watching, not participating in, both. As soon as I got an inkling that he was better with numbers than with words, I bought verbal SAT books for him every summer and spent endless hours playing editor on his high school papers. He had to find a route to well-rounded academic excellence.

With my daughter, it was much the same. I rotated her through one sport after another, intent that she also follow in my footsteps. Alas, she was more an artist than an athlete — but that was OK! I loved theater in high school and performed in countless plays throughout college. So I pushed and pushed in that direction, a backstage tiger mother with a mighty roar.

I now realize that I wasn’t simply and benignly motivating my children. I was probably giving them the constant feeling that they were disappointing me, that their natural interests, talents and drive were never enough. That’s by far my biggest regret as a parent — not that neither of them has my alma mater, not that neither of them was all-American in lacrosse, not that neither of them had a precocious turn on a Broadway stage. I worry that neither of them understood how little I really cared about that. And that’s because I didn’t understand it myself.

Somehow, they survived. The credit goes entirely to them. My son prospers at a top-notch public university, where his major and his side interests bear absolutely no relation to mine at his age. He’s happy. My daughter decided that college wasn’t for her — at least not now — and took a job in the restaurant industry in a city halfway across the country from our New Jersey home. I visited her there recently. I ate where she works and watched her in action. She moved with a confidence that wasn’t always there before. She moved with joy.

So what was the tug of war that I went through with them — and that so many of my friends go through with their children — all about? What was the point? The gift our children give us is their individuality, and they develop strength of character not by emulating or outdoing us but by finding their own ways once we finally let them. That destination may not be one we ever imagined. But in being a surprise, it can be a special delight.

I try to embrace different yardsticks for my children now: their contentment, their fulfillment. And I genuinely admire their decisions and their determination to live their lives on their own terms. Maybe I’m just mellowing in my advancing age, or maybe they’ve taught me something crucial about the tyranny of precise expectations and the liberty of sloughing those off. When I swap parenting stories with my college classmates during our next weekend together, I won’t lament what my children haven’t done or may never do or the degree to which they aren’t replicas of me. I’ll celebrate their originality. Or — imagine this — I won’t hold them up for inspection at all.

On a Personal Note

Over the years, Frank has used his newsletters and columns to write at length about our family, including his relationships with our two brothers — Mark and Harry — and me. So I thought I’d seize this opportunity to give you my perspective on his. It’s not so much a correction of the record as a refinement and an elaboration.

He says that we’re big eaters and loud talkers. True. I mean, we’re (half) Italian. It’s in the genes.

He says that we take pains to carve out time for trips together. Also true.

But I’m not sure he gives you a full and accurate sense of how he fits into the group. As the second-born boy, he wasn’t the natural leader of our pack; that role fell to Mark, the firstborn, who cast a long shadow for Frank to grow up in. Frank also didn’t fly somewhat under our parents’ radar, the way Harry, the youngest of my three older brothers, did. And he wasn’t the pampered baby of the family, a long-awaited daughter. I drew that lucky card.

So Frank became, well, the family’s narrator. Its chronicler. We often turned to him to describe what we were going through, to put it into words (and this was before he went ahead and did that for a living). I can still remember the puzzled expressions on Mark’s and Harry’s faces when Frank sometimes came out with a verb or an adjective they’d never heard of. He was sort of like an SAT prep guide on legs. And if I’m being honest, he could be a little lordly — that’s a Frank kind of word — about it.

While we’re on the subject of his foibles, I should give you my view of his caretaking of Regan, given how frequently he regales you with tales about her. It’s … obsessive. He agonizes if he has walked her less than five miles on a given day; he’s stupidly happy if he has gone over eight. My dogs always gyrate with excitement when Frank and Regan drop by, because he’ll take them along for one of these marathons or force me to bring them along.

Oh, and on those family trips? No one else suggests that cocktail hour begin quite as early in the afternoon as Frank does.

He’s the only sibling each of us calls regularly. I’m not sure why, but it works out that way. He and I talk almost daily, often at some early morning hour when the ring of my phone beats my alarm because Frank is already up and (you guessed it) out walking Regan.

He’s generous — to me, to my children, to his other nieces and nephews. He’s generous with his time, with his confidences, with his advice (which is pretty good), with his gossip (which is even better). Heck, he’s even generous with his newsletter space, giving it to me this week. I’m grateful. And I thank you, too, for indulging me.