Searching for the perfect mother
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BY ERIN ANDERSEN / Lincoln Journal Star
“God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers.” — Jewish proverb
Ask mothers what it takes to be a good mother, and they will tell you.
“Being there,” said Jean Hennings of Lincoln, the 2006 Nebraska Mother of the Year.
“Sacrifice,” said Vikki Gremel of Seward, the 2004 Nebraska Young Mother of the Year. A good mother has patience, love and the know-how to have fun, added the mother of four.
A good mother is “kind, affectionate and nurturing,” said Christine Bartels of Lincoln, mother of 7-year-old Joshua.
A good mother gives her children the ability to be self-sufficient and independent, said Joan Kinsey, Lincoln mother of four and foster parent.
The ideal good mother is a mediator, minister, mechanic, merchant, pack mule and maid. She is selfless and tireless. She is organized, efficient and ever at the ready.
And she bakes cookies.
She also doesn’t exist — never has and never will — under society’s idealized standards, say researchers/authors Sue Lanci Villani and Jane E. Ryan in their book, “Motherhood at the Crossroads: Meeting the Challenge of a Changing Role.”
The ideal “good mother” that many mothers aspire to and compare themselves to is a fantasy, created by politicians, doctors, psychologists, Hollywood, the media and, especially, marketers, say sociologists and historians.
The “good mother” is also a uniquely American phenomenon.
No one disagrees that motherhood is a most noble vocation, a job unequaled in all of nature and unparalleled in value and fulfillment.
It is the greatest and perhaps hardest job in the world.
Made harder over the course of history by ever-changing ideals of just what makes a good mother.
And today nearly every mother fears she is somehow falling short, said Raelene Hill, national president of American Mothers Inc.
The image
“To be a mother is a woman’s greatest vocation in life. She is a partner with God. No being has a position of such power and influence. She holds in her hands the destiny of nations, for to her comes the responsibility and opportunity of molding the nation’s citizens.”
— Spencer W. Kimball, 1895-1985, 12th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
In pre-colonial America, mothers were considered custodians, but not role models.
Women were considered to be “devious, sexually voracious, emotionally inconstant and physically and intellectually inferior,” writes Diane Eyer in her book, “Motherguilt.”
“Their sinfulness made it necessary for husbands to rule over them and their children,” Eyer wrote. It was the father who provided children with the education, moral advice and nurturing they needed.
“This is not to suggest that mothers and children did not love each other or have a close relationship, but rather that motherhood, as we know it, simply was not recognized. Children were economic assets claimed by their fathers,” Eyer wrote.
The Industrial Revolution changed all that. Men and women no longer toiled side by side in the field, rather they were separated by gender roles, said Andrea Estepa, an Oberlin College history professor who teaches the course “Motherhood in the U.S.: 1930 to Present.”
Men went off to work.
Women stayed home.
And because industrialization now allowed women to buy — rather than make — household goods such as clothes, soap, candles and even foods, she had more time to keep house and keep her children in check, said Erika Kuhlman, associate professor of history at Idaho State University in Pocatello.
The Victorian era brought a whole new — and romanticized — view of motherhood. And infants, once considered to be born “full of the devil” were now seen in the light of baby Jesus, “pure and innocent,” Eyer wrote.
A child’s upbringing determined a child’s fate.
But who was best to bring up baby?
Not necessarily the mother, Eyer said.
In Europe, “infant schools” opened to give children the nurturing and education they needed.
In the United States, the idea was briefly popular — until a prominent New England doctor decreed this early intellectual activity for infants diverted energy away from the physical development of the female brain, resulting in teenage or adult insanity.”
Spurned by fear, mothers — at the urging of political leaders and physicians — became more attentive and attuned to the needs of their children. Their worth and femininity was determined by how well they managed the home and raised their children.
Underlying this intense focus on mothers was the economic reality that unless women stayed home, they would be in direct competition with men in the country’s new wage-earning workforce, Eyer said.
From the U.S. president on down, everyone agreed there was no other profession as honorable as being a mother.
And mothers relished this role of raising children. They took on the challenge with great enthusiasm, not only doing what was best for their children, but for all children.
It was mothers who joined forces calling to the end of the Civil War. And later it was mothers who demanded improved sanitation for all families.
Mothers — and all women — became a force to be reckoned with. After all, they were charged with strengthening the moral and spiritual foundations of the home. They ensured our nation’s founding principles — God, country, honesty, integrity, morality and education.
The notion of motherhood became even more romanticized in the years following World War II, when women, who answered the call to work for the war effort, returned home to their children full time.
A new field of psychology further exalted the mother’s role. Experts ruled that attentive mothers could keep their children strong and moral and spare them from becoming miscreants and criminals. Furthermore, these experts pointed to poor mothering as the root cause of all that could go wrong with children.
Television showed us the ideal mother — Harriet Nelson, Donna Reed and June Cleaver.
“There was a cultural movement to create images of women and send messages to women that being a stay-at-home mother and housewife was a totally fulfilling job. You could use all your skills and talents. And it was the most important work a woman could do,” Estepa said.
American Mothers President Raelene Hill, 57, was a product of those times. Her own mother stayed home to raise her children. When Hill was old enough to go to college, she did so with the express purpose of learning the home economics and child development skills necessary to make her a better mother and homemaker.
Today the mother of five grown children and five grandchildren has no regrets about her choices and how she raised her children.
But many others of her generation took a different view of the American housewife. They saw their mothers as stifled, unfulfilled and unhappy.
They argued that the role of mother should not deny women the opportunity to just be people, Estepa said.
That women could do both — be good mothers and have a career.
They could, in fact, have it all.
The reality
“The commonest fallacy among women is that simply having children makes one a mother, which is as absurd as believing that having a piano makes one a musician.”
— Sydney J. Harris, author
and journalist
These new mothers soon discovered “having it all” meant giving some things up.
Being a mother is hard.
It is also wonderful.
Heartbreaking.
Uplifting.
Nearly every mother also will tell you there is no greater pressure than being a mother — be it real, perceived or self-imposed.
Every mom wants the best for her children, said Joan Kinsey, the mother of four and foster parent to more than 70 children over the past 15 years.
And there is no one right path to getting there — although plenty of people will argue otherwise.
Today’s critically inclined society makes it tougher than ever on mothers, said Hill.
Everyone is an expert. Every problem has a solution. Right. Wrong. Or somewhere in between.
But unlike most other jobs, motherhood affords little wiggle room for “do-overs.” Meaning when something goes wrong, it usually is the mothers who get the blame.
“We have a criteria out there (for mothers) that is mostly unrealistic,” Hill said. “And half the time those setting up the criteria are not moms themselves.”
Mothers judge themselves against the experts. Against the celebrities. Against their own mothers. And against other mothers.
They forget that “these ideals are just that — ideals,” Estepa said.
“Even at the those points in time when we thought the family was so perfect — it was never really like that for a majority of the people,” she said.
When Kinsey was pregnant with her first child, her vision of motherhood was based for the most part on her friend’s happy, cute and always smiling 6-month-old son.
“I was going to have a really cute baby,” Kinsey recalled.
“Instead, I had a premature baby with colic for four months.”
She endured months of non-stop crying, sleepless nights and self-doubt.
“I really felt I was pretty worthless as a mother,” she said.
Ultimately, she realized, it was a reality check.
No mothers have all the answers.
All mothers second guess.
“I hear from a lot of people that they have this feeling that whatever they are doing, they are not doing it well enough,” Estepa said.
It is easy to get trapped in the minutiae over what good mothers do or don’t do, Kinsey said. Mothers need to take a deep breath and focus on what ultimately matters most in the raising of a child — creating a self-sufficient and responsible adult.
Good parents give children guidance, support and consequences. They help children be the best they can be, and advocate on their behalf. Good parents “sometimes have to let children experience failures and learn from that,” Kinsey said.
In some ways, being a mother today is harder than it was 30 years ago, said Shari Thurer, Boston psychologist and author of “Myths of Motherhood: How Society Reinvents the Good Mother.”
“Having a baby is like doing a Ph.D. People are perfectionistic about it,” Thurer said in a telephone interview.
Somewhere along the line, mothers started seeing motherhood as a competitive sport.
It shouldn’t be that way, Hill said.
The road ahead
“The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.”
— Carl Jung
Today’s moms have more choices than ever before.
“As women, we need to support moms, no matter what they are doing and what their choices are,” said Lincoln’s Vicki Wood.
Christine Bartels agrees. When son Josh was born, she stayed home. Today, Josh is 7, and Bartels works part time in a pediatrician’s office and runs a life coaching business for mothers out of her home. Her focus is helping mothers discover and pursue their passions.
If the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s taught us anything, it’s that mothers do not have to lose their self-identity in order to be good parents, Bartels said.
Most choices mothers make do not hinge on good or bad, but what is right for their families, she added.
All moms love their children 100 percent, she said.
And it shows.
But the reality is, children need more than just their moms, Bartels said. They need other people and other influences, she said.
Among those people — fathers.
Much of America’s focus on parenthood is now focused on the role of fathers. And many fathers are eagerly rising up to the challenge, becoming more involved with all aspects of child rearing, said Erika Kuhlman, the Idaho State history professor.
Kuhlman and her husband share a 50-50 approach in raising their son. It has given her more confidence and freedom. And it has made her a better mother, she said. However, Kuhlman acknowledges her own mother subtly makes it known she wishes her daughter would spend more time at home with her son.
“To be realistic about it, fathers’ roles should just as emphasized in society as the role of the mothers,” Kuhlman said.
But what mothers — and fathers — really need are social supports that allow them to be the kind of parents they long to be, Estepa said. That means family-friendly programs and policies helping families with child care, health care, parental leave and other universal family issues.
“(Today) everybody is working so hard to just keep their head above water,” Thurer said.
So who will lead the charge for social change?
Mothers, said Estepa. All they have to do is join forces, demand changes for the benefit of all mothers and children, she said.
And they can start by doing the very thing that makes them wonderful mothers in the first place — following their hearts.
Reach Erin Andersen at 473-7217 or eandersen@journalstar.com.
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