Motherhood: job or performance art?
I’m not sure why I feel the need to apologize or have an excuse for going all out for my child’s birthday party. I have considered several possible reasons for this feeling:
-it’s not a competition, and my friends would still love me if I just threw a couple of Dora plates and a bakery cake out on the card table and called it a day.
-there are children starving somewhere, and I’m throwing out the crusts of these dolphin-shaped sandwiches.
- I’m working on a PhD and should therefore be serious, studious, and practical at all times, rather than expending mental energy making marshmallow fondant.
- I am a serious scholar (see above) who studies women’s issues and therefore my choice to be at home this semester should be analyzed thoroughly for all possible implications and meanings.
Do you see how I make myself crazy with all this? And believe me, I do.
In my own mind, homemaking/mommyhood has never really been my full-time job. Perhaps because I don’t think of it as a job. A relationship, yes. A responsibility, absolutely. A competitive sport, creative outlet, and performance art? Yes, yes, and yes.
And yes, I’ve read the reports that if you stay at home you are doing the work of someone who should be payed over $100k per year. I’ve read them ad nauseum. That still doesn’t make me think of motherhood as my “job.” Maybe that’s just semantics. Or maybe because I have never had a job I liked as much as I like my sweet child.
And here’s another thing (and oh, am I going to get flak for this one)— I still don’t get why people say that staying home with your children is the hardest job in the world. Either I have really great kids, or I’ve had some seriously crap jobs. Is parenting hard some days? Yes. Is it as bad as working in a coal mine, or working retail during the holiday season? Thus far, I would have to say: not even close. People keep saying, “oh, just wait until (fill in the blank).” And then I get to the blank, and then past it, and I think, “well, that wasn’t so bad.”
But—and this is key—I have a supportive husband who co-parents with me. If I didn’t have him, I would probably be singing a different tune. And I can’t make claims to things outside my experience. If you are, for example, a single mom with a special needs child, then you may very well have the hardest job in the world. I haven’t walked in your shoes, so I can’t say.
I am, to be honest, interested in pregnancy, maternity and motherhood as a performance. If you read any of the mommy blogs that are out there, you can see this in action. This is not a negative criticism of mommy blogging – I support it FULLY. I read “mommy blogs” and love them. I am, however, interested in a scholarly sort of way in the meaning of these blogs. How do they “mean” when read as a whole? What about the party blogs (just google “children’s party blogs), which feature page after page of exquisitely executed, magazine-shoot-worthy theme parties for children who still poop in their pants? (Guilty as charged – I’ll get around to posting some pictures of the party I just threw for my two year old, so that I can participate to the fullest in “motherhood as performance.”)
Another thing that interests me about motherhood as performance is that fatherhood does not seem to have the same performative element. My dear brother is a stay-at-home dad, and I’m hoping he’ll weigh in with some insightful comments on this difference.
I’m hoping others will, too.
Why do we “perform” motherhood for the benefit of others?
Why do we NEED motherhood to be the hardest job in the world?
Why is it so offensive to suggest otherwise? Is it our need for validation? Our competitive nature?
My guess is that our complex response to feminism, this need to do it all and be perfect (or, in the case of the anti-mommy blog, deliberately imperfect), twists our perceptions of ourselves as women. I haven’t gone through all the implications of this, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Reply from the ‘Dear brother’:
I have a few thoughts which are unfounded and generally based on personal experience and observation but here it goes. In man’s experience, creating something, be it an object, an event, a feeling, a location, etc… is a defining moment in our life, however small the item created. Using a modern term, my grandfather is a “Maker” and has created literally multiple thousands of things in his lifetime. If you speak with him he will remember almost all of them and tell you about the process of making that item. We are validated and remembered by the way we manipulate the world around us and mothers are no different.
It seems that the modern age has given a voice to those who just needed an audience. Stay at home mom’s may only have time to blog at 4am but they can be read at anytime of the day, maybe years later, by untold thousands. When blogs became popular a few years ago just the creation of the blog was enough for most to feel some kind of validation (”I have made something!”) just by putting their voice out there. Then it got crowded and less novel to have that voice and in turn, less of a feeling of validation. Now you are more likely to come across what I like to call the ‘Super Blog’ or ‘Pro Blog’. It’s big, it’s updated regularly, it’s pretty to look at and there are lots of take home projects. Most importantly it has a big, vocal audience. Thus, a bigger creation, more personal validation. And now I’m rambling but you get the point.
Mom’s get to create kids, which is a big deal, dress them up, show them off, and present them to the world (”Look What I DID!!”). Everything else, such as the party (that I was not invited to :P ) seems to be trappings of the ‘look what I made’ mentality present in all mothers. It extends down each end of the timeline (look what’s growing inside of me vs they’re successful due to all of my hard work) and mothers, rightfully so, take credit for what they have made.
As a SAHD who also works from home and ‘makes’ other things I guess I don’t place quite as much emphasis on the boys as I could when it comes to perceiving them as a creation in the works. Men generally work outside the home, are the breadwinners, etc.. and gain manliness by what they do, or something. And that stereotype is true. I once worked as a civil engineering designer and I designed bridges and highways and housing editions, etc… and it was validating. So validating, in fact, that I still think of it fondly and relate to it often even though it’s been 5 years since I worked there. I do not gain validation from my children the majority of the time although i wish I did. I wouldn’t feel quite so much internal pressure to do more non-homemaking activities like industrial design and daytrading (yes, I’m a daytrader) if I garnered all the validation needed from staying at home with the boys. I’ll ask my wife, the psychology major social worker, if it’s nurture or nature that causes moms and dads to be this way, she LOVES when I ask her the unanswerables right before bed.