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Isolated parenting
By ella | October 26, 2005
On Monday I watched a programme called “Having a Baby Ruined my Life“. I would normally avoid programmes like this because having a baby didn’t ruin my life - although it made it bloody hard at times - and any programme broadcast on Channel Five is generally rubbish. But as I watched I found myself more and more engrossed. There were all these mothers saying all these things that I had felt when I was suffering from post-natal depression: how they missed their former lives, how the relentless routine made them want to jump off a bridge (not literally), how getting out of the house for even a newspaper became a military operation so that they stopped bothering, how the sleep deprivation made them feel like zombies and how their relationships with their partners suffered. Some found the process so harrowing that they couldn’t bring themselves to have another child. It would have made for fairly depressing viewing for most, especially if you were at the stage in life where you were thinking you might have a baby, but I sat there wishing I had seen this three years ago because the worst thing about being stuck at home with small children and hating it, is feeling like you’re the only one. I didn’t feel like there was anyone I could confide in, even my husband, although I tried to drop him not-so-subtle hints when he got home about how awful each day had been. Other mothers seemed to exude this glow of not only coping, but loving every minute of it aswell, and I felt like something must be wrong with me to be feeling differently. Looking back I probably seemed to other mothers that I was not only coping but also loving every minute of it because I felt like there was this myth that I had to live up to and to be anything less would be failing. Yet at home I was falling apart.
Some of the problem may stem from the fact that many of us had careers before children and to be defeated by a small infant in your own home seems unthinkable for us. We no longer see children being brought up in society as so much of the parenting that used to take place communally is now done behind closed doors. This means that many of us have little or no experience of babies before we have our own and it also means that many of us have little or no support from other mothers. There is no break for many of us from childcare and we can grow increasingly isolated, sleep-deprived and miserable, often without anyone really realising. Husbands and partners frequently don’t understand how boring and tiring being at home all day with small children can be and they can have their own worries about being the sole breadwinner and coping with tiredness when they have to work all day.
Of course being able to read other people’s experiences via their blogs has made me understand that my experiences of motherhood are more common than I realised. But I have been a parent for nearly four years and watching this programme was the first thing I have seen in the mainstream media (in this country) about the difficulties of parenting. One mother summed up my feelings when she said “I love my daughter more than anything but I hate motherhood.”
Our health visitor has stopped doing post-partum depression questionnaires at the six week check after the baby is born because every new mother is tired, depressed and often tearful (I hope they find a more useful way of picking up those mothers who are depressed). But I also wonder how many mothers expect to feel crap at six weeks but then who feel depressed a few months later when the reality of 24/7 parenting has really sunk in and the lack of support in bringing up children really begins to show. I wish there were some easy solution. We live isolated lives, physically shut away from friends, relatives and other parents. There is little support or recognition for stay at home parents. Other mothers often don’t want to talk about their ambivalent feelings towards motherhood when they go to coffee mornings and toddler groups for fear of being seen as a failure or as weird. At the same time, when you’re expecting your first child you don’t want to be told that becoming a parent is hard, really hard. Perhaps we should all be sent home from the hospital with a video showing us how to care for a baby which includes some other parents telling us about their experiences. Or perhaps we should all just support each other a little more and understand that some of us will love motherhood and some won’t. We all love our children, it’s just that some of us might be counting the days until they become just a bit more independent.
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Read More:
- Postpartum depression
- Ten minutes
- Maternal depression, irritability and guilt
- Motherhood vs mothering
- What it is (to be a mother)
Categories: The Politics of Motherhood, Post-Partum Depression
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