American ex-pat journalist and mother of two Helen Kirwan-Taylor has
confessed her dirty secret in a London tabloid. Hang onto your wigs! —
she’s bored by her kids.
In
her engineered-to-inflame, first-person essay titled, "Sorry, but my
children bore me to death!" Kirwan-Taylor brazenly confesses to blowing
off birthday parties to get her highlights done, text messaging friends
through Disney movies and using work as a means of escape from her two
young sons: "To be honest, I spent much of the early years of my
children’s lives in a workaholic frenzy because the thought of spending
time with them was more stressful than any journalistic assignment I
could imagine."The world has taken the bait, placing Kirwan-Taylor at the center of a
recent blogosnit. Mommy websites are buzzing with angry responses, and
the Daily Mail followed up the article with two pages of readers’
reactions along with the requisite weigh-in from a psychologist, Pam
Spurr, who has coined the acronym du jour, SMUM, or Smart,
Middle-Class, Uninvolved Mother.So
now it’s on between the SMUMs and the SCAMs (Smart, Child-Centered,
Active Moms — my coinage). SCAMs are the superachieving moms who
hand-letter birthday invitations, spend their days in imaginative play
with their toddlers, bake from scratch and joyfully embrace each moment
spent with their supergifted offspring.
I know (and have been
known to like) these women. I even have moments when I wished I had
their game, but I can only be the SMUM that I am: distracted,
well-meaning, ambitious for myself. But my kids know I’ll always be
there for them when the chips are down, even if I’m not actually going
to get up to serve them any chips.We daughters of second-wave
feminist mothers were raised to dream big and strive for goals beyond
the hearth and home. We launched careers, gained the respect of our
peers and defined ourselves as individuals. Then we had kids, and
everything changed. Motherhood can be fascinating, challenging,
life-affirming work. It can also be mind-bendingly dull. Having a child
can feel like a sudden erasure of all that we have worked for out in
the world.Smart, educated, highly skilled women find themselves
trapped alone in their homes with demanding, pre-verbal people, doing a
fulltime job they have no training for. Our executive decisions concern
snacks and toys, and our negotiations are about whether the 4-year-old
is allowed to wear her tap shoes to the mall. We give up proximity to
our friends and colleagues and substitute it with the all-too-often
tepid conversation found in a Mommy and Me group. It’s enough to make
any SMUM turn to retail therapy.Kirwan-Taylor gets to the
guilty heart of the matter when she asks, "What kind of mother hates
reading bedtime stories? A bad mother, that’s who, and a mother who is
bored rigid by her children." (I would posit that the mother who wants
to skip another Barney retread at bedtime isn’t so much a bad mom as a
tired mother.)Despite her strident confession, Kirwan-Taylor
seems to have internalized the message behind this latest stroke of
feminist backlash: Independent, self-determined moms who seek
fulfillment outside the home are selfish and neglectful, and the
quality of their love doesn’t measure up to that of moms who dote on
their kids.SMUMs, or Slacker Moms as we’re dubbed stateside,
may be characterized as "bad" moms, but SCAMs have their critics too.
They’re accused of mollycoddling, raising over-programmed kids who will
be unable to function independently as adults. Nobody comes home from
the Mommy Wars intact.Like all media-fueled frenzies, this
issue has been oversimplified, framed as a good-mother/bad-mother
standoff rather than a debate about the real challenges facing real
moms who fall somewhere between selfless and selfish. This cooked-up
catfight distracts us from the real problem: We live in a society that
still doesn’t accord the same value to women’s work as men’s, that
leaves stay-at-home moms isolated and unsupported, criticized and
guilt-tripped.Until we allow women to be genuinely who they
are and not force them into some outdated "good mommy" mold, everyone
will lose — SMUMs, SCAMs and the children we are all trying our level
best to raise.
I seem to teeter between slacker and selfless, craving the time to pursue my own interests (even if that is simply clipping my fingernails uninterrupted) but also loving time spent out and about with my 2 year old. I feel comfortable acknowledging that tending to her basic needs can be mind-numbing (particularly when she refuses to nap), and I’ve been known to flip on the TV in a desperate attempt for a little peace and quiet. But, there is something totally awesome and amazing about every day with her, like a new word or a new concept or just a big hug and an ‘I love you.’
I think every woman reacts to motherhood in a different way – part personality, part her own upbringing, part circumstance. It makes me sad to think that we have to create acronyms for ourselves, peg ourselves as one type or another, thus shutting the door to the possibility that we could be all of those things…and gosh, be a damn fine mother, despite our society’s attempt to make it as hard as possible.
Not a mom myself, I nevertheless look forward to your “Smartmom” column in the local paper and recently started reading your blog.
I see something incredibly unfair to women about the fact that there even ARE “Mommy Wars.” Is a father considered a bad father if he doesn’t make it home to eat dinner with his kids every night? Almost never. Is a father criticized for admitting that he doesn’t really enjoy tending to his kids’ basic needs? Please, he’s treated like a freak if he says he DOES enjoy it. Nobody ever just assumes a man will be less focused or dedicated to his career once a child comes along, but it is almost always assumed that the woman will quit and stay home for a while, or at least cut back on job responsibilities (unless she wants to be called selfish).
I don’t have the answer, but I think what everyone should try to keep in mind is that at the present state, whether we’ve “chosen” to juggle parenting with a job, to be childless, to be a SMUM or a SCAM, the fact is that most men get a choice we don’t have: To have children with the assurance that our children are well-cared for without doing it ourselves, maintain momentum in a fulfilling career, and be considered an excellent parent. And frankly, anything else seems like something to be stuck with, not a choice, to me.