The Mother I Set Out to Be

by Lisa Fite on March 5, 2011

I have mixed feeling about this article: The Opposite of a Tiger Mother: Leaving Your Children Behind It doesn’t shock me. It doesn’t make me happy or sad. My feelings are truly mixed.

I always wanted to be ‘someone’s mom’. I never remember a time when I didn’t and very early on I had also decided that I wanted to be a mom that stayed home with her kids. To that end I actually delayed motherhood until I finished all of the requirements in my chosen profession. I obtained my Master’s degree and completed all the requisite clinical hours for licensing and certification and then I promptly got pregnant. I was then pregnant or nursing (or both!) for the next three and a half years. Because I nursed I felt that my children quite literally could not live without me. I had a somewhat tumultuous childhood. Yes, there was some abuse, and there was poverty and there was moving – 10 times before we finally settle into our very own home. A tiny little place on a ‘private drive’ (a euphemism for a dead-end road) that was one of four houses lined up in a row facing a block wall. There was no street sign, the concrete road crumbled more and more as the years went by and when I would instruct people how to get there I always told them to ‘turn down the alley’ and most of the time they missed it because they would say: ‘It looked like an alley, I didn’t think anyone could live there.” I did live there. I grew up there from 7-17 and then again for a year or so after college before I got married.

One of the reasons I wanted to stay home was that I always felt like my childhood was unstable. I wanted my children to have consistency. I didn’t want to stay home for a while, complain about money and then drop them off at the nearest relative that didn’t really want 3 or 4 extra children in the house that was already bursting at the seams. I lived an hour away from the closest relative as it was so that wasn’t feasible anyway. I had moved far away on purpose. I needed the distance, maybe more than I have ever needed anything.

I love my children, but parenting is hard. It’s loud and exhausting emotionally and physically. Children are an endless stream of needs and wants and those needs and wants must be met someway, somehow even if it does leave you as a mother starving and chronically constipated and longing for a moment of quiet and peace. I finally got a babysitter after injuring my back hoisting a heavy load of cloth diapers from the pail to the washing machine. I would take a few hours every other week and get a coffee all by myself. It was heaven. We enrolled my son in preschool. Something I had at one time thought was useless! I was his mother *I* could teach him, he didn’t need preschool – ‘glorified daycare’. But I found I was more patient, less overwhelmed the more help I got. I had my daughter at home and just having one at a time was so much easier. When my son entered kindergarten my daughter started preschool and they were both gone in the morning for 3 hours.

I contemplated going back to work but decided the transportation and childcare arrangements were prohibitive. I would wait until they were on the same campus at least. The next few months were tough. I had 3 hours to myself, but they weren’t always the productive invigorating hours I hoped they would be. I dreaded pick-up from school because I would be hit with that consistent barrage of want and need that was rarely accompanied by politeness and gratitude. I had a couple of friends wonder why I hesitated to go back to work and encouraged me to explore it more. I was terrified. Then I finally drove to a childcare facility one day and took a tour. My problem with transportation and childcare suddenly seemed less daunting. This was something people did, the child were happy, they played, they ate, they were cared for just like the sign on the building that said ‘childcare center’ suggested.

So I went back to work fulltime. The first day I stopped by the gym instead of going directly after work to pick up my children. I worried that they would be upset at the delay, but they were perfectly fine and I felt at peace. The next day was not as easy. I picked them up and came home juggling bags, trying to put things in place while they cried out for my attention. The next day I came home first, took take of the few chores I needed to be ready for the next day and then went to pick them up. That has been my routine since and now I’m present when they come home. I have far less time with my children. I barely see them in comparison to our previous arrangement. But I honestly feel like a better mom for it. It’s not at all what I imagined and I’m still adjusting, but I’m reading to my kids at bedtime. I had given bedtime over to my husband because I so desperately needed a break at the end of the day. We go on family outings. We did before, but we can afford to go further away and to places like Disneyland every once in a while.

I didn’t expect my parenting to go through the evolution that it has. I do think it’s different for women and that there are greater expectations and demands. I’m sure I am not done learning and growing. I hope I’m not because I’m sure there are challenges ahead that I can hardly imagine now, in this moment. I’m not the mother I set out to be and I wonder who really is when I read stories like the one above. I’m setting out to be the best mother I can be given everything I now know and everything I hope to learn. And with that, it’s time to go pick up my kids…

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  • Kyle

    I personally decided as early as high school that parenting is not for me. I am aware of how people would see me as “selfish” or “greedy” or “unwilling to take responsibility” but I doubt any would dare say “irresponsible”.

    I also knew, that if I wanted any children at all, I could skip the early years of working and adapt a child in need. Yes again, I was willing to take all the name calling for that. Every year , all the negative things I hear about parenting (mostly relating to finances, stress, time, health), I am thankful I am not in the same boat, with that said, I am not under any illusion we’ll become extinct because too many people become like me. For all the positive things I’ve found about parenting, or even marriage, I’ve managed to find a substitute for that happiness, YES, I know, people actually married and parenting will tell me “There is no replacement and nothing comes close” but you can’t tell me I’m missing out if I don’t know it.

    I try not to judge people for the choices they make, especially if they’re irreversible, I can only learn and decide for myself. Lastly, I think people who complain [this is not directed at you, just saying people whom can't decide what they want] “there isn’t enough time (or money)” often don’t think in comparison to other people, other times, and the bigger picture. If time and relaxation is what you want, maybe the city life isn’t for you, if you lived in a rural area, you’ll have lots of quiet time, you can read, you can exercise, you can sleep all you like. If they feel a family “shouldn’t” have to live on 2 incomes, they are free to pursue a lifestyle prior to the decades when families worked 2 jobs (it’s not impossible, just uncomfortable), this could mean one car per family every 10 years, no computer, clothing shopping once a year, getting rid of “safety nets” (insurance policies)…

    Probably the last thing I want to add is, that if one can look at everything in terms of monetary value, the decisions can be made much more easily.

    • Haysoos

      “I personally decided as early as high school that parenting is not for me. I am aware of how people would see me as “selfish” or “greedy” or “unwilling to take responsibility” but I doubt any would dare say “irresponsible”. ”

      How can making a decision not to take on a responsibility that isn’t right for you been seen as selfish? I don’t think people have kids because there’s a societal need for their kids. People are supposed to become parents because they want to, not because someone else wants them to.

      • Kyle

        I completely agree. Which is why I chose what I did.

  • Kyle

    I think this article says it best, she’s not a bad mother, she’s just selfish, but at least honest about it.
    (Yes, it’s unfair for her children that they were born and lost a mother, but better to know now, than her complaining later on that she hated being a mother and her children wondering if it was their fault)
    http://thestir.cafemom.com/big_kid/116986/rahna_reiko_rizzuto_is_selfish

    The only thing “wrong” is that she did something she said she “never wanted”, certain decisions are too serious to turn back, but even those, better late than never.

  • Steve

    It’s so interesting that people have such a hard time finding the “right action.” I think we “over-think” things, or are too dedicated to our “plans”–which we don’t realize were probably arbitrarily set in the first place. Another part of it is the “protestant work ethic”/”American competitiveness” that makes us want to do everything perfectly–or at least “the best.”

    People should always be people. So, for example, there should be people who HAPPEN TO BE mothers. So, for example, in those early years, if you would have sometimes simply said to the kids “I need some time alone with myself” what would have been the result? They would have learned that NOBODY in their future is going to give them undivided attention 24/7; they would have learned that THEY ALSO have a right to time for themselves (and thus everyone does). And maybe they even would have learned the joy of trying to do a nice thing, be supportive, etc., for MOM–and actually LEARNED (rather than being told) that giving really CAN be more fun than receiving (as long as the condition isn’t imposed–by others, or by ourselves upon ourselves).

    It’s a strange idea, indeed, to think of ourselves as the SERVANTS of our children; just as it’s a strange idea to think of ourselves as their MASTERS. We’re all people trying to live–at different intervals along life’s arc. Children need to be given love as a natural expression, not as a duty…or a “career.” Ultimately, children learn best by example. IMO the best a parent can do for their children is to set an example of a caring, and developed and developing human being.

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