On Motherhood

On Tuesday, the Young Women asked me to give a few thoughts on motherhood and preparing for motherhood.  I thought a lot about what I would say--I was pretty sure they didn't want my politically-charged, anti-doctor, pro-mid wife/natural birth tirade, so I moved beyond that and the only thing I came up with was a super cynical response to all things mother.  Which is awesome considering I'm now in the "danger zone" of 38 weeks.  I'm sure they were wondering if I knew how I got pregnant so I could avoid further situations.  When I got home, I felt pretty terrible that I was so negative, because I didn't really mean it to be.  So here is my attempt to readjust and rephrase what I said--just to clarify a few things.

How to Prepare for Motherhood:

Number one: realize that motherhood is a constant stream of unending failures and that no body really cares how you feel because dinner still needs to be made, children bathed, rocked, played with and put to bed.  So toughen up because you won't be the best at anything any more.  You won't get award certificates for trying or even for doing well.  Thicken up that beautifully tanned, well-shaven, daily bathed skin of yours and realize that you are destined for failure.

Why failure?  Because there's no way to be a good mom.  Define good mom.  Go ahead.  Try.  Good moms never feed their kids sugar?  Good moms make cookies with their kids every day?  Good moms always have clean, well-dressed children?  Good moms let their kids explore their creativity and dress themselves?  Defining what a good mom does leads to a serious of contradictions so that's not going to work.

We could try to define a good mother by the outcome.  Good moms have children who all go to Harvard?  Or even just to college?  Good moms have children who are all rich?  Good moms have children who all go on missions?  Good moms have children who all get married in the temple?  Well there goes just about every mom I know.  Defining a good mom by outcome, denies children of any agency or responsibility for their own actions.

Let's take a minute and look at some parents from the scriptures--notice that for the most part people features in the scriptures are prophets or in other ways super righteous people.  People we could consider to be good parents--whatever that means.  First off, Eve the mother of all living.  Her son killed her other son.  Guess she's out of mother of the year award.  Sariah, as in Lehi and Sariah.  Two of her sons repeatedly tried to kill another of her sons.  She's out too.  Let's try the wife of Alma the Younger.  Her son lead countless souls astray when he hooked up with a harlot while on a mission.  Fail.  Now the highly praised mothers of the 2000 stripling warriors.  I think we can all agree that the Stripling Warriors turned out pretty well--they enough faith that not one of them got killed despite fighting in several battles.  But what we don't know about these women is how many of their sons decided not to join Helamen.  And lastly, Mary, the mother of Jesus, got reprimanded by Jesus when she got mad at him for staying in the temple.  So even these great, powerful, super-righteous women failed, to one degree or another, in their attempt at motherhood.

You will fail.  You will do something wrong.  You need thick skin so start now--start not letting things bother you.  Suck it up and move on.

So why bother trying?  First off, if you have children already, if you don't try, you'll be held accountable for all their sins (Doctrine and Covenants 68:25).  So you need to at least try.  Second, what better why to learn and grow.  Children are the best revealers of weakness that I know--you have a problem with patience that you can hide at work.  Try hiding it from a two-year-old who found a pair of scissors and your favorite dress.  You can't fix something that you don't know about, or have practice fixing every day (Ether 12:27).

After all this.  All this guaranteed failure this is the conclusion I came to--why even bother becoming a mother to begin with:

I love being a mother.  A stay at home mother even.  Because what job do you know that everyone expects and knows you will in some way fail at and accepts it?  None, except mother.  Yes, on occasion you'll get that one person at the grocery store who knows everything about parenting and about your children and could raise them a million times better than you could and doesn't mind telling you this while you're trying to figure out how much milk to buy.  Thank you Stranger.  But, in general, people know and expect you to fail.  So it's ok to quit.  Every day.  Trying to get the toilets cleaned but the 4-year-old really wants to read a story and the 2-year-old just wants to be held?  Quit.  Just give up.  The toilets will still be dirty tomorrow so read that story and hold that toddler.  Children bickering and fighting and in all ways making unpleasant noise and you just want to scream too?  Quit.  Just give up.  Go to the park.  Play outside.  Lock the kids in separate rooms and you in yours.  People except it and accept it will happen.  And then, when those dirty, mismatched, irritating hoodlums finally fall asleep after an hour of coaxing, threatening, and bribing, sneak back in and have a nice long look at them and all of a sudden they are angels.  So precious and perfect and you almost explode you're so full of love and pride and you realize for the one millionth time that nothing is better, more reassuring, more joyful, more fulfilling than children.  Even if, no matter how hard you try, when they're 28, they'll find something you did wrong.  Like never feed you cheesecake.  It's worth it.  All worth it.  But get ready now, Young Women of the Entitlement Generation, to fail and accept it and revel in the amazing degree of freedom this gives you to quit and try something new, every day.