How to be an Anxious Parent

I am an anxious parent. Or more accurately, I’m an anxious person who happens to also be a parent.

But does that mean that I parent my children anxiously? I try not to, but happen not to be perfect.

As a confessed anxious mother, I try hard not to pass along my anxiety to my kids. My own version of the American dream: I would love to help my kids become more resilient than I will ever be. In fact, I worry about it. Because worrying is what anxious people do.

Which brings me to the latest brew-ha-ha in the DC parenting world. Reportedly, Child Protective Services investigated local parents who let their two kids, six- and ten-years-old, walk alone on Georgia Avenue (an close-in-suburban version of a four lane highway).

Judging by my Facebook feed (as one does) most parents reacted with some combination of three things: 1. I might not let my kids do that, but I do let them: play outside alone/walk around our neighborhood/walk a few blocks to school/ other showing of parent street cred, 2. I respect other parents’ right to be the judge of what their kids can and cannot handle, and 3. There are some parents who have poor judgment and that’s why we have CPS and laws against leaving young kids alone.

Local laws dictate that kids must be eight-years-old to be left alone or 13 to be left responsible for younger children.

Maybe some kids are ready before then. Maybe some kids aren’t ready until later. The consensus seemed to say that six seems young, but ten is old enough for such an adventure.

But what about the ten-year-old who was left in charge of her younger brother?  Is ten too young to be left in charge of a younger sibling?

My opinion—not to be confused with the opinion I believe every other parent should have—is that ten is too young. For me. For my kids (who have years to go before ten, plenty of time to prove me wrong, as they so often do).

Maybe it's the news accounts of young children accidentally shooting a sibling that makes me nervous about children left alone. Maybe it’s "just" anxiety. Certainly, the publicity surrounding every Amber Alert makes the world feel more dangerous than it is.  

And there's this--it doesn't matter what statistics say, once you’ve been a though a rare, difficult experience (in my case a ruptured ectopic pregnancy), statistics seem to lose power. Things that don't happen often do still happen to someone.

Child abduction by strangers is rare, but no one can tell you it doesn’t happen. This is usually when someone interjects that riding in a car is more dangerous. I don’t find it reassuring that more kids die in car accidents. That just makes be double-check that my kids are properly buckled in safe seats.

My biggest fear for the six- and ten-year-olds walking along Georgia Ave isn’t child abduction, it’s how many times I’ve heard “pedestrian struck” in the traffic report. Six-year-olds aren’t developmentally ready to be afraid to die. They’re pretty sure it’s reversible. And ten-year-olds shouldn't be burdened with the parent-level stress of looking after a sibling in a potentially dangerous situation. What if the six-year old gets hit by a car?

Trusting your gut is a central tenant of good parenting. At some point, you have to decide to trust your kid out in the world. Trusting your gut and listening to your kid is how you figure out when the time is right. 

As an anxious person, I second-guess myself when I feel worried. I know that I have fear that is outsized. I try to ignore the wildness of a mind overrun by anxious imaginings.

But some amount of fear is healthy. I can’t just throw gut-instincts out the window. I need them. So I struggle with trusting myself. I worry (as anxious people do) that I won’t recognize danger because I’m too busy trying to suffocate my fear, telling myself it’s anxiety, not reality, and trying to override anxiety I can't temper.

I try to sort anxiety from healthy fear. I try to teach my children one and not the other. And then I worry that I will fail, that I will ruin them.

But honestly, I don’t think my kids will suffer tremendously if their mom needs them to wait just a bit longer to walk a highway alone. As I used to tell other moms when someone was worried their baby wasn’t sitting up fast enough or walking soon enough or potty training on schedule, "They aren’t going to go off to college... not knowing how to walk along the street alone."

Right now, my kids are 6 and 3, so they’re not going anywhere alone. Later, I hope I’ll know when they’re ready to be more independent. In the meantime, what’s the hurry? Why do we want our kids to grow up so quickly?

I think the conversation about free-range kids has many moving parts. You don't have to put your kid on the subway before you're ready. There are other ways to structure safe, healthy, age-appropriate risk-taking. For instance, start with this.

We don’t all have to let our children loose on the street just to prove we’re not failing on teaching them independence. There are so many other ways to fail our children. Enough to keep our supposedly bubble-wrapped kids busy for quite awhile.

A last thought for the cynics among us… Think it’s a coincidence that the queen bee of free-range kids weighed in on our tiny town brewhaha? With her piece in the Post, Lenore Shenazy  wasn’t just sharing her thoughts, she was promoting her new show. Starts tomorrow on Discovery (which happens to be based in the same small town as the kids who caused all the fuss). As a former publicist, I say, “Nice work!” As a mother I say, “Spare me.”

In Defense of Other Moms

First, a story: 

About two years ago, I was walking to a UPS store with my baby on one hip, a box balanced under my other arm. My then four-year-old was carrying another box and walking nicely next to me, mercifully not doing anything to upset this delicate balance. I had it. I was ok.

But I was also ready for the whole thing to implode any second, to drop the box (or the baby) or for my older kid to stray into the busy parking lot. Even so, I almost said no when a nicely dressed lady offered to help. And even when I said yes, I had to tell her that I was only saying yes because I’d promised a mom friend that I would, now that I had two little ones.

As this other mom carried our box and walked us to the store, she talked about her grown kids, an older daughter and a younger son like mine, spaced three years apart like mine. She’d been there. She got it.

She knew that most of the time it’s all me, but that she could, however briefly, make me feel supported, like I didn’t have to do it all alone. Even though I thought I was handling it. Even though I probably could have done it alone. And often did, I didn’t have to. In this one moment, I didn’t have to be alone.

And in that moment, when I accepted help, without fear of being judged a mess, I couldn’t yet know that after leaving UPS, I’d have to change a poopy diaper in the back of my SUV, which was suddenly tiny and full of heavy things I had to move out of the way with one empty hand.

You never know what will go wrong next. Accepting help, feeling supported, lighter, put me in a better place not to freak out about the diaper change situation.  

And I know, because since then, there have been moments when I could be the one to help ease another mom’s burden, I know how good it feels to support someone else. To feel like you’re strong enough to support someone else.

And then a rant:

This whole “Mommy Wars” thing puzzles me. We probably live in the most non-judgmental period in American history. Not perfect, but so much more accepting of the many ways of being. Just in the last 10 years, the magnitude of the change in attitudes toward gay marriage alone leaves me so hopeful.

But if I only knew other mothers from what I read in books and articles and online, in blogs and comments sections, I would be terrified. And pretty pessimistic about the future of the human race. Luckily, I can venture out into the wider world where I see not-one-mom who is anything like the moms we’re supposed to believe are everywhere. 

It’s like they built “The Mommy Wars” and no one came.

And lastly, a de-bunking:

With six plus years of this mom-gig under my belt, having organized countless informal, weekly playgroups, volunteered at two different parent-cooperative preschools and attended dozens of music, yoga, ballet, soccer, and whatever else classes, I've met a lot of moms. And with very few exceptions, I can say this” Other moms are quite lovely. Actually, it’s more than that. Other moms effing rock!

“The Mommy Wars” is not just a laughable, media-contrived, non-existent phenomenon. It’s a problem. Its very non-existence is a problem. And it’s making being a mom harder than it needs to be for many moms.

I’m not going to deny a few internet trolls and a handful of random judgmental idiots. They exist in every other part of the real world, so why would we expect anything different from moms. Probably because we hold moms to a standard no one could possibly attain in every carpe-diem-moment of every precious day.

These imaginary war-mongering moms are nowhere I have been. But I have met a lot of women who are having trouble separating the self-doubt inside their own minds from constant judgment they imagine others are directing at them. Because we’re told that everyone is judging us and we believe it.

Before I was a mom, when I wanted to be a mom, I admit that I resented the moms of my peer group. They were a part of this club that I wanted to belong to and had this bond that made me so jealous and which I stupidly thought was fake and a fraud.

Well, now I know. Moms are bonded to other moms not to shut anyone out but to hold each other up.

So…

Thank you thank you thank you, awesome other moms!

On Being Santa

With Thanksgiving behind us, it’s full sprint to what I believe we are now supposed to call “the winter holidays.” Which means the grousing has begun over consumerism and forced cheer on one end, and “taking the Christ out of Christmas” on the other. Even if you can tune out Bill O’Reilly, it’s still peak time for crazy-making.  

Holidays—while supposedly a simple, charming series of picture perfect moments—are really quite the mess of history, religion, family dynamics, parenting style... Not to mention a regular marital health check-up. They are a magnet for grinches of all sorts. Including someone I may share a roof and a few  kids with.

For him, it’s something like this… Valentine’s Day? Hallmark holiday. Independence Day? Fireworks are just an outdated attempt at displaying of our military might. Labor Day? An attempt at disruption the connection between US workers and international unions by switching from May Day to September. And Thanksgiving? With perhaps the most phony origin story of all holidays—a complete fiction that covers up a shameful, bloody history.

Holidays are especially touchy for those of us—a majority of Americans—who don’t attend any sort of regular religious service. Or those whose spouse insists on having their own separate brain.

When not grounded by any particular set of beliefs or place of worship, holidays are a tinderbox near a campfire. 

Thanksgiving—the unofficial kick off of obligatory “Happy holidays” greetings—is an odd holiday. The history it hides behind is horrifying. The travel nonsense is head-to-dashboard insanity. And it was bad enough that Black Friday followed, but now we’re supposed to go shopping before our stomachs have settled. But, I hesitate to confess, it has always been one of my favorites, not for its origins, but for the actual way it’s celebrated. I love a day spent in the kitchen, cooking, taking more time to enjoy our food, to be with our loved ones, to slow down.

Whatever their origins, we experience holidays through the way we choose to celebrate—or not. We each have our own personal memories, and they’re never going to be the same as our spouse’s. For anyone who is co-parenting, negotiations ensue about which of the traditions of our parents and grandparents we will pass along to our children and which we would rather leave behind. Add that ball of wax to the list of what we should have— but never would have—discussed while we were still dating.

For me, someone not inclined to decorate beyond a Christmas tree, experiencing holidays as a parent has been an unexpected pleasure, making everything new all over again. My daughter loves parties so much that she tries to give out goodie bags after a play date. And don’t get me started about the name tags she insists our guests wear.   

The creation of new traditions is a welcome joy, but also something that feels very weighty to me. Being conscious of building someone else’s memories brings up so many forgotten ones. And I don’t want to get it wrong. 

As my husband and I have fumbled our way through creating the kind of holiday experiences we want for our kids, we have landed on a few new traditions that are not from either side’s ancestors, but one’s we have found with each other. We like walking around with the kids to see the local holiday lights, hot chocolate in hand. We like chopping down large green things and dragging them inside, so the tree thing is always nice. And decorating with tiny lights to break through the dark winter nights? That’s my favorite part.

But who knew that my husband’s childhood Santa always left the presents beside the fireplace and not under the tree? I mean, that’s just lunacy, no?

There are many holes in our stories. Our children are particularly troubled by our habit of lighting a fire on Christmas Eve, which would obviously scorch Santa’s behind. Oops!

I hardly remember believing in all of the holiday fluffery, but I do remember learning “the truth.” Sometime early in grade school, I went to my mother in tears because someone had told me there was no Easter bunny. I think she was surprised, actually. “You do know that Santa’s not real either right?” she asked. Apparently I did. A fat man in a red suit? Duh—total fake! A human-size bunny who brings eggs and candy? How could it not be true! I can be charmingly, aka ridiculously, naïve.

There is a lot of double-dealing when it comes to kids and holidays and I don’t have a great poker face. My parents didn’t go to any great lengths to convince us that any of the holiday characters were real. I wonder when my perfectly intelligent six-year-old will call us on this flying reindeer nonsense. For now, I answer her many questions with, “Well, the stories say…” How much lying am I willing do to keep up the façade? I’d hate for her to be the girl on the playground who ruins it for everyone, but someone’s gotta do it, right?

When a friend’s older son asked her point-blank last December, she replied with the very clever, “Ok, I will tell you the truth, but do you want me to answer you before or after Christmas?” Doesn’t take a genius to figure out which way he went on that one. I mean, what if the presents go away when you know who really brought them?

When you don’t have a comfortable religious home or disagree on how to tell the stories (do my kids really need to hear about Krampus?), it can be hard to create something from nothing and make it feel whole. We tripped all over each other before we found our way. And we’re not done yet.

While I won’t deny that holidays can be a time of forced family closeness and phony cheer, having kids has a way of renewing long-lost excitement about those moments we remember fondly. And it’s exciting to get to chose the rest. And then sit back with some egg nog and watch their faces.

I think there are an infinite number of ways to get the holidays right for your family. And really only one way to get it wrong: to forget to stop and look around.

Other People’s Children in an Age of Anxious Parenting

Last summer, during our annual family beach trip, I was in charge of naps. Each afternoon, my husband would take our no-longer-napping daughter for an Adventure-with-Daddy, and I would crash with my three-year-old son. It was perfect for everyone, especially me, because I was so exhausted in my new job that I actually needed a two-hour nap every day. 

And then one day… My son didn’t nap. And I did.

After I feel asleep, he somehow unlocked the door to the bedroom (which was locked because, well, this…), went downstairs and, not finding the rest of the family, decided they must have gone to the pool, unlocked the door to the outside world, and left to search for his daddy and his sister.

I’m sure there is a way to turn this story into a charming, magical masterpiece of children’s literature. An adventurous little boy sets off, pacifier in mouth, dressed only in superhero underpants and a t-shirt, with his floppy chocolate brown bunny under his arm.

In real life, this is every parent’s worst nightmare. In my imagination, it’s even worse. The minute he leaves my sight, I assume, he will be swept away in the trunk of the car of a psychotic pedophile, never to be seen again. You can say it’s not common, but you can’t tell me it doesn’t happen. We all know it does.

I woke up when he ran back into the bedroom absolutely terrified. I never actually felt him gone, but for the time it took for him to say "downstairs," "stranger," "couldn't find you,"  between sobbing tears, I had no idea what had happened to him. I'm sure horrible thoughts flew through my primate brain about home invasions and rape and murder, but it was almost like I couldn't hear, holding him, trying to get dressed and flying down the stairs, piecing together what had happened. 

What happened was, essentially, nothing. He wasn't found by a psychotic pedophile.

He was discovered by a lovely mother of two little boys who also try to venture out on their own. When we found her in the pool, she was happily splashing in the sunshine with her husband and kids, like a person who hadn't just saved my son's life. And mine, frankly.

I owe her in that deep kind of way, that even trying to repay would diminish.

Moments earlier, she had seen my son, alone but for his brown bunny, standing outside the gate to the pool, crying—having realized his sister and daddy weren’t swimming, and he didn't know how to find his mommy--me, sleeping stupidly in a nearby rented condo bedroom.

So she helped him. She took his hand and walked him around the little condo community, door to door, asking him if anything looked familiar. And when he found his rain boots inside our (probably-still-open) door, she stood and waited until she heard him find me. And then she left.

She didn’t judge. She didn’t follow him up to my room and tell me I was a horrible parent. She didn’t worry that I was an unfit mother—she heard me comfort him and then I heard the door close gently.

She was the embodiment of grace—easy-going, happy to help, it happens all the time, could have been anyone… I spent the rest of the day describing her as “the perfect person” to find my lost child. And she was. But she was more than that.

She was the safety net we don’t believe exists anymore.

By chance, the friends that were visiting us at the beach that day are among the most relaxed parents we know. (Their kids are older than ours by just enough to make them seem like infallible sages.) When I told them the story, I called the mom who fond my son “the perfect person” to have found him. And the wife, not disagreeing, said, “Ninety-nine percent of people who could have found him would be ‘the perfect person.’ ”

Most people—almost everyone—would help a lost child find his mother. Very few would have other ideas.

* * *

It’s been almost two years since 20 children and 6 adults were gunned down in Sandy Hook, CT. A few days after that tragic event, I attended a monthly parent education meeting at my kids’ preschool. The news was addressed only briefly, and most parents weren’t any more worried about their kids being killed at school than they’d been the day before, when those families had children that were still alive.

There were lots of remarks, in our parent community, about how kids were “more likely to be hit by lightning” and “way more likely to be killed in a auto accident.” Which is true. But…Leaving aside the fact that school shootings have become much more common, it didn’t matter to me how uncommon it was.

It happened. In real life, it happened. Twenty families were suddenly without their six- or seven-year-old children. I was a wet mess for the entire meeting. I seem always to be the most afraid. It's the biggest parenting goal I have, to raise children who aren't as anxious as I am.

* * *

A few months after my son went missing at the beach, a friend—a teacher and a mother—told a story about driving to work and seeing a little boy walking alone on a busy street in a neighborhood that would make many mothers uneasy. He had a backpack, was clearly walking to school, alone because his parents couldn’t make the walk with him, for whatever reason.

This friend happens to be someone who believes strongly that children don’t have enough opportunities these days to develop their confidence through independent adventure. That is, she is someone who believes that a child walking himself to school is a good thing. But somehow this boy was just a little too young, a little too uneasy, a little too something…

As she watched him walk along, knowing she would need to turn soon and would not be able to see him, she was torn about what to do. Just as she was about to turn, where it was the last moment to decide to intervene or not intervene, she kept driving. She watched him until she could no longer see him, and then, she decided, it would have to be someone else’s turn.

The next mom--or whoever--to see him would be responsible for keeping him safe for as long as they could see him. And then he would belong to someone else's watchful gaze, all the way to school. Imagine a relay team of people following him by seeing him, protecting him as he walked alone that day. A whole community, each one “the perfect person” to keep him safe until he arrived.

***

As parents today, we often talk about the days when parents told their kids to go outside and play, just be home for dinner, before the street lights flickered on for the night. It’s not so long ago. For most of us, that was our experience—one that we both remember fondly and fear passing along as a legacy to our own children.

Recently, I heard a radio reporter say that there are literally millions of children who are bought and sold, right now, today, as slaves and child prostitutes. Even in the US, this happens. Children are harmed by horribly imperfect people, sometimes their own parents. There are children who face real danger, children who need us not to turn away.

When my son was lost, the “perfect person” found him. Dumb luck. And almost anyone would have been the perfect person. More dumb luck. Those of us fortunate enough never to even imagine selling a child, those of us who would help another child find his mother, those of us who imagine other people’s children as the children of all of us, meant to be watched over by all of us… how do we build that? Or believe that it exists already.

How do we build a community where our children are safe to wander?

If we were less distracted by anxiety about our lucky children, would it be easier to build a world where more adults do more to keep more children safe? Children who face unimagined and unimaginable harm. 

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A Letter to My Pre-Kid Self

Dear Know-It-All,

Hi. You might not recognize me. I’m your post-kid self.

I may not go to the movies as much as you, or even know what movies are in the theater, but I do get cartoon jingles stuck in my head every day. So, it’s almost an even trade. Ok, maybe that’s not the best place to start with you… 

Point of praise: It’s good that you had big ideas about what parenting would be like, but they’re all gone now. These days, you could write a hefty hardcover filled with all the things you once thought you’d do when you became a parent. Chief among them: Never change! It’s funny now to think about how you thought motherhood would be. (You’ll hate reading that line, but like it or not—you have no idea.)

You think you will be different, that your kid will be different, that motherhood won’t change you. Ha—you even think you won’t let your kids eat in the car! When your best friend laughed quietly at that, I know it hurt you, but trust me on this: you can’t imagine the restraint she was showing.

I remember how much you hate those “It changes everything” baby shampoo commercials. And I remember your eyes-rolling when your best friend would say things about “three year olds,” as if she had some knowledge that went beyond her own kid. 

You’ve been through some tough times—abortion, ectopic pregnancy and the fear that you might not able to have a baby—so I’ll try to be easy one you. I have a lot more forgiveness than you could spare. I think I traded it for sanity.

I can still see you, after the ectopic rupture, sitting at a friend’s baby shower, feeling outside of the precious mom circle. You hated how moms seemed to form an exclusive club. There were times you wanted in. And times you looked down at them. How could another mother, a complete stranger, act as if she knows your friend better than you, just because they both have kids?

There’s no way to say, “You’ll see,” without condescension. People are different and they change in different ways, but there’s something that runs through nearly every person upon becoming a parent. Something that changes you. 

Here’s (just some of) what you don’t know: Parenting can be so lonely. And hard as hell. And it opens you up to a level of self-doubt that would have washed you out to sea before you had kids. And you will become bonded to other women, women you don’t know—through pregnancy pains, childbirth—however it goes, midnight nursing—or bottle feeding, sleep-deprived insanity, Target tantrums—in unimaginable ways.

 For now, you feel that connection as that thing that shuts you out when you’re with friends who’ve recently become parents. Later, you’ll know it as that thing that keeps you sane. The bond between mothers (parents) is an intense thing—it can make friends of strangers and strangers of your friends. Don’t worry—you’ll still keep the old friends around, at least the good ones, but you’ll need lots of new mom-friends if you’re going to survive motherhood.

I hate that you looked askance at parents who left work by the clock to get home to kids or had a different schedule to match the school day or who never said yes to post-work drinks. I wish I knew how to go back in time with an understanding of how it would feel when you are the one rushing off not to be late for pick-up, not wanting your child to be the last one waiting.

I wish there was something I could say to you, to make you understand how important such things will become. We could be allies—young singles and tired mothers—if we only knew how to say these things to each other. If future-moms and future-dads could see ahead to what they will want out of their jobs, maybe work would be a different place. The problems mothers—and fathers—face won’t improve. Not until you can imagine how much your needs will change, how the center of your solar system will shift.

It’s so interesting for me to watch working pregnant women just before they go off to maternity leave, and to listen to new moms with infants talk about parenting. The things they say, I have said those things. I have had those conversations—about sleep, about childcare, about how nothing will change, about how I will still be the same person.

The current focus on what sets us apart, as opposed to the common struggles we all will go through, may be part of the reason that this country—and the companies employing its citizens—is so hard on parents. If only non-parents could see how much that culture, that insistence on a life that isn’t much of a life, impacts them, too. You could literally run marathons (the flexible workplace would help with your intense training). 

I wish you could imagine that, because I could really use you on my side. 

Thanks for listening,

You, mother of two

Imposter Mom Syndrome

Both times we left the hospital with new babies, I felt like an imposter. Like an overgrown teenager who didn’t take the grown-up test and wouldn’t have passed. “They’re really gonna let us just walk out the door like this, with a baby human? Who’s in charge of checking in to make sure we’re doing it right?”

I’ve talked to lots of friends about this imposter syndrome, and they have had this moment, too. One day, you wake up and the police officers are way younger than you, and it’s weird.

But I realized something this week: I’m a grown-up.

No, really, I totally am. Leaving a job that wasn’t working for me or my family was a decisive move. One of the most self-directed intentional thing I’ve ever done. There have been a lot of “Sure, why not?" moments along the way. There was an open door somewhere and I went through it.

This time, when my life wasn’t the way I wanted it to be, I changed it.

For now, I’ve renewed my stay-at-home status. There are people who believe I am doing just the right thing, focusing on my family, not working outside the home. Some of them, I would not like very much. And there are people who think I’m a relic, not living up to modern day commandments. I probably wouldn’t like most of them either.

This week it hit me—I’m in charge of me.  The only question I need to answer in my current self-doubting, insecure incarnation is this: Am I ok with me?

I know that sounds horribly trite, like a big fat cliché. I’ve had these thoughts many times, but this time was different. Because this time I’m a grown up.

The people who would judge who I am based on my current state of affairs—one way or the other—will step off, as we used to say back in the day, if I feel good about what I’m doing and emanate that feeling. Or at least I’ll stop seeing their judge-y faces because I’m too busy living my life according to my own, grown-up desires.

Don’t get me wrong here. There are days when I’m no Rosie the Riveter. The self-confidence required to not only figure out what you want to do, but to do it and not ask anyone else for advice, that’s pretty grown-up. There are bound to be slip-ups.

In grad school, I had a professor who told me that my poetry is “not for everyone,” but that people who “get” me will “really get” me. It’s kind of like being okay with that. I’m not for everyone.

Over the last six years, since I have become a mother, I have found it incredibly hard to be okay with me, to feel confidence in my choice, but I never really figured out whether those questioning voices were coming from someone else or from me.

When I was first home with my first baby, I went through a whole messy process of trying to figure out who this new person was. She doesn’t work, she runs playgroups, she does mommy and me yoga. Was that ok? Was I happy? Did I need more? And then the anxious questions tumble out… What if my husband left me? What if he suddenly died? It was a vulnerable place to be and it made me very insecure—financially and emotionally.

Home again now, after working a real, pays-me kind-of-job, I’m cycling through all of that again. All of the doubts, the insecurities and the questions came back at me full force in a way I had not expected.

Working at a job gave me the confidence that I still have value in that part of the world, that I have something to offer and am welcome if/when I choose it. I spent money without checking in first, because it was my money. And I hadn’t even really noticed that, when I wasn’t working, I had felt like it wasn’t mine. With the first paycheck, that feeling of security came back and reminded me what life is like when you earn your own money.

That may be the hardest part of being “at home” for me—completely relying on another person in a whole body-whole life kind of way. Just like falling in love and realizing what you’ve just handed to someone is the ability to hurt you.

Having kids adds to this, because it’s about more than whether I get hurt, it’s about my instinct to protect these vulnerable offspring who have been entrusted to me. What if I’m suddenly, by accident or choice, the only one to love and feed and clothe and support them? Yikes.

Having a job comforted that part of my mind. I thought it would last, but now I think it’s just a part of it. Being a “stay-at-home” mom is a choice to be vulnerable, and it needs to be paired with the peace of mind that I would be able to do all of those grown-up things if it was left to me alone. And then letting it go.

Because you can’t think about all of the weight of that every day and stay sane.

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The Myth of Choice Parenthood

My mom was 21 when I was born. By 25, she had four kids. Today, that has shock value. I get tired just thinking about it.

I was a full decade older than my mom when I was a tired new mom with babies who wouldn’t sleep. It’s no wonder I was always tired. Being up all night in your twenties is easy. I was otherwise occupied on my 20-something late nights.

When I became a mother at 32, I certainly didn’t have the energy (or the body) that I had at 22. Three years later, pregnant again at 35, I was even more tired. The exhaustion of parenting is cumulative. Being pregnant starts it off with a bang, followed by seemingly endless night wakings, and then they learn how to talk… and you learn about a whole new depth of exhaustion.

Coming up on my 40-somethings, one bad night’s sleep can really throw me for a loop.

When I was 20 and pregnant, I made a choice not to have a baby. I had an abortion, stayed in college, and took the time to (kind-of) figure out what kind of life I wanted while it was still all mine. 

Even at 27, newly-married, I still wasn’t ready for a baby. I remember the feeling very clearly—on my honeymoon in Paris, failed birth control left me in tears in fetal position in one of those short, deep French bathtubs. The idea of a baby was terrifying.

We are only two or three parenting generations into birth control being legal for married couples—and (mostly) reliable. The Supreme Court is still ruling on cases that impact women’s access to birth control. And yet the sense that we can control our family planning is almost taken for granted.

Don’t get me wrong—birth control is awesome. But it doesn’t always work. It just doesn’t—there are plenty of unexpected babies to prove it. Still, what it has done for women could fill volumes.

Many of my generation spend a sexually active decade avoiding pregnancy, with the naïve assumption that it will happen when we’re ready. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.

The idea that you can choose when to get pregnant, naturally or otherwise, choose when to give birth or how, choose what your life will be like when your baby is born, whether you’ll nurse, how much sleep you’ll get, what your children will be like and what they’ll need…it’s all false freedom.

The first lesson of parenting—you have no control, surrender is your only hope. 

So, when I read (here and here and here) about the controversy surrounding decisions by Apple and Facebook to pay for employees to freeze their eggs, my so-called choice feminism told me that more options available to women is always good. Except when it’s not.

There are good medical, economic and cultural arguments against egg freezing as a catch-all solution. For some, IVF is a gift, but for others it’s a disappointment—either way it’s far from a sure thing. And I agree with all of the cynics who see this as a way for companies to take the pressure off being a parent-friendly workplace. It does seem like a ploy to keep younger workers away from that struggle, to insist that pregnancy and parenting are things you can postpone and that will be there for you when you want them…In fact, why even time to date and settle down? You’ve got another decade at least. Just stay at your desk. We’ll take out your dry-cleaning. Go play ping-pong if you’re worried. 

The result is a line is drawn between parents and non-parents, further sidelining those who would ask for more flexibility, day care options, sick leave, and other things that make work work. Even for non-parents, it maintains a cultural work ethic of having no life outside your job. No time for family, friends, whatever you want to do can wait. I hear marathon training is pretty all-consuming. It doesn’t have to be a parents-only argument against reasonable work expectations. Most workers would prefer a life that offers more—whatever that means for them.

It seems to me that we need a re-centering. The articles about the science of egg freezing, the struggles of IVF, the reality that it may not be as easy to have a baby a decade later, those are needed voices. But there’s more to having a family than how hard it is to get pregnant. If you have a partner and want a baby, or even if you don’t have a partner and want to have a baby, it’s misleading to be told it’s all the same.

Forget about getting pregnant and giving birth, having a baby is harder when you’re older. Being up late nights, having the energy to run after a toddler… all of parenting requires energy. While we may be more emotionally ready to parent at 40, we can’t ignore that our body was more ready at 20.

Similar to our focus on the wedding and the honeymoon and not the marriage, our attention to procreation is heavily weighted on the pregnancy and childbirth side of things and not to the life of parenting that follows. No one cares about that until they’re there. And apparently it annoys non-parents when parents so much as open their mouths. 

I spent a good six months planning my wedding. A year is hardly uncommon. And I paid good attention in my prenatal classes, even took notes. Six-weeks focusing on everything up until the baby is in the world. Anything else is left for the steep-learning curve that begins when the baby arrives.

Maybe we should devote at least one week to the “happily ever after” of parenthood. Maybe pregnant couples should be required to do an internship—spend a day with actual parents, ask them questions. They could use your help anyway. Childcare’s not cheap (nor should it be—those ladies work hard!).

Parenting is hard in the same way marriage is hard. Making and birthing a baby—the only things we care about pre-parenthood—have virtually nothing to do with parenting. It’s like saying that someone who could plan a lovely wedding is likely to have a happy marriage.

The baby is easy, it’s being a mom that’s hard. And sometimes the baby isn’t easy. How are Facebook and Apple going to help with that?

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