From
the moment they either decide to try to get pregnant, or find out
they have become so, mothers
are told by many experts that they must be “natural.”
This does not mean behave and parent in ways that come naturally.
This means following a strict agenda of natural (attachment) parenting,
that will, again, be the only sure-fire way to insure not only the
healthy physical development of the child, but also the kind of
adult they will turn out to be. Peggy O’Mara, the editor of Mothering magazine (note the title) wrote in the Oct. 2003
issue about what good friends she and her adult children are, a
self-serving diatribe meant to be inspirational: “we sit on
my bed in the morning and sometimes talk about how unusual it is
that we all get along so well.” Later, she and her adult women
friends also gather on a bed, the pre-teenage children “nuzzling
and cuddling [with them]just like little puppies.” The cause
of all this heartwarming, animal slobbering, bed-sitting: natural
parenting, including unmedicated childbirth, taking “our babies
into our arms and carry[ing] them around with us everywhere”
[italics mine], co-sleeping, breast feeding until the child gives
it up, home schooling. O’Mara states, in what could be the
mantra of the natural parenting movement, “that the bonding
and attachment of the early years provide a rich foundation for
a lifetime of love.”
Doesn’t that sound
lovely? Don’t we all—whether we are mothers, children
or both—want that? Unfortunately, what is implied here—and
in all the literature of natural parenting—is that this high
intensity parenting is the only method that guarantees this love,
this development. Or, as Dr. Sears, the man who gave the name “Attachment
Parenting” to this high intensity style, says, “we have
found that attachment parented children are likely to be: smarter,
healthier, more sensitive, more empathetic, easier to discipline,
more bonded to people than things” (17) than the non-attachment
parented child. He doesn’t say just how he found this out,
or what the millions of non-attached children are actually like.
Of course, these results
of can be automatically assumed by the way Dr. Sears and others
have appropriated the terms “attachment parenting.”
and “natural parenting.” If you want to be bonded and
attached with your child (and vice-versa), you’d better follow
Attachment Parenting. If you want to be a natural mother, you’d
better mother Naturally. By extension, those who choose other childrearing
methods must not be attached, must be unnatural. Too bad if your
way of being natural doesn’t fit into this mold. Too bad if
you do not have the ability, the temperament, the time to carry
your baby everywhere with you, sleep with her, nurse her until she
is two. You and your child will not be as attached to each other,
your child may not develop normally, her adulthood will be scarred
and your relationship will be jeopardized. Oh, and according to
O’Mara, if you took pain medication during childbirth your
child is more likely to become addicted to drugs as an adult. So
you’d better get to work and ‘be natural.” Don’t
worry if this all seems to much for you. According to Dr. Sears
“instead of feeling tied down, mothers feel tied together
with their babies” (15). None of these “natural”
experts seem to take into consideration that a mother and child
tied together can still drown.
I do believe there is,
for some mothers, however they parent, a mysterious connection between
mothers and their children that circumscribes time and space and
does make us feel “tied together” with our babies. But
this bond is not present in all women, is not the same for the women
who possess it, and is utterly irrelevant in the day to day job
of mothering. To say that maternal nature is the main reason mothers
are good at mothering is to turn mothering into a passive act that
denies the mother any consciousness or skill, shames her into believing
she should be at all times the enthusiastic and gifted primary caretaker
of her children, and relieves any other person or group (including
the father) from any real obligation.
The truth is, motherhood
is not a natural act, it is a learned one. The more education, resources
and economic security a woman has, the more effective a mother she
will be. To say that women know how to mother naturally is like
saying a construction worker can build skyscrapers because he or
she is comfortable with heights. This denies the importance of training,
hammer and nails, safety ropes, teamwork, disability and unemployment
insurance in case something goes wrong, life insurance in case the
worst happens. Mothers have few of these safeguards. Instead, mothers
are told that emotional satisfaction is both our motivation and
its own reward, and that to ask for (mothers don’t demand)
any other security or compensation is unnatural, unwholesome and
inappropriate.
In her seminal work
Of Woman Born, Adrienne Rich had this to say about the
assumptions behind “natural” motherhood:
First, that a “natural”
mother is a person without further identity, one who can find her
chief gratification in being all day with small children, living
at a pace tuned to theirs; that the isolation of mothers and children
together in the home must be taken for granted; that maternal love
is, and should be, quite literally selfish; that children and mothers
are the “causes” of each others sufferings (22).
I’m sure that
there are many women who would not ascribe these assumptions to
their own lives yet who believe they should act in accordance with
the beliefs these assumptions engender, or feel that there is something
wrong with them when they do not.
No wonder mothers feel
the pressure to be all and more for their children, no matter who
we are and what the circumstances of our lives. So much of popular
culture as well as parenting literature leaves us little option
but to feel that every time we do the slightest thing for ourselves
alone, without focusing on our child, we are putting him or her
at risk. No wonder many mothers feel so constantly inadequate, guilty,
and quick to judge the choices of others. We are told there is too
much at stake in our behavior to feel otherwise. |
