“Representing motherhood puts you in a double-bind because audiences expect you to be ‘authentic’ because you’re representing this foundational — even sacred — social relationship between mothers and children, but at the same time, you’re under enormous pressure both from brand partners and the audience to look a certain way.” Kathryn Jezer-Morton, in conversation with Anne Helen Petersen
I started to write this piece – or, at least, I gave it a headline and copied and pasted the above quote – in October of 2021, two weeks after I gave birth to Atlas.
Of course, then, I got sidetracked, first by life and then by the hormones and the sheer overwhelm and the shock of having a baby, and writing about the concept of motherhood and the perception and judgment of women’s parenting abilities seemed… not like something I was mentally or emotionally able for, and it’s been taunting me quietly from my drafts folder ever since.
That October, the question – not only, I suppose, of what makes a mother, but of what makes a good mother – was very much front of mind for me.
People will tell you (oh, will they tell you, over and over again) that the most important thing you need to provide for your child is love, even though Maslow would most definitely disagree. Love as arbiter of acceptable motherhood is too obvious to be used as any kind of benchmark; we all know that it’s simply not that straightforward.
And, in any case, love can also be an indicator of bad mothering, most often seen in the idea that women who love their sons too much – this does not seem to be a concern for daughters, as the female of the species functions as a sort of sponge for love, while the male has a limit to the amount of love he can take – somehow irrevocably damage, pervert, or distort them.
There’s an expectation, I think, that all women have the innate ability to mother; that to be a woman is to be a (potential) mother; that, when a women does not automatically “take” to motherhood, there is an underlying reason for that. She is suffering from postpartum depression, she is hormonal, she is overtired, or any combination of the three.
And it’s easy for us to see, from the outside, who is doing a good job, and who is doing a bad job, thanks to social media and, I guess, the tendency of our deeply flawed human brains to make snap judgments about people when we have only a tiny fraction of the facts (if we have any at all).
Before Atlas was born, I fell down a rabbit-hole of gossip threads focused almost exclusively on mothers. These women also happened to be beauty influencers, podcasters, journalists and radio presenters, but once their status shifted from “woman” to “mother”, even in the first trimester, right after she had announced her pregnancy, the tone of the threads changed, almost immediately.
No longer were the posters criticising her choice of lipstick, or lamenting her brand disloyalty. A big bugbear on these threads is when an influencer will use Clinique one week, and Image Skincare the next, which seems to entirely disregard the fact that, in order to be a beauty influencer, say, one must be interested in beauty, and therefore may try a range of skincare. In fact, could one be a beauty influencer if one was truly loyal to one’s favourite skincare / makeup / haircare brands? Would you try nothing new? How would you ever talk about beauty products?
Suddenly, the most important thing – even, I would say, the only important thing – was how this woman was speaking about, or to, her child; how she was comporting herself, now that she was a mother; how she was looking after herself and her body; how she was portraying motherhood and breastfeeding and the postpartum period and and and and… She began to exist exclusively as mother, and nothing else.
I read posts where people speculated about which of her children one mother favoured; another was said to be giving her child some sort of anxiety disorder by being “all over the place” (who among us, etc). Each step became a misstep.
The weird thing is, it would make sense for the woman herself to feel like that, at least in those early weeks when lack of sleep makes logical thought incredibly challenging and the only thing that seems to matter is keeping your tiny succubus alive. But for strangers on the internet to take such an interest in another woman’s child? Another woman’s parenting?
Of course, where there is a man in the equation – a husband, a partner, a dad, essentially – he is not under half as much scrutiny. “The poor kids, off to the grandparents’ again; she is always out gallivanting,” the posts would read, with no mention of the other parent in the equation. Why is his gallivanting okay, while hers somehow represents her abject failure as a mother?
The answer to this, as to so much else, is, obviously: the patriarchy. The Western world has done us all a great disservice by reducing a man’s role in the family unit to that of breadwinner, provider and protector, and entirely neglecting a man’s capacity to nurture, to love, or to comfort.
In literature, the “bad mother” has stood in many a spotlight: Matilda’s mother, in Roald Dahl’s book of the same name; Gustave Flaubert’s Emma Bovary, in Madame Bovary; Lolita’s Charlotte Haze; Cersei Lannister, in George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series. But these mothers are so bad, it’s inexcusable; their neglect, cruelty, and perversion often result in dire consequences for their children.
The bad mothers of today are women who spend too much time painting their nails, and not enough time making home-made macaroni cheese for their children; they go on weekends to London with Clarins, while taking their children to West Cork for a two-week camping trip; they speak openly about how difficult it is to remain patient and loving with a challenging two-year-old (while, crucially, seeming to remain pretty patient and loving with said two-year-old).
Online, the bar for entry to the good mothers club is sky-high. You must:
Never complain about your child, because one day they will be old enough to look on the internet and they will, undoubtedly, trawl through the annals of your social media presence and unearth a moment in time where you spoke about how annoying they were, and be, at best, embarrassed. At worst, they will file for emancipation and never speak to you again.
Give your child a wide array and variety of foods, all of which must be home-made and contain absolutely zero sugar or salt. (If you are giving your child processed food, you animal, make sure not to post it to Instagram.)
Spend at least 95% of your spare time with your child, or children, doing things that they are guaranteed to enjoy (and if you’re reading this and thinking, there are no guarantees with children, then I guess you’re a terrible mother). If you spend even an hour away from them and seem to be having fun, you must recite 10 decades of the Rosary and 14 Our Fathers and promise never to do it again.
Always, always be seen to be smiling at your child, and during any mention of your child. Anything that looks even remotely like a scowl, a frown, a slight tilt of the head or narrowing of the eyes is to be avoided. (If you happen to see a woman look at her child with any of these facial expressions, immediately call child services.)
Know, immediately and without a moment’s hesitation, what the best course of action is for your child, and be decisive in its employment. Any dithering is seen as weakness, while taking the wrong course of action is actionable in and of itself. See above re: child services.
I understand the very human propensity for judging other people. I do it too. But I like to consider myself an equal opportunities judger. If I find that I’m judging a woman for what kind of mother she is, I ask myself why it is that her husband is getting off, scot free. And if I find myself thinking, wow, this makes me a bad mother, I ask myself, is Brandin having similar thoughts? And when I realise that he most definitely is not, I try to let go of that judgment I’m reserving for myself, too.
And just because I haven’t shared this in a while… a palate cleanser.