bits and bants vol.50
give yourself freedom in motherhood
Well, well, well if it isn’t me forcing myself to write because I can feel myself go a bit squirrely because it has been so long. I feel as if my summer attitude of acceptance that summer is just as busy as the school year just more unorganized and with less routine has gone well for the most part. But I do feel this itchy anxiety creeping in telling me I haven’t done such and such and need to find time for whatever. One of the things that has been nagging me is to write in this space—and I am doing it this week before we go away on holiday and the chaos of coming home eats up another couple weeks!
One day when I am an organized Writer with Thoughts who will talk about how popular and how big her platform/Brand is(hahaha) I will pontificate on many different things. I wish I could pontificate on Being a Mother more, but my rational brain tells me that there is such a catastrophic margin of error that I hopefully will never do it.
For some reason this week I was reminded that maybe the most fundamental concept in motherhood is figuring out what is important right now for you—the individual unique mother and your unique circumstances of today, not in five years, or when you magically have time. It is what is important to actual you not the weird expectations you think people put on mothers. Frankly, people think of mothers so little that they really have no real expectations. They are around children even less, and have even less knowledge of what taking care of children actually involves, that you shouldn’t worry about those made up expectations one little bit.
The reality is that mothers have much more freedom than we give ourselves credit for. We have the freedom to decide what’s important to our family and ourselves today. And we can make a different decision tomorrow. We do not have to have a clean house if that’s not what actually matters to us. We do not have to make new and unique meals for our children every day if that is not what matters to us. If what matters to one woman is to wear dresses everyday and make her house a whole aesthetic that is her God given right! So too is it the right of the mother to want to be out and at activities everyday and not cleaning her house! It’s through these different choices that women can and should have their best use of freedom! Now of course it’s not total freedom because children also have a lot of wants and desires that we have to actually do things for. But there is a much wider margin of making the needs/wants of the child work as well as making our lives happier and the way we want than we often give ourselves credit for.
I was thinking of all this because I’ve heard of struggles of new-ish moms and the weird pressures they put on themselves. Like the weird expectation that the dishwasher needs to be loaded and running by a certain time when it’s just one mom and three young kids and a baby in the house. I just want to give that mom a hug, grip her face in my hands and squish is like a Jewish grandmother and tell her, “Who the fuck cares if the dishwasher is loaded?!”
Because it honestly doesn’t matter. Sure, there are days upon endless days of babyhood and toddlerhood where it feels like you have accomplished nothing and for the love of all that is good and holy just loading and starting the dishwasher would feel like the equivalent of crafting the first aeroplane and flying with a Wright brother. I understand that deep need. But also, is that dishwasher important enough to ruin your day and mental outlook for the day? No. It’s not. Your attitude and doing what helps you get through the day with endlessly needy babies who at the same time are endlessly adorable is what is important here. If that means you watch a cheeky episode of Love Island instead of the dishwasher that is what should happen. If that means you read an incredibly dry economics study because that’s your field of interest, then do that with your precious spare minutes. But don’t become a slave to these weird expectations that we put on ourselves.
I just want to give advice to new moms to find the ways that motherhood works for you not you working for some fictional motherhood. The freedom is in the uniqueness of the position. You are your own boss as a mom and also the boss of your children. You make those calls and there is freedom in that. And give yourself time to figure out how you want to do that. I would say it takes about five years to find your groove in motherhood. I know that sounds like an extraordinarily long time, but I think that’s the average. I think you try a lot of things out in five years and by the time five years have gone by you’ve got at least one kid who can sorta put on their own shoes and you have figured out whether or not you like moms groups. Your groove can change, it can go through lean times, efficient and productive times, it can go through straight hard times, but the groove is yours.
The basics of motherhood, of keeping your kids alive and fed are actually extremely big and important things. They do not happen easily or without cost. They do not happen automatically. You are the one who provides that day in and day out, and if “that’s all” you do in one day that is incredibly productive. They are days that count and matter to not only your kids but to you. They are changing you and growing you and sustaining you even if you feel like you’re not getting anything out of it or struggling through it. The days matter. You can find small joys and small ways to live out your freedom even in those days, find them. And never think the days will continue to be the same forever, because the one constant in motherhood is constant change and that is to our benefit sometimes but also to our constant grief.
This is scattered thoughts I’ve had and need to tell myself right now. Maybe this whole post coulda been a tweet, or maybe she needed to type for several uninterrupted minutes.
bits:
I feel like I am the only person who immediately starts spewing expletives when it comes to this subject so read this much more eloquent piece from the always eloquent Matthew Walther.
- shared his review of a biography of Anthony Bourdain the other day from a few years back but I enjoyed it so much. Is it because I just enjoyed Bourdain so much? I still pray for him.
- already tried a Smitten Kitchen recipe that I shared earlier this week on instagram but still need to give a go when I finally have zucchinis from my garden erupting at a furious pace, but it’s going to be a few more weeks longer. But in the meantime try my most favourite bougie summer lunch that I’ve loved from Smitten Kitchen for years. She’s a zucchini savant. All her zucchini recipes are gold.
And as always
tie wrote something so good I can only fantasize about the ability to turn out something so well written. It’s fine. I’m fine.
reading, watching, what have you:
A variety of children are always somewhere so my viewing is really up in the air. But with my older kids we’ve been watching Dept Q on Netflix which is pretty good, I haven’t finished it so I’m reserving judgement. I would watch Matthew Goode act out the phone book though so I am fairly biased, and the language is A LOT. So be forewarned.
I have started the great biography on Nancy Mitford by the great
because I find her substack so great that I started to feel guilty that I hadn’t read any of her actual books yet. Life in a Cold Climate has Laura’s excellent wit and a perfect amount of biographer injection. Which is hard to do because too much biographer opinion is grating, but not enough opinion is too boring.Come to think of it I’m also reading another book that came from
’s recommendation as well, Mapp and Lucia. So far it feels like a hilarious combination of Wodehouse and Pym and it feels just right for summer.I just got caught up on my instagram reviews from MARCH. Truly I need to get my life together.
As a lovely footnote I wanted to point out to all you dedicated readers that the amazing Ignatius Press has given me a 35% off coupon code, CHRISTYNOVELS, for all their novels for the entire summer! I point this out because you all know the absolute destruction I laid on The Father’s Tale in this space this past winter, but Ignatius Press is full of such stand-up people that although fully aware of my review they extended me further review copies, coupon codes, and giving away an entire series of mysteries on my instagram page. I know you will appreciate them and check out their wide array of novels, including their novels for kids!
Ok, I’m off to clean my house, pack up, and hopefully holiday for a week or so! Wishing you all the loveliest weekend!
Christy
Re: the dishwasher thing, I think it's so easy to feel that if we can just do SOMETHING to regain some control in our chaotic lives, we'll be HAPPIER. When in reality, motherhood is just one long surrender to loss of control and you gotta choose to be happy anyway, or not. But I do think being able to thoughtfully embrace that freedom you talk about as a mom really can ease the process, if we let it.
Thank you!! I feel that Catholic mothers *especially* should be reminding each other of this, since they have more kids than average and are swimming upstream in many ways so it's paramount that mothers should feel they have the freedom to mother in the way that makes sense for them at any given time. Unfortunately, Catholics mothers seem to be some of the worst culprits for pontificating about how motherhood/family life *should* look, and oh by the way you should be managing this ideal with 6+ kids. This is largely why I had to get off social media - I still feel like I'm too early in motherhood to let all that stuff roll off my back, so I just had to cut it out.