Mommy Wars, Ugh

I had that horrible expression ‘Mommy Wars’, stuck in my head when I woke up. It must have been some kind of terrifying dream that I mercifully can’t remember. But the term is an interesting one, if utterly ghastly.

First of all, I dislike immensely the word ‘Mommy’. It’s not that I don’t like being a mother, or that being a mother isn’t an essential part of who I am, but the word ‘Mommy’ flung as it is at me a thousand times a day by my children, isn’t something I like being called on the Internet. Mommy Blogging, which I guess this must be, when given that appellation, risks to sound both trite and preachy. I wish there could be something grander and more gracious. Something heading towards Mother, or O Life Giving One, rather than Mommy.

Second, it is past due that women stop being at ‘war’, particularly on the Internet, with one another. The limits of a blog post means that not every single essential point of every single controversy can be addressed every single time. Some grace has be to measured out. For example, if I say, as I did yesterday, that women should be allowed to find a dignified purpose and identity in mothering, even if they don’t homeschool, even if they don’t go to work, I am by no means knocking homeschooling, and going to work. Gosh, I’m a homeschooler, and, much to my chagrin because I didn’t really want to, I have worked outside of the confines of my home, sometimes even for money. Or, for another example, if I were to say talk about the merits and benefits of homeschooling, I wouldn’t therefore be trying to indicate to the wide world that sending your child to school is somehow bad. When a person, like me, tries to circle round an idea and nail some thought home, the reader might sling about some grace by not immediately rushing in with all the numbers of thoughts not expressed. I can’t write a whole book every day, much as I’d like to.

Which leads me to thought number three. Some have remarked, with eyes wide open and jaw lightly clenched, that set look of wondering horror spread over the face, that the pace of writing here is as akin to a faucet that cannot. be. turned off….its, what’s the word, voluminous, So Many Words. And maybe some of you feel like I come here and start a war every day. But consider, it may be that women, who indeed love their children, and spend all day with them, and probably even some women who don’t love their children, what do I know, often need some way of grounding themselves to reality so that they don’t commit terrible acts of seppuku, or hara-kiri, or whatever it’s called. Just because a person is in love, it doesn’t mean she wants to spend every single waking minute with her beloved (except me, of course, I’m the exception that proves the rule, love you Matt). A young mother, having brought forth a precious and delicate life, so enraptured, full into her baby-moon, still, For The Love Of All That Is Good And Holy, needs to have a few minutes away from the little sucker so that she can take a shower. She isn’t a monster, for her great desire to shower alone, she’s not selfish, she’s not evil. If she has some thoughts in her poor head that she doesn’t share immediately with her child, she is not A Bad Mother.

Some people might call what I’m trying to talk about A Creative Outlet. I like to call it, If I Don’t Write Every Day I Will Literally And Metaphorically Die. Color me grateful for this blog.

The problem with the Internet, and women in general, just to break my own rule, is that once a body has figured something out, and done it to her own satisfaction, she likes to cast her eye out over the landscape and look at what everyone else is doing. And if she sees that someone has done it better, she might curl up in a ball of morbid insecurity and reconsider her satisfaction. She has two options at this point. She can just hate herself (and who among us hasn’t taken that gentle path) or she can hate the woman who is Obviously Better Than Her. I like, generally, to employ a combination of the two–a modicum of self loathing, a tumbler full of looking down my nose at The Other.

I did this yesterday, to great effect. I looked at a beautiful blog, So Pretty, of a single lady with a perfect house. And then I turned to my beloved and had some very pointed remarks about how there’s no way she can get to heaven with a house like that. That kind of clean is Not Godly. She must not love God as much as I do with my messy house. In this way I salved my bleeding conscience over walking away from my filthy kitchen to go to bed and read blogs on the Internet.

It is human nature to judge. And the best standard, of course, is the Self. Some of us are better at it than others….cough. That was just a little joke.

Anyway, much as I complain about Other People, and the Internet In General, I think it’s immensely helpful to converse back and forth, even in half thoughts, trying to make connections between ideas and people. Otherwise we would have to criticize each other in person, and that would be, well, let’s not even countenance that thought.

Have a lovely day doing whatever it is you feel like doing. Unless it really is selfish and bad, and then just feel guilty or something. Pip pip.