Being with kids - from hard to wholesome

Motherhood as an invitation to growth

If you follow me a little longer, you know my adage is: Motherhood is an opportunity to develop our full potential. You can read about why here.

I'm writing this blog because in a week's time, I found myself having two very similar conversations with friends. These brought to light what that invitation to growth looks like for me, in real life. And I want to share stories about the 'third way of motherhood'. Motherhood is not all roses and butterflies and a women's only destiny. But it's also not a drag that's only survivable by engaging in wine o'clock and outsourcing most of the childcare. It's intense, and full of potential for growth. Or as Elissa Strauss put it on her substack:

For a long time, we diminished care through shallow sentimentalization. In this worldview care is simple, easy, always fulfilling—and something women are naturally inclined to. There was no mention of the burdens of care, or how care can hold parents and caregivers back from economic security and pursuing other interests and needs.

With the correction of this worldview came a sometimes overcorrection. Some second wave feminists, and many who followed them, focused more on getting women access to the freedom and economic security men enjoyed, while also prioritizing male definitions of success and living “a good life” in the process. This brought important benefits—personally, I am so glad to have a bank account, a job, and birth control—but it also fed into a popular conception of care as a miserable, unproductive and imprisoning experience.

Ultimately, both narratives diminish and demean care. Care is a human relationship, with many dimensions, possibilities, and plenty of friction. It’s also one that brings many people meaning and joy. When we get rid of the fairy tale/ horror story paradigm we begin to see that this friction can be productive and illuminating and shape us in profound ways

From Chaos to Closer: how our family bond has grown

The situation is as follows.

As a family, we have recently travelled for a while, which meant that me and my partner spend a prolonged period of time being our kids' sole caretakers. We did do turn taking and divided things up. We've obviously had our ups and downs, but overall, the experience has felt very positive. Upon returning home, both me and my partner, independently of each other, noticed it feels like we are a more tight family unit.

When a friend of mine asked how the trip has been, she commented that she admired us for being able to spend so much time with the kids, and that she just 'isn't made for that'. She said: "I find it boring to be with them most of the time, and it feels a bit suffocating to be with them for a whole weekend. I just need a lot of time for myself."

It struck me. Because I started out in motherhood feeling the same way myself. I was often bored being with them (esp pre talking). I was often overwhelmed by their demands, the chaos, the noise. I often craved time for myself and MANY times have thought: it's so much easier to just go to work, deal with adults. And my husband has felt the same in the periods he took parental leave.

But this has evolved.

The core of our parenting: Choosing connection over convenience

Let me be clear. We don't have 'easy' kids. They have varying degrees of strong-willedness, some neurodiversity, are FULL of energy, are boisterous boys, and their voices are so loud they will never need to use a microphone. But of course we love them to bits.

What I told my friend is this:

Before I explain what we do, it's important to mention WHY we do it. We, as parents, have very early on decided that our most important value in life, since becoming parents, is that we want to build an authentic connection with our kids. This comes first.

That also means that a lot of things come second, third, fourth etc. and many more things drop off the 'important' list all together.

It's very important to realize that each family has a different value set, and that it's completely valid if your family has another top value. It's just important to understand our hierarchy of values, so that you know from what perspective we are doing things.

For us, building an authentic connection includes being able to be with them, to fully embrace who they are, and to learn to live together as uniquely different people. This doesn't mean other people cannot also care for them, and that it's not important that they are cared for by a diverse set of people. We do think that is important.

But we don't want to be afraid, or feel incompetent about caring for our own kids. We want to be able to make choices about their caretaking from a place of choice versus lack.

I realize that it is a privilege to even have this choice, and that a lot of people would desperately want that, but that their situation does not allow for it.

The effort behind the growth: What we’ve had to learn

Even with this privilege, it has been hard work to get to that place.

• We've had to work through our own unhelpful coping patterns.

• I've had to come to terms with the fact that I have to re-learn 'play', having lost that ability into adult hood (faking it till I make it, esp. in pretend play)

• We (still) work hard on rebuilding our nervous systems to be able to handle the chaos.

• We have to change habits we don't really want to change (for example, being night owls)

• I've had to learn to let go of perfectionism and instead coming back to the belief that you can mess up and make up again

• I have to work with my tendency to want to control, constantly noticing it when it comes up (still not a nice feeling)

What has also been a game changer for us, and something we only realized quite late, is that we, unconsciously still held the belief that 'being with children is hard and difficult (and honestly, not worth it)'.

And to be honest, that's kind of the story we are all sold, in differing versions. For over 30 years, we had lived a life where the sole message was: you're worthy if you achieve (in paid work). Spending time with children hardly feels like you're achieving something in the moment. You're not getting the recognition, and being triggered is NOT a nice feeling (even though it gets easier to manage). And when we started as parents, it WAS oftentimes hard. We are now consciously telling ourselves: I choose to be with the kids, and I can manage this. And maybe it will be fun today. Jenna Hollenstein sums that up beautifully:

It would be easy to internalize society’s value system in which the grit and monotony of motherhood is seen as lesser. Whether stay-at-home moms (SAHMs), mompreneurs, moms who work outside the home, moms seeking work at a living wage, or moms who are in transition between any of the above, we face an often unwinnable battle for feelings of accomplishment, productivity, and usefulness. But suppose we flipped the script? Rather than it being the number of widgets sold, emails sent, or papers pushed, or the appearance of being “Instafabulous” and showing the world how you are rocking it, imagine if we chose to prioritize moments of presence, gentleness, and compassion.

Jenna Hollenstein - Mommysattva

We still have days where it doesn't work. Where I wish the day to be over. Where I have been with them, but certainly not in in a connected way. We start over, we apologize, we take time for ourselves, we talk about it and we try again. As Jenna Hollenstein puts it, I want to become the Mommysattva.

The Mommysattva is how I call her. She understands the full importance of the responsibility she has assumed. She is invested in working with her own confusion, uncertainty, and difficulty. She craves realness, wishes to discover the nature of reality, desires to get to the heart of the matter, and is not afraid of the struggle, pain, and true joy required to do so.

Reshaping the narrative of parenting, beyond parenthood

Why im writing this is not because I believe that everyone should do this in their parenting, not at all. I'm writing this to hopefully provide you insight into the hard work that goes into what you might only see on the surface.

And mostly, I'm sharing this perspective because I DO hope that we, together, can reshape the perspective on motherhood being an invitation AND an opportunity for growth, however we define growth for ourselves.

Because, I have noticed that working through this specific difficulty in motherhood, also benefits me beyond motherhood, for example in my work. Having to learn to be with my difficult feelings because I cannot escape them (because I cannot leave the kids alone), has improved my tendency to procrastinate at work as well.

In relationships, I have become better at setting healthy boundaries, because I learned that if I don't in the setting with the kids, the day might spiral out of control.

Motherhood changes us, and that is great news. It's great news for the long term, because we become more interesting, more well-rounded people. In the short term, it might mean we have to deal with the struggle. Just like I tell my kids: we are here to learn from all that life gives us.

This blog is written by Babette Lockefeer, founder of Matermorphosis. Matermorphosis the place for ambitious women navigating the Shift to working motherhood. Want to get started with understanding Matrescence a little better? Sign up for the free Audio course here.