One of the greatest gifts in life, motherhood, is being smeared daily. It’s impossible to miss, whether you’re watching TV, doomscrolling, or just hanging out in mom groups physically or online. Moms are portrayed as constantly sleep-deprived, barely hanging onto their sanity, and wanting to get away from their kids.
Do you ever just scroll through social media when kids go back to school at the end of the summer? Moms post all the time that they cannot wait to send their kids back to the classroom so they can get back to doing whatever they do without their offspring. Meanwhile, TV sitcoms frequently show moms with a glass of wine and spit up on their shirts because now that’s their reality.
Motherhood was not always the object of a smear campaign. In television shows during the 1950s and ’60s, mothers were portrayed as beautiful, elegant women, and revered in culture. Moms dressed with elegance, wore heels, and had perfect hair and makeup. Sure, it was an ideal, but motherhood was at least portrayed in a positive light.
Then the Sexual Revolution happened, and the birth control pill was introduced. Women were encouraged to be free from their fertility, to rid themselves of the “burden” of children, and to be more like men with zero responsibilities to potential offspring. Not long after, the Supreme Court delivered Roe v. Wade and gave every woman the so-called right to an abortion for any reason at any point in pregnancy.
It’s no surprise the systemic teardown of motherhood followed closely behind. Feminists railed against the patriarchy and demanded to be free from motherhood in every way possible. Instead of the 1990s mantra of abortion as “safe, legal, and rare” from Bill Clinton, we now are faced with the Shout Your Abortion movement and cries that abortion is essential to women’s empowerment.
For those moms who do choose motherhood, they can expect to be bombarded with mommy wine culture, where moms feel like they have to be drunk to get through motherhood. I have friends who are more frustrated by the fact that they have to defend their choice not to drink during playdates than they are with the constant demands of their little ones. One mom even wrote how isolating it is to be sober, wondering if her kid would get any playdates or if she could make friends without drinking.
Motherhood is an incredible gift. Yes, there are difficult days where sanity hangs by a string, but that’s part of life. I can never quite get over the superpower women have to grow a baby inside them. It’s hard; every mother gets it. But when moms constantly share that they love when their kids are in school or summer camp and out of their hair, or that they need alcohol to get through parenting, their kids are listening. They see their moms always with a drink in hand or complaining of yet another school break.
Children absorb so much more than we think they do. They will remember that their lives were a burden to their moms who always seemed to want to be wherever they were not. That can be devastating to a child. It’s fine to take a break from parenting to get nails done or do something alone for a few hours, but to constantly want time away from kids feels like a slap in the face to children. Yet this is what pop culture encourages when it portrays moms as barely hanging on to what is left of themselves and only wanting to get away from their own kids.
Today, the DINK (Dual Income No Kids) lifestyle is advertised as the ultimate ideal. No kids? Awesome! You can really live your life and do whatever you want without children tying you down — that’s the message women get from today’s culture. Kids hear it too. They see when their very existence is undesired. It’s scary how quickly society has changed from pro-mother and pro-child to anti-motherhood and anti-children.
It’s OK to have bad days as a mother, to be frustrated and not have it all together. Dealing with whiny, ungrateful children is a part of the self-sacrificial journey of parenthood. Moms have an enormous amount of responsibility, and they absolutely need to be supported. Motherhood doesn’t need to be overly glorified because that, too, would be inaccurate.
But motherhood shouldn’t be trashed everywhere either. We need to overhaul the image of motherhood in our culture. It’s an incredible gift that I celebrate with all the other mothers I’m so privileged to know and love.
