“Babies grow very fast, enjoy.” “You only have eight Christmases to believe in magic with your children, make the most of them.” “Make the most of the summers with them, because later when they grow up they won’t want to go on family vacations.” These are just some examples of a type of messages that proliferate on the networks and at a social level inviting mothers and fathers to enjoy parenting, and to do so urgently because time passes quickly.
“They get on my nerves, I can’t handle them,” explains Leticia, mother of a six-month-old baby and an eight-year-old girl. “They are messages that have always made me feel bad, when I read them on social networks or when another mother or a neighbor tells me, and I have been thinking for some time why they generate so much rejection in me. The problem is that they totally idealize motherhood, as if it were a stage in which you have to be happy all the time. But then the reality of most mothers is not like that. I love being with my children, but the days seem very long, and I don’t have the feeling that time flies at all. So those messages from Mr. Wonderful make me sick,” explains this mother.
For Paola Roig, perinatal psychologist and motherhood popularizer, the first thing to do to combat this discourse is to “accept that children grow.” “Somehow it seems like they will grow less if you enjoy it all the time. But that’s a lie: our creatures are going to grow the same, whether you enjoy it or not. We have to live with that pain and at the same time pleasure of knowing that our creatures are going to grow, and that other times are going to come, and that perhaps sometimes we are going to long for a past time, but that does not depend on the level of enjoyment but rather it is inherent to life,” explains the expert.
Perhaps a joyful and enjoyable motherhood is one in which it is accepted that moments of concern, doubt or suffering also exist.
Paola Roig
— psychologist
Furthermore, adds Roig, “it is impossible to enjoy something all the time”: “But not only in motherhood, but in life, which sometimes is enjoyment, sometimes it is suffering a little, then you have a good time again, and then again a little sad… Motherhood is the longest and deepest relationship we will establish with anyone in our life. If it happens to us with our partner that sometimes we hate them and would throw them out the window, well with our children too. Accepting that does not make us bad mothers nor does it make us have a less joyful and enjoyable motherhood. On the contrary: perhaps a joyful and enjoyable motherhood is one in which it is accepted that moments of concern, doubt or suffering also exist,” says Paola Roig.
Irene Ferradas, journalist, trainer and mother, agrees with this criterion. “I’m not sure what it means to be a good mother, but I know that it doesn’t have to do with enjoying yourself all the time. I can’t think of anything, in fact, that always, always, always makes me enjoy it. Demanding it from my daughter would be nonsense,” he reflects.
For her, the messages that urge us to make the most of motherhood are “ready-made phrases,” “that are said without thinking too much about their origin or their possible repercussions for whoever hears them.” “I suppose that the passage of time is something that causes us a lot of confusion, and that when your children grow up and you see a baby, nostalgia makes you go to that common place, as if to feel that at least you have warned someone else that one day It probably feels like you feel now,” explains Ferradas.
Eight Christmases, ten summers
Paula, mother of two teenagers, already explained the ambivalence that summer vacations – or “killings” – generated in her: “They tell you to enjoy all the time, that time passes very quickly, and you receive the typical messages of ‘you will only live 12 summers with little children’. But then you have to spend the summer and it is exhausting,” he said in that report. Now that Christmas is approaching, he has the same mixed feelings: “On the one hand I feel like it, because it is time we spend as a family and there are many moments of enjoyment, but on the other hand I feel so lazy that I am dying. I will have to juggle teleworking with them at home, jumping from celebration to celebration, taking care of the gifts, preparing special meals and dinners for the whole family and thinking about Christmas plans because that’s what we have to do,” this mother acknowledges.
I compare it to what it would be like to see a couple who are falling in love and tell them: ‘Enjoy, the high will soon wear off.’ Why would you do something like that?
Irene Ferradas
— journalist and trainer
Paola Roig also uses the example of Christmas to talk about current expectations regarding parenting: “We have tremendous demands regarding motherhood, it is as if we have to be doing things all the time. Now that Christmas is approaching, we have to think about making an advent calendar, organizing the elf game… We must ask ourselves if all of this equates to enjoyment, or rather enjoyment is simply being able to be at home or in the park with our creatures.” , explains Roig. For her, maternal ambivalence is especially present during the holiday season, although not only. “It is a feeling that accompanies us during all stages of motherhood, even before we become mothers,” she says.
Irene Ferradas also sees a point of threat in the messages about the urgency of enjoyment. “I compare it to what it would be like to see a couple who are falling in love and tell them: ‘Enjoy, the high will soon wear off.’ “Why would you do something like that?” he asks. And he offers a reflection: “We know that childhood lasts only a few years, so it is natural to feel a certain urgency to accompany it with presence, to find out about the different stages that our creatures go through, to enjoy it. But no life, not even the most privileged, is enjoyable all the time. Not even in childhood. Pretending that everything is sweetness, joy and wonder is ridiculous and can be quite frustrating,” he concludes.
#Wonderful #motherhood #Enjoy #time #quickly
