Christine Kelly Reads and Writes

It’s the first day of school, and while Twitter and Instagram is full of moms crying as they send off their kid to their first ever day of school, I’m quietly celebrating inside. I can’t celebrate outwardly, but I don’t want my kid to think I’m excited to not see him for a few hours. But also, I’m embarrassed.

Shouldn’t I be sad? Shouldn’t I miss him before he’s gone? Why am I not feeling like all these others mom are? Am I a Bad Mom?

This further was exacerbated when I had a conversation with a mom I recently met. They were talking about volunteering for school, and I was like “no way, not for me.” And their response wasn’t like, “get that,” it was “well just volunteer for the book fair. It’s the easiest.”

My perception was that there isn’t an out. That as a mom I need to volunteer, even if I work three jobs (not counting being a mother) and am sole child care when they’re not in school. My time is valuable, but apparently not enough to warrant spending on what I need, only what I should be doing.

All these feelings seemed to brew further once news of Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas’s divorce broke, starting a conversation about whether Sophie is a Bad Mom. My initial response to the first reports coming out about Joe having the kids on tour was, “doesn’t Maren Morris also do that? So what, the dad took the kids out?” But then as more information came out, the arrows all pointed at Sophie for not being what we expect a mom to be—solely a mom.

Rolling Stone had a great article calling our the misogynistic bullshit that is the media circus already framing the narrative of their divorce, no doubt all thanks to Joe’s PR team. And thankfully it’s backfired.

I was glad to see a general communal thought from the Millennials and Gen-Zers that this was all PR malarky and we aren’t buying it. Additionally, reading the Rolling Stone article in defense of Sophie helped me see we’re realizing more and more how mom’s are pigeonholed into being “mom” and not themselves. Being yourself= Bad Mom.

When I went in search of articles that may be along this vein, there were a few. Many that mentioned how mothers don’t like parenting, some mentioned how their kids are better for them focusing on themselves (but this was one article opposed to the many about coming to terms with motherhood). I think there is a lot of truth to this. Doing things for yourself will help you love yourself and your children in a better way– but society doesn’t love you for it, so most messages are teaching you how to love being a mother rather than say it’s ok to put yourself first.

I think there are a lot of moms that feel that motherhood isn’t a good fit for them despite being a mother. I want to be sure to caveat here, that there are a ton of mom’s that LOVE being a mother. I have seen some mom’s very close to me become a better person after having a child, finally reaching fulfillment that they’d been searching for. Motherhood agrees with them, and for that I’m so happy for them! But instead of being the exception, they are the rule, when I feel it should be the other way around.

I also think it needs to be stated (because it’s the internet), that even if mom’s don’t like being a “mom”, they love their children. Those two things are not mutually exclusive, there can be room for the love of your children and the sadness of losing yourself to the identity of being their mom.

I think ultimately, it’s hard being a mom because our lives change significantly. While our husbands lives also change, there isn’t the expectation that they will be volunteering at the book fair, or making the cupcakes for their birthday party. We lose ourself to the stereotype because it’s not an option, it’s a requirement. We are the ones that scroll how to best bring up our child, and all the while feeling like it’s resting on the moms shoulders, the burden to carry. My constant thought is, “if I don’t do this, who will?”.

That’s not to say my husband isn’t an amazing father; he is. But where a heavy weight is on my shoulders to love motherhood, to volunteer at school, and be sure my kid is having a good childhood, my husband seems to skirt around true sacrifice, still able to serve himself without society saying, “oh he likes getting drunk instead of being home with his kids” (this is hypothetical because my husband rarely drinks), or “good for him for taking them to lunch.” The unasked question with the latter statement is “where is the mom?”. It’s just as easy for a man to earn the label of Good Dad as it is for a woman to become a Bad Mom, as shown by the PR scheme of Joe while announcing his divorce.

It’s not hard to figure out how it’s come to this. When we’re not given a choice over our bodies, why should we have a choice with what we’re doing with our life if it’s not being sacrificed for our children?

And while our generation is working to break cycles, it seems we’re still on the hamster wheel trying to find a parenting mold that will fit with a method of still sticking true to ourselves. But it seems that even when we put ourselves first, the label of Bad Mom will follow us, if not in our mind but in society.