“Babies grow up very quickly, enjoy it.” “You only have eight Christmases to believe in magic with your children, make the most of it.” “Enjoy the summers with them, because later, when they grow up, they won’t want to go on family vacations.” These are just a few examples of a type of messages that proliferate on networks and at a social level inviting mothers and fathers to enjoy parenthood, and to do so urgently because time flies.
“They annoy me, I can’t manage them,” explains Leticia, mother of a six-month-old baby and an eight-year-old daughter. “These are messages that have always hurt me, when I read them on social networks or when another mother or a neighbor tells me, and I have been wondering 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 the reality for most mothers is not the same. I love being with my children, but the days seem very long and I don’t feel like time passes quickly at all. So these messages from Mr. Wonderful make me sick,” explains this mother.
For Paola Roig, perinatal psychologist and maternity popularizer, the first thing to do to combat this discourse is “to accept that children grow up”. “Somehow it seems like they’ll grow less if you enjoy them all the time. But that’s a lie: our creatures will grow the same way, whether you like it or not. We have to live with this pain and at the same time the pleasure of knowing that our creatures will grow, and that other times will come, and that perhaps sometimes we will regret a past time, but that does not mean It depends of the level of pleasure but it is rather inherent to life,” explains the expert.
Perhaps a joyful and enjoyable motherhood is one in which it is accepted that there are also moments of worry, doubt or suffering.
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 pleasure, sometimes a little suffering, then we move on again good time, 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 him and throw him out the window, well with our children too. Accepting this does not make us bad mothers, nor does it make motherhood less joyful and enjoyable. On the contrary: perhaps a joyful and pleasant motherhood is one in which we accept that there are also moments of worry, doubt or suffering,” explains 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 it doesn’t have to do with having fun all the time. In fact, I can’t think of anything that makes me always, always, always enjoy it. To demand it from my daughter would be nonsense,” he reflects.
For her, the messages that encourage us to make the most of motherhood are “ready-made sentences”, “which are said without thinking too much about their origin or their possible repercussions for the person who hears them”. “I guess 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 drives you to go to that common place, as if to feel that at least you have warned someone else that one day, this is probably how you feel now,” says Ferradas.
Eight Christmases, ten summers
Paula, mother of two teenagers, already explained the ambivalence that summer vacations – or “killings” – generated in her: “You are told to enjoy all the time, that time passes very quickly, and you receive the messages typical ‘you’ll I only live 12 summers with little kids’. But then you have to go through the summer and it’s exhausting,” he said in that report. Now that Christmas is approaching, he has the same mixed feelings: “On the one hand I want it, because it’s time we spend as a family and there are a lot of fun times, but on the other side I feel so lazy that I’m dying. I’ll have to juggle working from home with them at home, jumping from party to party, taking care of presents, preparing special meals and dinners for the whole family, and thinking about Christmas plans because that’s what we have to do », recognizes this mother.
I liken it to what it would be like to watch a couple fall in love and say, “Enjoy it, the euphoria will wear off soon.” 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 of parenting: “We have huge demands on motherhood, it’s like we have to do things all the time. Now that Christmas is approaching, we have to think about making an advent calendar, organizing the elves’ game… We have to ask ourselves if all this amounts to pleasure, or rather the pleasure is simply being able to be at home or in the park. with our creatures.” , explains Roig. For her, maternal ambivalence is particularly present during the holiday season, but not only. “It is a feeling that accompanies us at all stages of motherhood, even before becoming mother,” she said.
Irene Ferradas also sees a point of threat in messages about the urgency to cum. “I compare it to what it would be like to watch a couple fall in love and say, ‘Enjoy, the high will wear off soon.’ “Why would you do something like that?” he asks and offers a thought: “We know that childhood only lasts a few years, so it’s natural to feel a certain urgency to go along with it. of presence, of knowing the different stages that our creatures go through, of enjoying them But no life, even the most privileged, is pleasant at all times. Not even in childhood. , joy and wonder is ridiculous and perhaps quite frustrating,” he concludes.
