Nicolette Lafonseca Hargreaves - 25 Nov 14
My baby boy is not yet a year old and already I am aware of what I have lovingly and fearfully called the mother wars!
Before I became a mother I was forever hearing statements such as; “well you don’t understand you are not a parent.” I was perplexed by this, the inference that as I did not have a child of my own I was incapable of wanting to protect the rights of children and did not understand their suffering because at that point my vagina was still intact and my breasts had not been sucked dry.
As a then childless woman I was led to believe that parents and more importantly mummies were part of a secret society that I didn’t, no couldn’t possibly understand, and let’s face it being on the outside of a secret club is never a good feeling. So there I was pregnant and ready for my initiation.
Speaking as a parent, there I said it, it is not so much a secret society but a minefield…
It turns out that competitive motherhood begins in pregnancy where you are required to engage in the popular road trip game of top trumps without any of the fun – no wait it is exactly like top trumps. There is no sympathy to be had for any amount of nausea, bleeding gums, exhaustion or trapped wind. Why, because someone in your circle will always out do you.
It is an odd time, because when I had breast cancer no one was waiting to say, “only stage three I was stage five”. In fact quite the opposite. Why was there not this solidarity amongst women when it comes to pregnancy? I think it is because it is not a serious illness and therefore manages to circumvent any of the usual etiquette and niceties as a British woman I am accustomed to. I also think the fact that, thankfully, more woman have been pregnant than have had breast cancer. For whatever the reason the fact still remains that when anyone feels like crap they just want a bit of sympathy, they don’t want to hear, “I was worse”, because it’s annoying.
The other thing that I noticed when I was pregnant was that there was a queue of women waiting round the block to tell me to enjoy being pregnant because my life was over from here on out. When I suffered from insomnia for the last three months I was bombarded with people telling me to get used to it I will never sleep again. They did not stop there, they began to share other such gems as you will forever wet your pants, you will never lose the weight, your relationship is essentially over.
Just in case there are any ladies out there who are now afraid to have children because their life will be over and this will be celebrated by a trickle of wee running down their leg, fear not. I can hold my wee in I am losing weight and my life is not over. Life is different, but that was part of the point of having a child, to make my life different.
In fact I was surrounded by so many people doing nothing but complain about motherhood I was curious as to why they had not one but three children. I can count on one hand the friends I have who spoke in a positive way about parenthood during my pregnancy, they were a welcome breath of fresh air.
Running the gauntlet of negativity and top trumps is the first stage of competitive motherhood, think of it as basic training or a small skirmish to prepare you for the coming fire.
Before I progress any further I will confess to you that I am competitive, I am obnoxiously competitive, I can remove the fun from any game. I am a sore winner as well as being a sore loser, I am in many people’s eyes a bad person. I already have a desire to be the mummy that makes the best cakes and snacks, but I have that desire because I want my son to bring his friends home and not disappear off to other people’s houses. You would think that a self confessed competition hungry beast as myself would be fine in a viper den. You would be wrong, as nothing can prepare you for competitive motherhood because it is beyond guerrilla warfare, you have no idea when the enemy will strike, or indeed who they are.
I was reading an article about our very own dear Duchess Kate and how great she looked as a mother and how quickly she got her figure back after child birth. Whilst being thankful that I am recognised by no one, not even my own mother at times, I am not under the pressure that those women are to ‘look great’ after childbirth.
Regardless of my lack of celebrity I was under my own pressure to look good, well alright. No one likes to look bad so at a time when there are endless visitors about to enter your home to look at your new baby. You are essentially inviting people over to see how tired you look and look at your tummy and wonder if you are still pregnant. So you brush your hair, you start to use foundation as if it were polyfiller and you greet your public. So there you are, a well turned out mummy, have you won? Short answer no.
Whilst you may be judged for turning up at the mother and baby group in your Pjs cleverly disguised with a jumper over the top you will be equally judged if you turn up looking somewhat nice. You will be met with comments such as, “well I could spend my time getting ready but I am just concentrating on being a mummy”, said whilst she is drinking coffee talking to her friends and neglecting to notice her own child is eating poo from their nappy.
The overriding factor in competitive motherhood is that there are far too many factions rendering it impossible to keep abreast of all the rules of each group. No sooner have you filled your cupboard with snacks free of gluten, sugar, salt, fat and taste ready for baby led weaning you are met with an army of mummies laughing at you. They will scoff at your efforts, tell you how foolish you are to introduce one food at a time, “food allergies, pah they didn’t have food allergies in my day”. They will delight in telling you that they are just more chilled out and relaxed when it comes to parenting, inferring that you are a highly strung wreck.
My son is only 10 months old and I am wondering what is in store for me as time marches on. So many things can become part of competitive motherhood, walking, talking, building a tower, catching a ball (I am yet to master that one myself), and all of this before school. Here I was thinking that during this time I was free of playground competitiveness but it is only just beginning.
I am a child of the 80s so at this time my mind is naturally drawn to the Matthew Broderick cinema classic War Games. As the computer plays tic tac toe & subsequently Global Thermonuclear War, the computer declares in all its sentient wisdom; “this is a strange game the only way to win is not to play.”
My son is not in competition, and probably for the first time in my life neither am I. There are others out there like me, conscientious objectors to competitive motherhood. For those women, the ones who are just happy for themselves and their children to progress through life at a pace that suits them, to stand by in their mistakes and failures with equal vigor I leave you with this quote from Dr Seuss. “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
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After many years of working in development in the UK and overseas, the social worker in me decided to take her opinions on life to a global platform, so I started a blog. Through this blog I discovered that I loved writing. My friends and family suggested that I find an alternative outlet for my sardonic ranting that was not the dinner table, I found Selfish Mother.
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