Shari Dworkin and Faye Wachs dived into the phenomenon of how past feminist uprisings have been used to create the link between looking ‘great’ and our ability to mother well. I mean seriously, WTAF?
One of the key points in this article that really clarifies the outside-in view of the female body is: ‘Exactly at the moment when a woman's body is accomplishing a highly valued route to femininity, she is least likely to be viewed as aesthetically ideal’. It's the view that while pregnancy is a great thing, it isn't an attractive thing. In my experience, other females notice how we are ‘looking great and glowing’ through our pregnancies. Yet there are perceived responsibilities that once we have a child, we will go back to looking and being exactly as we were before.
A survey conducted online by BabyCenter of 7000 new mothers identified some key points in the after-baby-body world. It found that 64 per cent of the survey takers felt their body image had gotten worse after they became a mother. Interestingly, it also found that over time, even if mums lost the weight, their body image remained altered in 62 per cent of the population. That's a lot of body image concerns we are carrying around.
Mothers have enough changes in their world learning how to care for this new little person, and how to navigate a whole new existence. I mean, they've just momentously birthed, passing into matrescence and their new sense of self (more on that in the next chapter). Well done, Mama! Being concerned about getting their body back should be one of the lowest things on their agenda.
Expectations that within weeks after birth you appear as if you haven't been pregnant at all abound. If we look at the social commentary around celebrities after they've had children, you can see the continual seeding of this narrative into the psyche of mothers worldwide.
I remember when we were living in South Korea — my husband and I moved there when our kids were two and one years old — we got a group of mums together to exercise. This was a super precious time for me as I didn't know anybody and it allowed me to forge beautiful friendships. On reflection, there was definitely an undercurrent of exercising together to allow ourselves to look a certain way (and can I just say that all of us were healthy and looking after ourselves and our kids well). Many conversations were had on how to best feed ourselves without losing milk supply or energy levels to allow us to get that old body back again.
Hell, I juice-fasted, I ate a low-carb diet, I did everything to make myself look like I did before I had kids. And I never questioned it. I just thought that was what I was supposed to do. It was an expectation of my motherhood that I was a successful mother if I looked a certain way. And that was defined by my pre-baby self.
Zero recognition was given to how the process of becoming a mother changed my physical being. Zero acknowledgement for growing babies, the widening of the ribcage, the softening of pelvis shape, the years of breastfeeding.
Nope … it was all about fitting back into the dresses of years past and being happy with my sense of self, which was based on this external perception of what that was. It's time we all started calling bullshit on this. I didn't know any better … and one of my core desires is to help mums recognise they are more than just the way they look!
(3) Mothers should ‘parent’ a certain way
I don't want to be controversial in this land, but there are so many ways we can parent. In my experience, there most definitely isn't a right or wrong way that fits everybody, their family unit and their children. I went into this whole mothering gig with an expectation that I would parent in a very specific way, while still being unsure how to mother. I'm not sure where I grabbed the info from and what subconscious pathways it had been built through, but there were ways that I perceived to be the ‘right way’ to parent.
The ‘right way’ when I became a new mum looked completely different from how I parent now. It's an evolving thing. But interestingly, the perceived expectation of how a parent should do it is high. Research by Kate Harwood, Neil McLean and Kevin Durkin identified that those mothers who went in with an optimistic (or positive) outlook were much more likely to have matched or exceeded expectations. However, when the ‘experiences were negative relative to expectations, there was greater depression symptomatology and poorer relationship adjustment’. What this means is that if you go into parenting thinking it will be great, and it is, then you have a great time. However, if you go into parenting and it isn't as good as you thought it would be, it just makes you more likely to have depression and anxiety. The perception of what parenting should be and look like can impact the mental health of our mums.
Remember back in chapter 1, where I talked about newborn times predicating burnout? This is exactly what I meant. If we can create realistic expectations of parenting, and how changing what you do is normal, then we are much less likely to end up in burnout land.
I can categorically say that I went into motherhood with pretty high expectations of glorious calm days, lots of connected play, ease with breastfeeding and sleep … you know, all the pretty pictures. Yet there are some questions that I wish I'd asked and discussed with my husband before we began the journey that could have made it a whole lot simpler.
I wish we had discussed:
How will we share child rearing duties? How does each of us see the make-up of day and night?
What support can we expect to have to help us achieve our parenting and family ideals?
What religion/ethics/mindset will we aim to develop in our child/ren?
To smack or not to smack?
Who would ideally look after the child/ren if both parents are working?
What would an ideal childhood look like to me now, as an adult? How can we create this for our child/ren?
What does a happy and healthy parent look like?
What does a happy and healthy child look like?
Are there any cultural significances we each bring to the table? How can we incorporate those?
How can we each connect socially to our friends and mindfully with ourselves? How can we keep our relationship alive?
Mindfulness being brought pre-emptively into the parenting journey before we embark on it is an amazing way to kick off the shackles of ‘should’.
Those first six to eight weeks (or months) can be so life altering, and having a plan together (or with your support people if you are doing this gig solo) is so very important. If we can head into parenting with an open heart and mind, and decrease the ‘shoulds’, imagine where that can lead us.
(4) Mothers should be selfless all the time
Okay, this probably doesn't need a great deal of discussion, but the martyr or selfless mother concept is a biggie in the expectation stakes. Research conducted by Lazarus and Rossouw in 2015 discovered that it was vital to educate women about societal expectations and self-expectations prior to having a child, as ‘these expectations can influence levels of self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and stress’. Much like in point 3, how we think it will end up and how it actually does can drive our mental health outcomes.
Where point 4 differs is that we are focusing not on the parenting journey, but on how your selflessness as a mother is indicative of the intensity of your love for those little babes. The self-scrutiny of failure around not
