or has prolonged inconsolable crying, your odds for depression increase significantly. A history of a previous depression, or bad PMS, may also increase your risk for postpartum depression. It’s challenging but important to remember good self-care after your baby is born. Sleep when you can, eat as healthfully as possible, and go outside for walks to keep your sanity.
The Terrible Twos, the F#*!ing Fours, and Moody Little Bitches
This isn’t a parenting book, and I’m not mother of the year, so I’ll be brief. Kids’ brains aren’t done cooking yet. The rational frontal lobes don’t fully inhibit the emotional limbic circuits of the brain until the midtwenties. Children, and especially adolescents, typically have poor control over their impulses and their emotional outbursts. They’re not naturally mindful. That’s your job. You need to be their holding environment, containing their emotions. The easiest way to do this is to mirror to them their concerns; don’t minimize them. “You really wish you could have a cookie right now!” works better than “You know you can’t have a cookie until after lunch.” They also want to feel in control, so offer choices that you can live with, like “Do you want your bath before or after story time?” Also, for your teenage daughter, try being a helicopter pad, not a helicopter parent. Be a loving sanctuary where she can pause to catch her breath. She still craves attachment and connection with you, though she’s not always acting that way. And keep track of her cycle. It’ll help you immensely to anticipate and make space for her moody bitchiness.
The mantras for marriage hold for mothering. Same team. Conflict is growth trying to happen. You each have the blueprints for the other’s development. Your children have valuable lessons to offer you as they push your buttons. Our demons surface when we’re reminded of their existence, and we lash out. That moody little bitch is your yoga, a trigger for self-reflection, not a reason for you to go on psych meds. First of all, Do Not Take the Bait. She knows how to get your goat, and you need to consciously decide not to engage. Ignored behavior will extinguish itself more rapidly than behavior that is met with a big response, even if it’s negative. Just stay connected to her as best as you can while maintaining your integrity. Mothering is as much about raising yourself to be an authentic, empathic woman as it is about raising your daughter to become herself.
It Does Take a Village
Since the 1970s, when I was growing up, the prevalence of nuclear families has slipped from 45 percent down to 23 percent. The rate of babies born out of wedlock has risen four-fold. Another new feature: unmarried couples living together and raising a child fathered by another man. This number has jumped 170 percent in the past twenty years or so.
My private practice is full of women in their late thirties or forties who really want a baby. They’re desperate to find the right man for the job, aware that time is running out. I’ve gotten in the habit of exploring with these women just what it would take to go ahead and have that baby, man be damned. There are plenty of ways to get sperm, whether purchased or gifted, and there’s no guarantee that the baby daddy is going to stick around or provide everything you and the kids need anyway. If you want a baby, I say gather your sisters, mothers, girlfriends, and mentors and make yourself a village. There are plenty of cultures that do it this way, and examples abound in nature, particularly among primates, that show it can be done just fine if sisters are doing it for themselves.
Three-quarters of women today are working mothers, a number that’s quadrupled since the 1950s, and even though 40 percent of us are the primary breadwinners, the bulk of the child-rearing responsibilities still falls to us. And unlike long ago, when we had plenty of help nearby in the form of extended family and clan members, now we’re going it mostly alone. We are overwhelmed by the responsibilities and the tedium that alternates with the power struggles when it comes to raising kids.
Children used to spend more time around different nurturing adults, and multigenerational homes and gatherings were the norm. Now kids are warehoused with other kids, whether in day care, school, or summer camp. They learn from their peers instead of their elders, and they are starved of the intimacy and attachment they require. Peer orientation puts them at risk for drugs and promiscuity, so my advice is to attend to your kids’ attachment needs if you don’t want them to fill those holes on the Internet or elsewhere.
Our ancestors were “cooperative breeders.” We evolved in groups where all the resources and responsibilities were shared, including food, sex, and child care. In tribal societies, everyone chips in to raise the children. In some aboriginal groups, there is partible paternity, meaning the men aren’t entirely sure which children are theirs. This not only reduces conflict in the tribe, as men are bound by the shared paternity with other men, but also benefits the children, who receive special interest from multiple male members. There are several nursing mothers, infants are shared, and each man works hard for all the members of the village. Parental exhaustion is “inappropriate for our species” and is likely a relatively new phenomenon because we’re doing it alone.
We are all exhausted. Our fatigue is a huge issue, and it affects our ability to be there for our kids, our spouses, and ourselves. Unfortunately, when the baby comes, all of our energy seems devoted to child care. But if we don’t devote time to self-care, we’re going to feel even worse than we already do from sleep deprivation. And there’s one more thing you need to fit into your schedule:
Sex During Motherhood—Having Little Kids Means Having Even Littler Interest in Sex
My life is very full, my to-do list long. Buy milk, make sure Joe’s homework is done, shop with Molly for her semiformal dress, and then one last expenditure of energy when I plop into the marital bed. Some nights, it feels like just another chore to be checked off my list. (I’m thinking of those pads of lined paper that say “Another Dumb Thing I Gotta Do . . .”) I don’t know about you, but by the time I get done in my office, having spent the day gratifying my patients, and come home to the kids, who need my loving attention, a dishwasher that needs emptying, and laundry that needs folding, there are other things that come to mind once I finally lie down. In a survey of married women, 63 percent said they’d rather watch a movie, read, or sleep than have sex with their husbands.
When my kids were younger, they were all over me—on my lap, playing with my hair, nursing. It was very hard for me to switch gears and interpret touch in a different way just because it was coming from someone I married. I remember wondering, What happened to the horny girl I was in high school when I wasn’t supposed to be having sex? Is it Mother Nature’s cruel little hoax that when I can finally appreciate and celebrate the intimacy of my relationship, I have lost interest?
Although there are exceptions, women in early pregnancy or early postpartum report significant reductions in sexuality. A major predictor of sexual satisfaction is relationship satisfaction. We know that marital satisfaction plummets during the first two years of parenting. Fatigue and depression are important throughout the perinatal period, but at six months postpartum, the biggest predictor of sexual happiness is “the quality of the mother role.” So how you’re doing as a mom matters, but let’s not forget about hormones.
After the baby, you may be nursing for an
